Aphex Twin Selected

This disc basically collects tracks from two Warp singles ("Ventolin," "Donkey Rhubarb") released by Aphex Twin during 1995. Besides the memorable A-sides, there are four remixes of "Ventolin" and the Philip Glass orchestration of "Icct Hedral." It's not quite the greatest-hits compendium that Aphex Twin needs, but it works well for trainspotting fans.

The audio companion to David Toop's excellent book advances the case he made, that Les Baxter, Aphex Twin, The Beach Boys, Herbie Hancock, King Tubby and My Bloody Valentine are all related by their effect on sound pioneering. A double-disc set, Ocean of Sound impresses not only with its incredible diversity of musical styles, but with how easily these artists work next to each other. The second disc includes consecutive contributions by Paul Schütze, the Velvet Undergound, Holger Czukay of Can, The Beach Boys, African Headcharge and Sun Ra. Besides illustrating Toop's point beautifully, the album is an excellent addition to the collection of any wide-ranging ambient fan.

Virgin's fourth Ambient volume is the first of all-new material from contemporary artists, and it provides the most highlights of any in the series. Tracks from a score of crucial new-ambient producers, including Aphex Twin, Seefeel, O'Rang, EAR, Main, Final, Lull, Labradford, Techno Animal, Scorn and Paul Schütze. Seeing as each track is available only on this collection, it became the hardest-to-find of the entire series soon after its release.

Warp20 (Chosen) placed the track selection process in the hands of fans, who voted online with the option to add messages like "This song makes you feel like a proud parent, à la John Hurt in the movie Alien," as reprinted throughout the booklet. The ten tracks (+ bonus track for Japan) that received the most votes make up the first disc. After track five, the disc makes a swift transition from covering exemplary material (Aphex Twin's bent lounge-porn single "Windowlicker," Boards of Canada's eerie yet blissful "Roygbiv"), to looking more like a sampler of recent releases (from Plaid's "Eyen" to Clark's "Herzog," all 2001-2006 territory). The 14 tracks on the second disc were picked by label co-founder Steve Beckett…

Nav Katze are a Japanese music group whose style ranges from mellow acoustic pop to electro-rock to ambient techno. Anime fans may know Nav Katze from the Video Girl Ai soundtrack, and techno fans may have heard the Never Mind The Distortion remixes by Aphex Twin, Global Communication, Black Dog, and others.

Rough Trade presents “Behind the Counter with Max Richter“. This spectacular compilation put together by much-loved British composer Max Richter is the first in Rough Trade Shop’s Behind the Counter series, in which some of our favourite artists create mixes especially for us using the records we sell on the shop floor. As big fans of Max, Rough Trade invited him to curate a mix, knowing he would pick out some unexpected gems. The result is a 36-track (on CD) and 33-Track (On Vinyl) compilation of soundbites, pieces of composition, interesting mixes and curious musical choices including tracks from Mogwai, Boards of Canada, Philip Glass, Aphex Twin and Low among some classical works by Rachmaninoff and Bach.

Call it ironic that the Aphex Twin's first U.S. album release was under a pseudonym, but given the many names Mr. James has used over the course of his career, perhaps it's just as well. Regardless of name or intent, on Surfing on Sine Waves he serves up a great collection of abstract electronic/dance madness, caught somewhere between the driftiness of his more ambient works at the time and the rave-minded nuttiness of "Digeridoo." The opening track, "Polygon Window," plants its feet firmly in both camps, with a brisk series of beats playing against the slightly dark, slightly quirky keyboard sounds with which the Twin first made his name…