1) Xtal; 2) Tha; 3) Pulsewidth; 4) Ageispolis; 5) i; 6) Green Calx; 7) Heliosphan; 8) We Are the Music Makers; 9) Schottkey 7th Path; 10) Ptolemy; 11) Hedphelym; 12) Delphium; 13) Actium
The humble beginnings of Aphex Twin, but with a blatantly melodic touch he'd later forego, and which makes it something special.
Key tracks: "Xtal", "Ageispolis", "Heliosphan"
Many artists try to conjure a mysterious aura around themselves but Richard D. James takes the cake. I'm of the type who loves reading about the things they listen to, be it Wikipedia articles or various interviews, so that I can understand the context around the music further. So, the Wikipedia entry for Selected Ambient Works 85-92, which is the very famous and highly influential debut from a man commonly cited as one of the key figures in electronic music, includes a caveat or a weasel word for nearly every statement about the album's history, to the extent that we don't even know for sure whether the date range of the title is factual to begin with given Richard would have been around 14 in 1985 (which, I mean, is possible but...). The title is about as blatant as Aphex Twin gets, and it's still a question mark. Not even the genre part of the title is accurate because this isn't ambient as you'd come to expect it. The atmospheric focus of the genre is fully and heavily present on SAW 85-92, but there's a kick and a backbone driving these songs forward, sometimes at surprisingly high speeds. Ambient techno would be a more accurate moniker, even if less catchy - the songs are soundscapes first and foremost, but they're ones that actively take the jump to life.
For an Aphex Twin record SAW 85-92 is pretty straightforward as well; no swerves or twists, largely just calm and collected compositions that stay where they started in. James hasn't yet started to experiment with structures and hyperactive beat programming, and so while the songs clock at an average 6-7 minutes for most parts, they often showcase all their ideas within the first minute or two and then stretch and subtly build on them across the remaining length. This is fine, because I am an inherently boring person and I find that some of James' later works, full of their wizardly programming magic and off-kilter twists, obscure the more melodic aspects of his craft which I appreciate the most. When it comes to instrumental electronic music in general, much of the magic is in the production and chosen sound elements for me, and the sound world of SAW 85-92 is the most gorgeous thing about it. The record is full of lovely, warm analog synth tones, blessed by time rather than coming across dated. There's a little bit of fuzz throughout in its audio that could just as well be an intentional stylistic choice as it could be a limitation of James' recording technology, but which makes its atmosphere even deeper; it sounds like it's underwater, somewhere distant from anything else. They're the kind of sounds that I find to instantly invoke a setting or a tone, guiding the listener down into particular atmospheric paths and worlds that the music begins to create. They're the sort of sounds I could sink into forever, which is exactly what ambient should conjure at its most ideal.
Saying that, there's a hint of irony in that statement because the 74-minute SAW 85-92 is definitely too long for its own good and it creaks in places where James goes askew from the general scope. "Green Calx", for example, has a more abrasive, aggressive tone which sits a bit unwell with the rest of the class even if on its own right it's a fine song, and the migraine-pounder "Hedphelym" is one of the handful of songs where shaving off a few minutes would have actually done a world of good. But most of the album's running length feels absolutely essential, and the record's opening salvo especially is the kind of introduction that instantly makes you understand why the album holds the clout it has. The first four songs represent everything great about the album's sound: the shimmery synths and ethereal vocal samples of "Xtal", the sustained atmosphere of "Tha", the playful bounce of "Pulsewidth" and the lush shine of "Ageispolis", all marvellous pieces of dreamlike moods with a tight, melodic skeleton underneath. The bulk of the album from thereon offers variations on the same elements these songs are made out of, to varying degrees of success, but one stands out and steals the show: "Heliosphan" is by and far the fantastic peak of the album right in the middle, a perfect mixture of an urgent, sci-fi metropolitan drive with an intensely dreamy ambient touch taking it somewhere further into the galaxy. It's basically the album's recipe honed down to a T and then amplified on both the ambient and the techno ends, to produce something instantly immortal. It's one of my all-time electronic songs and to this day it gives me pleasant chills down the spine.
If not already obvious, I wouldn't call myself a general Aphex Twin fan and I am ready to admit I have a limited knowledge of the actual historic quality or context of SAW 85-92 (partially thanks to James' own obscuring of it). What the blank slate nature of the record and how I've experienced it (from semi-random shared mp3s to the physical release, which is the most bare-bones CD packaging I own) has done though is that the album experience has become all about the personal context I've built for it over the years. It's music that not just has the atmospheric zone-out qualities that ambient by nature possesses, but those additional melodic and rhythmic ideas throughout help latch it onto the world around it. So this album is about the university study sessions, the revelatory discovery of "Heliosphan", the late night trips it's soundtracked, all echoing in my head - all which I can recall more clearly than I can some of the track titles. The two Selected Ambient Works records are arguably the most single-mindedly focused Aphex Twin albums, which gives them a very distinct character among his works, and out of the two this one is where the melodic touch is more present. It makes it "accessible", I guess, if that's how you want to call it, but maybe moreso instantly welcoming. You know right from the invitingly comfortable synth waves of "Xtal" that you've landed on music that can really transport you elsewhere, and it's a journey for the ages from there, through the waves of sound that wash through.
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