The Artist/Album: Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2 (Warp, 1994)
Our Review: Anyone remotely interested in the long overdue triple LP repressing of Aphex Twin’s second Selected Ambient Works collection needs to nab it immediately now that Sire’s done the honors nearly 20 years later. A masterpiece on par with anything Brian Eno’s ever released, it features 25 beat deficient tracks–all but one of which are untitled, and marked with a mysterious icon–that were considered quite experimental at the time and are doubly essential decades later. Richard D. James himself compared the album’s sensory overload samples to “standing in a power station on acid,” the result of lucid dreams and synesthete mind states. Hearing it now, spread across heavy, thick grooves, it’s easy to buy into that myth, or at the very least, walk away feeling like you just witnessed a high water mark that may never be repeated.
Available At: Amazon · Insound
Stream ‘Selected Ambient Works, Vol. 2’ in full via Spotify below…
