Selected Ambient Works 85–92

Nice ambient and electronic music

twin peaks

Electronic music is a lot more enjoyable when it's not trying to be a proxy for any other kind of traditional sound making - i.e., guitar, bass, drums, horns, strings, etc. Aphex Twin isn't trying to mask the electronic nature of what he's doing, rather, he celebrates it. He toys with it, playing.

Aphex plays with the music as a cat would: batting around and pouncing, only to casually retreat and relax, but returning again and again from different angles, different postures, different positions. Partly for fun, partly to exercise its essential nature. Paradoxically unpredictable yet patterned, regular, rhythmic.

When music becomes too perfected by the technology and tools used to make it, all the humanity, art, and soul is squeezed out. Electronic music is especially susceptible to this problem. The sense of play is gone. Rather, it become a prescribed idea of what music "should" be, what you'll buy, a way to eliminate all risk artistically and economically. (Essentially everything that sucks about the world today.)

SO, it's incredibly rare when someone avoids the trap of electronica - its tendency to be a soulless proxy for human-centered art - and creates something unique and interesting, that takes risks, and stays true to its nature.

Aphex Twin added a chaotic, human energy to electronic music and his overall body of work is immense. One of a handful of artists who changed the way I think about what music can be.

It would be easy to say this is dated compared with his later releases - which grow in range and complexity - due to the preset Roland drum machine sounds but I think it adds to the charm here.

Certainly not what I'd call ambient — at least not in the way Eno seems to have defined the genre. No, this is actually listenable.

More than that, it's excellent. And yes, while I might have it on in the background, this is foot-tapping, hypnotic, immersive chill-out electronica. Almost dance music, but post-dance music. Yes this is what I want to listen to on the way home.

Wouldn't call this an album

This is so primitive looking back from 2026. I could do this in garage band in an afternoon. For 1992 (and possibly earlier) this is a great start to portishead to boards of Canada which I think hadn't produced an album yet? Also, I feel like for how seminal this is, I don't recognize any songs. I know him from later weirder stuff. But this is just there...

So beautiful and unique. Really enjoyed this album. Always nice to find an album with a big reputation that lives up to the hype

I was worried for a sec when I got this because, fool that I am, I mixed it up with Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works *Volume 2*, which while on some level still compelling, is *much* longer, and *much* more ambient. I'll just say that if you aren't into this one, you can skip the sequel. If 85-92 is like hanging out in the weirdest dance club on the planet, Vol 2 is like studying for an exam about a spacewalk that you're about to participate in. Anyways, this is about 85-92, so I should probably write about that one. I am now a good several years away from my most robust Aphex Twin phase, but I do still love a lot of the man's music. Although this is one I largely missed. To be honest, I kind of gravitated towards the post SAW Vol 2 stuff, and just didn't really give this a fair shake. And I have to say that while I still don't really understand the incredibly common argument that this is his discography's crown jewel, I do think this is remarkable, *especially* within the context of when it was made. As the album title suggests, these songs were recorded between the years 1985 and 1992. Regardless of your thoughts on this thing, just listen to it and think about this fact. The music here sounds so consistently, deeply futuristic, and remarkably organic that it is honestly damn near timeless. To think that it was largely recorded in the mid to late '80s, one of the most deeply "of it's time" times for music, is damn near unthinkable. I have no idea how he made something like this. And honestly, for all the emphasis on "ambient" here, these songs have some real musicality. Listen to the synth melody on Aegispolis, or just everything on Green Calx. The music here is chilly and spongey and surprisingly varied. As I implied, I do prefer Richard D James' later works somewhat, but the place this has in electronic history is cemented, and deserved.

It’s not bad, I guess. Is it good? Also no. But for 1001 Albums To Listen To That Make You Want To Die, I’ll take it.

Šef sve pozadinske muzike ovog svijeta.

This album blows me away every time I hear it. Filled with cool ideas and even greater execution.

This is the music that plays in the background while a music critic explains to you why Neil Young is the greatest artist of all time.

I would have loved to have heard this in 1993, and I wonder what I would have thought of it then. What else was happening around that time? Enigma? I liked them. Enya? Same. But that's really all I can remember with similar vibes. Anyway, in 2026, it's a lot of what I want in an ambient electronic record.

Green Calx took an interesting turn away from "chill out" music, which breaks the immersion for me. Ptolemy and Hedphelym (which required a skip halfway through) were other tracks that didn't seem very "ambient" to me and took me out of the relaxed space the preceding tracks brought me to.

It's really difficult for me to imagine someone 14 years old putting this together in the mid 80s. While I appreciate the ahead-of-its-time-ness and honestly, would consider it revolutionary, I can't help but wonder if this guy was like SUPER weird as a kid. I can't imagine someone so young basically writing the blueprints for what really wouldn't become a popular genre for 15 or more years. Truly incredible when you think about it.

This would have been an easy 4 stars with the omission of the three previously mentioned tracks. In spite of those three, it'll still wind up at that rating, taking into account just how foundational this album was and how early it happened, sounding NOTHING like anything else at the time.

⭐⭐⭐.75

I think this review is going to hinge on whether the person likes ambient music or not. If you do this is probably one of the finest ambient music albums ever made.

I don't mind Aphex Twin but overall, this was pretty uneventful

This list would feel incomplete without some album by the great Richard D. James, with this one being perhaps his most famous. It is such an atmospheric and enigmatic listen

8/10 [KEEP]

I didn't get much time to listen to this today, but what I did hear pricked my ears up. I haven't always enjoyed the music of Aphex Twin. In my university halls he was revered by the hardcore drug-takers as some sort of electronic prophet. Under these terms, I think he's slightly overrated. Good, very good maybe. But overrated.

Is that the smoke detector beep in Green Calx? This is another example where I’ve seen this album a bunch of places and told myself I would get to it eventually. And yeah, those nerds over at rateyourmusic were right. This is pretty great. These beeps and boops are entertaining. Favorite songs are Pulsewidth, Ageispolis, Ptolemy, and Actium.

I love ambient music and hadn't listened to this in a very long time so this was great to hear again. Some genuinely interesting formal and timbral experiments for electronic music at that time.