Selected Ambient Works Volume II – Aphex Twin – Released 7th March 1994, Warp Records
Selected Ambient Words Volume II (SAW II) is Richard D James’ second album on Warp Records and his first Warp release under the alias Aphex Twin. (The album was distributed in the US and Canada on Sire.)
It was intended as a follow-up to his debut Selected Ambient Works 85–92 (SAW I) which was released on R&S Records back in 1992, though critics were quick to mention that musically and thematically SAW I and SAW II were vastly different.
Following the one-two combo of SAW I and Surfing On Sine Waves, expectations were high with the music press eagerly anticipating another chill out masterpiece.
But Richard D James (RDJ for brevity’s sake) was always one to defy expectations, especially where the music press was concerned.
RDJ is an artist and not a performer, always challenging, never compromising and, if he gets to fuck with the music press while doing so, all the better.
The dance music press was particularly savage in their reviews of SAW II, which in retrospect is understandable.
SAW I is Aphex Twin’s most accessible album, and generally his most beloved, while SAW II is easily the most difficult and misunderstood release in his entire back catalogue. (Which, considering the piercing shrill noisecore of Ventolin or that famous Windowlicker cover, really is saying something.)
Of all the Aphex Twin albums this always felt like the odd one out. The album has since developed a cult following, which, given that we’re talking about Aphex Twin, means it’s like a cult within a cult.
And yet, if you listen to them both back to back, you’ll notice there’s a clear connective tissue running between both albums.
First of all, there is chronological overlap. As with SAW I, some of these tracks are bedroom recordings dating back to when RDJ was a teenager.
Blue Calx, for example, was apparently the last track to be recorded at his family home studio (named Lannerlog).
You can hear plenty of other tonal similarities between both albums, which suggests the same equipment and recording process and, therefore, an overlapping time period.
Then we have the thematic elements common to both albums, which RDJ was happy to explain, had anyone taken the time to listen….
I’ve Been To The Desert Playing Tracks With No Name
Selected Ambient Works Volume II was the third Aphex Twin album I bought and although I didn’t dislike it at the time, I initially didn’t warm to it as quickly as I did the others.
Which is understandable.
Unlike its predecessor, this isn’t an album you can switch on and instantly groove to, which explains means why so many 90s journos with busy review schedules couldn’t get with it.
Hence the album got a lot of bad reviews at the time, only to prove the critics wrong in the years that followed.
They were expecting another post-club chillout album and instead they got two discs of beatless sound sculptures ranging from deep and introspective moodscapes to scalding lysergic nightmare fuel.
In that sense, SAW II isn’t actually ambient at all but rather anti-ambient.
It’s not music to have on in the background while you do other things, it’s music to actively listen to that’s purposely designed to take you to another place. Not always a bright and sunny place either.
SAW II has some bright and beautiful moments but it’s not chill out music. And it’s certainly not elevator music unless it’s a metaphorical elevator traversing the stops between heaven and hell.
As such, SAW II really is an album you need to be in the right headspace for, first, before you can fully appreciate it.
Some will literally take that to mean you need to ingest psychedelics to appreciate it, though that’s not necessarily true. They’ll make for a colourful counterpart sure, but instead you really need to look at the album itself as something that’s intrinsically psychedelic.
“When I chill out I go down to a different level basically. Chilling out for me is getting monged out of your head, sitting somewhere totally wasted basically. Ambient Works 2 is the stuff I prefer to listen to. I just get more into tracks like that.”
Richard D James interviewed in Mixmag 1995
RDJ also told the press that SAW II was inspired, or partially at least, by the practice of lucid dreaming. This is the practice of learning to control your dreams so you can manifest your conscious desires within a subconscious dream state.
In RDJ’s case, the idea was to “dream” up music and train himself to recall it so he could record it later. It’s certainly a fascinating notion, but whether or not his experiments with lucid dreaming actually bore fruit or not we may never know, still you can’t argue with the results.
