He's got a catalogue of bangers I've always loved, but Selected Ambient Works Volume 2 was so unique when it was released it really took me by surprise. It was hypnotic, sometimes eerie, other times introspective and beautiful.
If you're to believe the account Richard James gave, he claims to have used sleep deprivation and lucid dreaming to compose the album. I used to listen to the entire thing beginning to end on headphones, and I believe it!
SAW2 is maybe one of the most important collections of ambient electronic music ever made. It's an astonishing exploration of the genre.
I've thought it to be compared in some ways to Bach's "The Art of Fugue" which pushed its own genre so hard that its often considered to be pinnacle work on Fugues and sort of forced later musicians to move along to newer forms.
While I personally prefer SAW85-92, I have to recognize the ways in which SAW2 pushes ambient and electronic music, even today, to areas that force it to be defined and to redefine itself. SAW85-92 sounds very much like a product of the time, but SAW2 sounds absolutely contemporary even today. It somewhat closed the book on Ambient electronica and then shoved that book firmly into the avantgarde. The individual pieces range from unsettling to mind-alteringly beautiful.
"...I Care Because You Do" just sort of continues the leap forward. "Start As You Mean to Go On" feels to me like plugging yourself into a power outlet in a hurricane. IMHO, RDJ is at his best when he combines a kind of odd, almost apathetic, idle but tuneful, framework to a song, then ignites it into a frenetic mind blending fire with absolutely bonkers rhythmic lines, or sometimes just leaves it to chill like with "Aberto Balsalm".
It's wild to think we're talking about music older than people who have graduated college and are considered almost mid-career in some fields. And yet he's still making mindblowing stuff https://youtu.be/e_Ue_P7vcRE
If you're to believe the account Richard James gave, he claims to have used sleep deprivation and lucid dreaming to compose the album. I used to listen to the entire thing beginning to end on headphones, and I believe it!
https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/aphex-twin-selected-amb...