QKThr, an obscure cut from Aphex Twin’s 2001 album, Drukqs, sounds like an ambient experiment recorded on a historic pirate ship. Shaky fingers caress the keys of an accordion to create an uncanny tone; clustered chords cry out, subdued but mighty, before scuttling back into dreamy nothingness.
This 88-second elegy has always been overshadowed by another song on Drukqs, the Disklavier instrumental Avril 14th, which alongside Windowlicker is the Cornish producer’s best-known track. But QKThr has become a weird breakaway success, featuring on nearly 8m TikTok posts, adorning everything from cute panda videos to lightly memed US presidential debates, and a fail video trend dubbed “subtle foreshadowing”.