Much of this album feels like those fleeting moments between waking world and dreams. Where your mind is still vaguely conscious of its surroundings while slowly drifting into the obscured world of multidimensional shapes, sounds and sensations which seem ever out of reach of our conscious waking minds.
Hence the reason RDJ didn’t even give the tracks names, existing merely as visual textures, some dreamlike, some nightmarish, others still confused and disjointed, crammed full of alien sounds and fragmented voices.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m all for unhinged hedonism but I still like to balance it with solo introspection.
Alas the 90s was all about the former and often openly hostile to proponents of the latter. Hence the coke snazzling journos of the 90s who balked at SAW II’s musical introspection, labelling RDJ a pretentious piss artist and actively ridiculing his comments on lucid dreaming.
(Whereas nowadays everyone tries to bore the bollocks of you with their “spiritual journeys” at Instagramable yoga retreats.)
Personally I like to view the two Ambient Works albums as two levels of consciousness, so the lighter, more accessible SAW I is like NREM sleep, closer to the surface level, whereas SAW II is like REM sleep, a true dream state where we now find ourselves fully within the realms of the subconscious.
That’s why you shouldn’t think of SAW II as just an album, think of it as a shamanic experience, a collection of audio sculptures purposely created to induce altered states of consciousness.
And like any trip, you need to be in the right setting and the right frame of mind beforehand to enjoy it. Ideally in a place where you can remove yourself from all worldly distractions.
I’ve previously discussed memories iof the first time I played certain albums, be that Orbital’s Snivilisation after being caught in a rainstorm, or listening to Haunted Dancehall during a power cut.
For my first proper introduction to Selected Ambient Works Volume 2, I was in a desert.
The bleak hinterlands between Arizona and Nevada to be exact, grainy sepia toned horizons and desolate rusty towns, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling past the car window endlessly.
Suddenly the landscape, the album cover and the sounds of each track all somehow matched.
I remember trying to make sense of the inlay card at the time before finally giving up. As mentioned previously, none of the tracks have names and they instead correspond to the images on the inlay card. The original elder nerds of the 90s internet later named the tracks based on those photos and that’s the naming convention I’m using here.
The actual photos used were apparently taken by RDJ’s girlfriend at the time, all macro photography of random items around the house and so I thought, to celebrate the occasion, I’ll pay my own little tribute with some pictures of my own.
Disc 1
The opening track of SAW II is known as Cliffs, a gently a drifting arpeggio-based piece with typically-Aphex style pad chords and sliced up samples of a female voice singing.
Essentially there are 3 main types of tracks on this album, pretty, scary and pretty damn scary.
RDJ is kinda easing us into things gently with this one as it sits squarely in the pretty section.
Now for the obligatory YouTube video post… ah look, this guy had the same Cliffs Of Moher idea as me… ingenious.
Track two of disc one is known as Radiator, so here’s picture of my radiator which sits next to my computer during the cold months.
Apparently, the term radiator is a misnomer since they don’t radiate heat and instead work by convection. Couse that’s got nothing to do with this track, but that’s because this track is notably lacking in both radiation and convection.
I place this one on the outer edges of scary, it’s definitely an odd one. It defies description and yet I’m kind of expected to describe it, hence the reason I’m talking about radiators instead.
It’s actually cold again this week so I have the radiator on right now.
Track three, Rhubarb. This is one of my all-time favourite Aphex Twin tracks, it’s soooo soothing.
Hence the reason it’s appeared on countless mix tapes and compilation CDs I made back in the day.
I always keep this one on my phone in my emergency chillout pack. Like Xtal from the previous Ambient Works, it never fails to calm me down no matter the situation.
Of course, it can work in the other way too. When I’m sad I find this track intensifies the feeling, but then sometimes that’s what we need to happen.
As with all the tracks on this album, it’s simple in its structure yet profound in its execution. And it’s one of the few tracks that puts a lump in my throat, no matter how many times I’ve heard it.
