Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II (Expanded Edition)

Released in March 1994, Selected Ambient Works Volume II arrived as the difficult, uncommercial follow-up to the beat-driven Selected Ambient Works 85-92 — and reshaped what 'ambient' could mean in the process. Where most ambient music of the era aimed for calm, Richard D. James built something closer to unease: long, mostly beatless pieces with no titles, only abstract photographs and pie-chart symbols to distinguish them, forcing listeners to engage on the music's own terms rather than a marketing hook. It's since been cited as a foundational influence by a generation of electronic and ambient producers. This expanded edition, released in 2024, adds previously unreleased material recorded during the same sessions, including the long-circulated 'Blue Calx.'

Richard D. James, recording as Aphex Twin, is one of electronic music's most private and unpredictable figures — a Cornwall-raised producer who's spent three decades refusing to repeat himself, moving between beatless ambient, aggressive breakbeat and pieces built for prepared piano and modular synthesizer. He's released music under a dozen aliases, rarely gives interviews, and has built a reputation as much on mystique as on the music itself. Selected Ambient Works Volume II remains his most divisive record among fans of his earlier, more rhythmic work, and arguably his most influential — a blueprint later picked up by ambient and drone artists who never touched a dancefloor.