Album:    Selected Ambient Works Volume II
Artist:   Aphex Twin
Label:    Warp Records
Released: 1994-03-07
Summary:  Sometimes beautiful, sometimes scary, but always otherworldly.

Filling up an impressive three records or two CDs, Selected Ambient
Works Volume II contains a lot of music.  This is just as well, as
it's also a vast departure from Aphex Twin's other output: it is his
only work in the beatless ambient genre (one or two unobtrusive
rhythms aside), save for the odd track here and there on some of his
other releases.

On one hand, most of this album sounds as if he has just discovered
the delay and reverb effects and is subsequently using them as the
actual basis of every single track.  It also sounds as if he still
hasn't gotten to grips with mastering in general, with clipping and
painful resonance present, and an overall amateur sound marring the
final result.

On the other hand, it's also one of the most original albums to sneak
its way into a fair few households, at times beautiful and at other
times downright scary, but always alien and mysterious.

My favourite pieces of music from this album are the first and third
tracks.  In the first, snippets of lush vocals, a pad, and a plucked
instrument all gently fade in and out, filtered with a varying cutoff
point.  While this piece of music is very repetitive, this isn't a
problem.  It's something you could listen to while having a bath,
giving a massage or even drifting off to sleep.  In short, it's
absolutely sublime.  If anything, it somehow seems to end all too
quickly, after almost seven and a half minutes.  Likewise, the third
track is what contentment would probably sound like if it was a piece
of music.  It's about as relaxing as anything by Brian Eno, which
is really saying something.

Some of the other pieces of music on this album are a stark contrast.
The rather scary fifth track - distant drones and reverberated,
almost tribal, percussion - wouldn't feel out of place if you listened
to it while looking at some of H. R. Giger's artwork.  Similarly,
while little more than a simple arpeggio and some sustained notes,
the seventh track still manages to sound unsettling.  Like the rest
of the album, these pieces of music are simple, but very effective.

Richard D. James has a habit of lying in interviews, so I doubt
there's much truth, if any, to his claim to have been inspired by
sounds he heard in lucid dreams he had when he was creating this
album.  Nevertheless, it does have a certain resemblance to a long
night's series of dreams: each of these pieces of music can put a
vivid image - and accompanying emotion - in your head that, although
totally irrational, seems to make perfect sense at the time.  I can't
explain why, for instance, the nineteenth track (or twentieth if
you're lucky enough to have the limited edition brown vinyl edition)
reminds me of a puddle-filled, sunny village just after a bout of
rain has finished.  It just does.  Similarly, I can't explain why
such simple and repetitive music is so vivid, inspiring and emotionally
engaging.  It just is.