Every time that flute sound first emerges, washing over the main chords… gets me every time.
For years I read the inlay card wrong and thought this track was called Blue Calx. Turns out it’s Rhubarb. Problem is I’ve no rhubarb in the gaff, can’t stand the stuff tbh.
They had none in my local shop either which is just as well because taking photos in the produce aisle gets you strange looks. So instead I thought I’ll have a Rhubarb the Cat from the Rhubarb and Custard cartoon which fits the 90s vibe and was also the subject a terrible chart “rave” track.
Hankie is as dark as Rhubarb is pretty, making it one of the darker and more intense tracks on the entire album.
This one has pure horror movie atmospherics, so if you’ve never listened to this album before and decided to drop acid it’s probably fair to say you’re regretting that decision right about now.
Still, there’s a beauty to this track too, a desolate beauty.
That’s certainly what I thought when I listened to it on that desert road trip, staring out at a long dark strip of blistering tar, ripples of heat rising, parched vegetation along the edges, gnarled formations of cacti…
…Oh yes, same story here btw, I’ve no rhubarb and I don’t have a hankie in the house either, so I took a photo of a box of tissues instead. I mean c’mon? Who do you know that still uses a handkerchief in 2024?
Grass is another dark and evocative piece. Note here that trademark use of detuning on the pads as well as the distorted industrial-type percussion in the background. It’s not as prominent as other Aphex releases, of course, deliberately buried deep below the sands.
…Telephone poles bleeding black tar whiz past now, I count the beats in time, another one just as the heavy kick drum hits, Richie twists the filters, the drums writhe in agony, another telephone pole, but no telephone wire, no communication, no sign of civilisation, just a long road with poles and sand all around…
Mould – ah yes this one. I’d actually forgotten about this one. It’s another minimalistic piece employing chopped up female vocals over a series of overlapping melodies. So it doesn’t really sound like mould at all.
Down at bottom end of the register is a low, dubby bassline. It’s not very loud compared to the rest of the track but if you’re playing this on proper equipment, you’ll discover it’s quite deep.
Curtains is another hypnotic piece based around a single, swirling arpeggio with various melodic elements slowly orbiting around it, amidst a softly undulating current of lofi crackle and distortion.
For this reason I’m inclined to assume that this is one of his older tracks, recorded to tape and performed on the fly.
You can hear a certain hesitancy, at times, as he plays those high keys over the top, but again that’s the whole point of electronic music.
It’s precisely these tiny little imperfections which gives the track its unique character.
Blur consists of a slow, drubbing beat with an oceanic spray of reverb accompanied by a simplistic low octave keys riff.
These two elements are the main focal point of the track, around which everything else pivots, eerie pads drift in and out without fully committing as RDJ tenuously riffs over the top.
Again, this one feels like it was recorded live while he was feeling things out for the first time. But then just when it sounds like he’s finding his feet the track just fades out.
So my guess it’s probably one of the numerous experiments which RDJ recorded, stopped, forgot about then listened back to later and decided it would fit well on the album.
Weathered Stone starts of with strings over a tribal-tinged hiphop beat before a deep, detuned bassline fills out the soundscape.
This bassline is accompanied by a high sine melody, which, once again, has some notably odd tuning. More percussive layers are added, again with a slight industrial edge to them.
Every so often we get hints at more SAW I type melodic elements, soft pads and high keys, like We Are The Music Makers, but they tend to hang back more, as though shy of the spotlight.
My Aphex-Spider sense is telling me this one was recorded in and around the time some of the Ventolin EP stuff was recorded, I could be wrong of course.
Tree is a dark metallic drone track that just loiters about menacing the stereo almost ten minutes.
There are brief glimmers of light throughout the track, but they’re always snuffed out by the shadowy sweeps of analogue desolation.
I can think of no other piece of music which exudes such an urgent sense of foreboding as this track, and yet its tempo is practically glacial.
