Selected Ambient Works Volume II

Richard D. James put Selected Ambient Works Volume II out as Aphex Twin on 7 March 1994, Warp in Britain, a double CD, a triple LP and a cassette. Sire released it on 12 April. Most of the pieces have no titles. They are identified by photographs and by the pie-chart diagrams that stood in for names. A track that sat on the vinyl and the cassette was left off the original CDs. Later editions put it back. James described the recording, in a line that has stayed attached to the album, as standing in a power station on acid. The image is his.

The first Selected Ambient Works, 85–92, had been beat-led in places and had come out on Apollo, a R&S imprint, in 1992. Volume II takes the beats away. What is left is long, tonal, and slightly marine or slightly metallic depending on the piece. A tracklist that shouted would have fought the design. The photographs do the job track titles usually do: they tell you these are different rooms, not one long pad. Chart peaks exist, including a number one on the British dance chart, which is a strange home for a record this quiet and also an accurate one. Dance shops were where his audience already stood.

People later built a mythology around how the pieces were made, lucid dreams included. The verifiable design choice is the one on the sleeve. No names, or almost none. A power-station line from the artist. A format difference between the CD and the vinyl that means “the album” depends on which object you bought. If you want the Aphex Twin who was about to become a chart vandal with a face, he is elsewhere in 1994. This is the other one: long, nearly beatless, and serious about refusing a tracklist.

Sources

• Selected Ambient Works Volume II: Warp, 7 March 1994; Sire, 12 April 1994; untitled pieces, the format differences, and the chart peaks.