Selected Ambient Works

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit an album that changed ambient music forever.
The facts were thin on the ground. Richard D. James was from Cornwall, yes—a geographical outsider in the context of early-1990s UK rave, a kind of coastal cowpoke. He’d been at college for an engineering degree, one he never finished, and was known to pick at the innards of his analog synths. He collected aliases like another young man might sneakers, trotting each one out when the occasion called for it, never letting any of them get too worn: Polygon Window, Caustic Window, Power-Pill, the Dice Man, GAK, Blue Calx, Q-Chastic, AFX, plus his clear favorite, Aphex Twin.

Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Expanded Edition) is due for release on Oct 4, 2024, celebrating the original album’s 30th anniversary. Written when Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) was in his early 20s, the album gained critical acclaim both upon release and retrospectively (10/10 Pitchfork review, #2 Best Ambient Album of All Time, 4 star Rolling Stone review + more). Aphex Twin and SAW II’s influence continues to grow and take new meaning across generations.

Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Expanded Edition) is due for release on Oct 4, 2024, celebrating the original album’s 30th anniversary. Written when Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) was in his early 20s, the album gained critical acclaim both upon release and retrospectively (10/10 Pitchfork review, #2 Best Ambient Album of All Time, 4 star Rolling Stone review + more). Aphex Twin and SAW II’s influence continues to grow and take new meaning across generations.

Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Expanded Edition) is due for release on Oct 4, 2024, celebrating the original album’s 30th anniversary. Written when Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) was in his early 20s, the album gained critical acclaim both upon release and retrospectively (10/10 Pitchfork review, #2 Best Ambient Album of All Time, 4 star Rolling Stone review + more). Aphex Twin and SAW II’s influence continues to grow and take new meaning across generations.

One of the indisputable classics of electronica, and a defining document for ambient music in particular, Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is Richard D. James' earliest and most fully realized achievement. Reputedly created on homemade equipment deconstructed from standard synthesizers, the music within takes its cue from club beats and the techno rhythms of rave and acid-house culture. Upon these foundations, however, Aphex Twin weaves melodic tapestries of great subtlety, beauty, and atmospheric texture. "Tha," for example, contains a muted bass-drum pulse that becomes the center for evolving patterns of sound – a kind of aural mandala. The more driving rhythm of "Heliosphan" also gives rise to the ethereal play of melody. Several tracks, such as "Schottkey 7th Path" and "Hedphelym," have a tense, telescoping ambience that evokes paranoia and a sense of gravity-free floating at once. Other selections show Aphex Twin working more firmly in the techno-dance idiom, but even these display a complexity, elegance, and delicacy rarely heard in the genre. This landmark recording is one of the essential building blocks of any electronica collection.

Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Expanded Edition) is due for release on Oct 4, 2024, celebrating the original album’s 30th anniversary. Written when Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) was in his early 20s, the album gained critical acclaim both upon release and retrospectively (10/10 Pitchfork review, #2 Best Ambient Album of All Time, 4 star Rolling Stone review + more). Aphex Twin and SAW II’s influence continues to grow and take new meaning across generations.

Extravagantly opaque, willfully vaporous — Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II, released by the estimable British label Warp Records in 1994, rejuvenated ambient music for the Internet Age that was just dawning.