In motion it’s ponderous and deliberate, as though tiptoeing around a slumbering monstrosity, its chest swelling and heaving as it snores, but our heroes must move slowly and not stir the beast if they’re ever to escape the gloomy caverns of this twisted alien netherworld.
Or maybe it doesn’t sound like that to you at all, but I think we can all agree it doesn’t sound like a tree.
Domino is another faltering arpeggio-based piece built on layers of stuttering delays and mind warping detuning effects.
Over the top, high pitched drones scrawl searing white zigzags in your mind’s eye, as more layers of feedback rise and fall, rise and fall, but not in the way dominoes fall. I’ve seen dominoes, they don’t sound anything like this.
Reminds me, have I got a pizza in the freezer? I think I might have a pizza in the freezer. One of those cheap shitty ones from Lidls with barely any cheese on it, but it’ll do for now, writing Aphex Twin reviews is hungry work.
White Blur 1 starts off with a clatter of wind chimes and a sped-up conversation cutting in and out which I could never quite make out.
Age and decades of raving while dancing in front of large speaker stacks has since dulled my powers of Twinscription even further and I couldn’t find anything even on the ubergeeky Aphex forums so your guess is as good as mine.
Other than that you just have a steady synth drone and various swirly bits of sound but nothing else really.
You can argue, pro and con, whether or not this even qualifies as music. There’s no rhythm, there’s no melody, so it’s really more of a sound collage.
In a way I can understand why so many music critics were dismissive of the album at the time. Especially those dance music journos still tweaked from night before only to find this lurking in their in-tray.
“Ooh the new Ambient Works album, that’ll sort my head out!”
… 😱
Took me a few listens, too, to realise that not every track here is meant to be a piece of music, some of the tracks feel more like art installations, three dimensional sonic spaces for you to step inside and explore.
Just like paintings in a gallery, there are some pieces that will connect with you more than others, some will give you joy, others you’ll find unsettling. Both are rewarding in their own way.
Later we all exit the gallery with different perspectives and are affected in different ways, but altogether richer for the experience.
Disc 2
The first track of disc 2 is called Blue Calx.
Ironically it’s the only track here with an actual name but I still managed to get it wrong and mix it up with Rhubarb.
Anyways, I always loved this one but I can’t listen to it anymore without thinking of Adam Curtis.
He’s used it so many times on all his documentaries I half expect him to start narrating while I’m trying to type.
…He believed that by starting a blog and writing about old skool 90s electronic albums he could bring the mases together and then start a revolution.
But it was an illusion.
Because, in reality, the old structures of power remained, while the very people he had hoped to mobilise had grown disillusioned with longform content and had turned, instead, to shitty TikTok videos about cats…
What was I talking about again? Ah yes, Blue Calx. A typical Aphex track this, silky sinewave pads dancing to a steady metronome clacking away in a sea of reverb… timeless.
Apparently, it was one of the last tracks he recoded in his old bedroom studio at his parents house before moving out and going to college.
Parallel Stripes is another favourite of mine and one where I need to bring you back to my desert road trip story.
Up until this point I’d only ever seem mirages in old cartoons, and that was the day I learned how they looked in real life.
In real life mirages don’t simply shimmer, they actually pulse with life, appearing not merely as patches of blue but actual ripples. Seeing this phenomenon for the first time I finally understood how seeing them could drive a thirsty man insane.
So this track is forever fused with the memory of watching mirages glittering across the sands, driving forward towards them, only for them to vanish while new ones materialised on the horizon once more.
There is definitely something fleeting and ethereal about this track too, as though we’re all driving towards something that shall forever be out of reach.
Also let’s have a big cheer for the brainiac who spent ten minutes looking for parallel stripes while wearing an Addidas hoodie. 📷
Shiny Metal Rods is about as upbeat as SAW II gets, with a lumbering trip-hoppy beat and additional layers of tribal percussion.
