That’s right, folks, the most disturbing Halloween EVER! From now until Halloween, the Popdose staff are going to be thumbing through their record collections in search of the music that gives them the worst case of the heebie-jeebies. In this installment, Michael Parr looks at Aphex Twin’s second album. —Anthony Hansen
At times it’s difficult to classify the sound created by Richard D. James — better known as Aphex Twin — on his sophomore release, Selected Ambient Works Volume II, as music. Yes, there are moments of melody and occasionally a slight rhythm, but what are lacking are any familiar song structures — or titles, for that matter — to signify one movement to the next. This is complex, challenging and unsettling music, and it is quite frankly the most terrifying record in my collection.
Taking cues from the avant-garde ambient works of Fripp/Eno, John Cage and Tangerine Dream and fusing it with his own sense of space and dimension, James first came to prominence with his 1993 debut Selected Ambient Works 85-92, which John Bush of Allmusic described as “a watershed of ambient music.” The record is best described as minimalist, with most tracks only containing intricate drumbeats and layers of echoing synths. It set the framework and standard by which the genre was measured in that time period — and was followed up the next year by Volume II.
Volume II is a daunting two-disc collection, reportedly inspired by James’ lucid dreams and apparent synesthesia (which is probably what makes the record so frightening). The tracks shift between the transcendent and sinister, with only intermittent hints at what lies beneath. The absence of song titles (with the single exception of “Blue Calx”) also lends to the overall mystique of the record. Listeners were instead given diagrams with corresponding photographs and left to decipher and interpret the names. (more…)
I came to John Cale by way of 