Back catalogue: Ambient/Drone

Review: The Expanded Edition of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II is here; this is a reissue of an album that still serves as one of the ideasthetic backbones to most music fans' idea of 'ambient music' at large. A lesser-known fact is that when James recorded the record, he had concurrently undergone a period of lucid dreaming, and in this vivid lucid state, had heard many sounds akin to those heard on this record, which he had subsequently attempted to recreate. The sound of dreaming is usually an ineffable thing, but not to Aphex Twin, who had perhaps been one of the first to articulate dreams' bleary, smeary, selective and dream-distorted sonic quality. Many different interpreters have harped on this record, some hearing a 'cold islationism' in it, others a purer bliss; what is most evident is this one helped popularise ambient music in a formal, less connotative way, and continues to do so even today. This expanded versions features two unreleased tracks - that is, if you don't include the famous Soundcloud dump of nine years ago, plus 'Blue Calyx' now features on all formats instead of vinyl only.