There’s no melody on this one whatsoever, just layers of interpolating effects being added to the drums creating eccentric sonic textures and rhythmical interplay. And it’s all very low-fi and crunchy.
Incidentally I have no shiny metal rods in the gaff, so in the spirit of the 90s again, I just used a picture of the famous Inanimate Carbon Rod instead.
Grey Stripe isn’t a piece of music, so much as another sonic sculpture.
It feels like being trapped in a cave or a mineshaft or perhaps, to quote another famous track, a long dark tunnel, with the echoes of distant wind.
The sound then gets twisted and filtered and manipulated well past breaking point, taking our minds with it.
There’s a stuttering little glitch therein which may well snap your mind like a rubber band.
Incidentally if, for completely innocent reasons, you just so happen to see luminous scurrying centipedes on your ceiling at this precise juncture of your initial listening experience, do not try to impede their movements or arouse their suspicion.
Just let them carry about their business since the ceiling is their domain and what they do up there is no concern if yours. Unless they get angry with and start dropping down and crawling into your ears but best not think about that though, actually forget I even mentioned it…
Looking again at my Z Twig pic and realising, shit, it’s a bit putin-y isn’t it?
Yeah, fuck that cunt.
Thing is I don’t actually know what a z twig is and I can’t even find the corresponding image but eeh, yeah, point is this track’s collectively known as Z Twig and that’s my Z Twig photo, made with real, 100% twiggy goodness.
I should at this point mention that this is another personal favourite of mine, up there with my other all-time fav Aphex tracks.
While I associate much of this album with images of hot desert terrain, this one feels like an icy cold dip in the pool to wash the dust off.
It’s very much a watery track for me and honestly can you listen to this and imagine anything other than splashes and droplets of water?
Mmm, I feel all moist now… only criticism about this track? It’s too damn short.
As an aside, this track was sampled by PFM on the track Danny’s Song, which took the original loop and gave it the drum’n’bass treatment. It featured on LTJ Bukem’s Logical Progression, another classic album but that’s a story for another day.
Windowsill – ok now this one is definitely a desert song.
Close your eyes and imagine yourself bobbing along through the dunes on the undulating rump of a camel as it pads along slowly. The terrain just seems to go on and on, stretching out to the horizon, the sun beating down…
You’re parched and dizzy, squinting out over the golden dunes in the hopes of finding shade and water, maybe over the next dune, the next one… ok the next one…
It’s funny how some music can automatically play movies in your head. It does for me anyway. This man needs to do a movie soundtrack. He’s been hinting at it for ages, when’s it gonna happen though?
I mean with all due respect to Hans Zimmer, an Aphex Twin Dune soundtrack is bound to get the spice flowing.
Hexagon is another one of the prettier tracks on the album and one that sounds closest to what we might refer to as “classic Aphex”.
It fuses delicate, almost childlike melodies and music box tones with rollicking industrial-tinged beats. It’s nowhere as frenzied as tracks like On, but I imagine it was recorded around the same time using the same sound pallet and setup.
Lichen is a beatless piece with more classic Aphex sounds. One the one side, we get bright, soft pad sounds like cool air on a hot day, on the other, we’ve warm slooshy woodwinds weaving in and out.
One thing you’ll notice in fact, both on this album and other tracks from this period, is the use of soft, sinewave-generated synth sounds that sound similar to flutes and clarinets while still possessing their own unique tonal qualities.
I do believe there are just certain tones and sounds we’re pre-programmed to respond to, whether its on a biological or even neurological level I don’t know, but whatever it is, RDJ’s able to dial into those frequencies directly, like he’s got a Flipper tool for the human brain.
Spots is another eerie atmospheric piece consisting of little more than a synth drone and a loop of human voices. Some of the voices appear to be time-stretched, others drenched in reverb.
There’s not really all that much else to say about this one, other than it goes on for over 7 minutes with no trace of musicality whatsoever.
For me it one sounds like working the night shift in a factory and coming back from your lunch break to discover someone’s spiked the coffee with DMT.
Tassels, once again, gives me vivid memories of shimmering heat dancing along desert highways and endless vistas of scorched sand.
Honestly, Selected Ambient Works 85–92, that’s one of my desert island discs.
But if you’re ever going to go into an actual desert – I’m talking 50-degree heat and natty lookin’ cacti, none of that coconuts and palm tree shite mind – Selected Ambient Works Volume II is the way to go.
If I close my eyes and listen, I can see the scorching desert at midday in my mind’s eye.
What you think of my tassels by the way? They’re from the sitting room rug.
Those tassels really tie the blog together.
White Blur 2 is a detuned and demented anti-mantra that repeats and repeats hypnotically like the swinging of a hypnotist’s watch.
Amidst the vertigo-inducing spirals we get voices, speech, laughing and what could well be an animal growling, or perhaps it’s just laughing pitched down really slow to the point where the little snorts between the laughs sound like some enormous snuffling beast.
Honestly? Fuck knows.
This is another one that feels more like an art installation than a track, there’s an actual melody this time around, though it barely qualifies. Just the same notes repeating for around 11 and a half dizzying minutes.
Of them all, this is probably my least favourite track on the album, but I guess that’s the whole point. I guess it’s character building.
This album seems purposely crafted to delight and disturb in equal measure, and there’s something about this track and its prolonged use of a wonky, detuned loop, that deliberately jangles my nerves and puts me on edge.
Richard D James and Trent Reznor are the only artists I know of who do this kind of thing purposely and successfully. If Guantanamo Bay ever paid royalties I imagine both men would receive massive cheques.
The final track on the album, Matchsticks, is also one of its finest.
In fact, for me it’s one of the best from any of his albums and I submit it as further evidence of why we really need to get this man to do a movie soundtrack. (A horror movie, invariably.)
…Meanwhile back in the 90s, my desert Odyssey is ending. The sun’s beginning to set, burning the colour of a blood orange, a searing yellow crescent spinning rapidly in its centre but I can’t stare too long, even with my shades on it scorches my retinas…
Gradually it begins to disappear behind the horizon as the first hesitant stars begin to twinkle over the rolling Arizona sands.
As the sun dips further below the horizon civilisation slowly scrolls into view, above it a haze of lights and neon, scanning ahead for a neon sign with the magic word, “Motel”.
The Dreamers Of Dreams…
This is probably the closest thing RDJ ever done to a concept album and it unfortunately it blew up in his face. I’m sure he acted like he didn’t care but the critical reception must have irked him.
I imagine the disappointment wasn’t so much that the critics didn’t like it but rather that they didn’t get it. And to be fair, it took me a few listens before I got it, the music finally clicking into place on that unforgettable desert road trip.
In case you can’t tell, I love Aphex Twin. I love all Aphex Twin, though I do tend to prefer the younger, more minimalist Aphex Twin material more because I feel the music draws us in more.
The original Ambient Works is a classic for the ages, instantly accessible and bursting with vibrant melodies and rhythmic immediacy. It’s probably my favourite album of all time.
Whereas Ambient Works Volume 2 is less of an album and more of a two-disc volume of magical incantations crossed with a dimensional teleportation device.
To pick up the album and look at the cover is to stare in the face of the technonomicon, before opening it up to view the curious sidgels within. You’re then called upon to solve the riddles in order to identify the tracks, only to discover the names of the tracks don’t matter.
Some of those tracks are liable to grate or even make your skin crawl, but that’s what makes this album true art. Its contents exist to prod at our psyches and open our minds up to new ideas and new realms of consciousness.
Honestly, it makes sense that this album flopped. The dance music press thought it was too pretentious and the rock music press thought it was too boring.
But that’s what you get for trying to do something cerebral in the 90s.
Still, I can’t help but wish for a third instalment and a quiet desert to enjoy it in.