Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II Free

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FREE APHEX TWINS SELECTED AMBIENT WORKS: VOLUME II PDF

View Your Wish List. Recorded in Linmiri [Lannerlog bedroom studio], probably the last track I ever recorded in that house, quite fitting really, end of that era. I made it when coming back to visit my parents in Cornwall after moving away to go to college to do a degree in microelectronic engineering, which I thankfully never finished, was so boring, always preferred teaching myself, so much more satisfying, letting your mind wander where it needs to go. I usually always give priority to the vinyl versions of all my releases as I never ever really liked CD's much, think I would have liked CD's a little bit more if you could put 90 mins on them, who decided they were to be 74 mins anyway? Thinking about this now I'd love to try and get Warp to do high quality chrome cassette versions of all my Warp musics, maybe even metal ones if possible. If I wait a year or so for this I could include all the extras on the cassettes as there would be plenty of room, would have to sign the tracks over to Warp first for a physical release, something I don't have to do for this website but that shouldn't be too difficult. Someone I used to know, you know who you are, worked as a cleaner in a police station and kindly pinched me a police interview tape. It was with a woman who murdered her husband, it's the background audio in this track. Bought the synthi when I was about 19 from Robin wood at ems, Ladock, Cornwall. Saved Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II my money for it for a long time, one of the first synths I ever bought and I know that machine inside and out, magical piece of equipment, Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II felt like it was made specially for me. To comment on Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II you have to bag at least 1 track. Sign In. This site uses cookies. For information, please read our cookies policy. For information about cookies that are required for this website to operate correctly, please read our cookies policy. Google Analytics is used to track usage of this website anonymously. Turning off will mean that your IP address is not sent to Google. This site tracks activity, used for customised advertising across several services Facebook. Turning off will mean that your activity is not sent to these services. View Your Wish List Close. Close View Full Product. Item added to your cart. Play Share Share. Download Add to Cart. Comments To comment on this you have to bag at least 1 track. Aphex Twin. Previous Play Pause Next. Loading: Playback error. Accept Cookies Edit cookies preferences. Cookies Preferences For information about cookies that are required Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II this website to operate correctly, please read our cookies policy. You can choose to opt out of the following cookies: Analytics Cookies Google Analytics is used to track usage of this website anonymously. Marketing and Advertising Cookies This site tracks activity, used for customised advertising across several services Facebook. Accept Selected Cookies Back. Selected Ambient Works Volume II - Wikipedia

Each Sunday, Pitchfork takes an in-depth look at a significant album from the past, and any record not in our archives is eligible. Today, we revisit an album that changed ambient music forever. The facts were thin on the ground. Richard D. James was from Cornwall, yes—a geographical outsider in the context of earlys UK rave, a kind of coastal cowpoke. James claimed to sleep just two hours a night; claimed, too, that he could control his dreams, even wrote much of his music in his sleep. Did he really drive a decommissioned tank? No matter how tall the tales grew around this Cornish Paul Bunyan, none of them ever came close to eclipsing the music itself. James emerged inat 20 years old, just as UK producers were scrambling to keep up with the newfound domestic demand for electronic dance music. The sound was born in Chicago and Detroit in the mids and imported to the UK in when a handful of London DJs stumbled upon acid, the musical style—along with ecstasy, the chemical compound—while on holiday in Ibiza. Their horizons instantly broadened, they connived to bring the stuff back home, Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II wham: a canary-yellow smiley face landed upon fair Albion like a pallet of rations air-dropped by a benevolent conqueror. Local production went into overdrive, and few native sons or daughters it was mostly sons were more determined than James to put their shoulders to the wheel. The floodgates opened. In addition to techno, ambient music—more than that, really, the idea of ambient music—was in the air in the early s, even if nobody could quite agree on what the term was supposed to mean. As a comedown soundtrack, ambient provided a gentle landing pad for psychonauts returning from the trips of the night before; as a mind-expanding spiritual elixir, it went along with oxygen bars, smart drinks, and other trappings of the dial-up counterculture in the final decade of the 20th century. Both were long, largely seamless journeys whose ebb and flow mimicked the fluid path of a psychedelic trip—swirling collages conjoining bucolic synths, pedal steel, classical strings, dub and acid-house rhythms, the occasional thunderclap or train whistle, and barnyard animals. By the ethereal style was unstoppable. The independent label Caroline countered with its own franchise, Excursions in Ambience. Then, as now, Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II first Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II you become aware of with Selected Ambient Works Volume II is its purity, its starkness, its emptiness. There have been quieter records, more minimal records, more difficult records. But few have done so much with so little; few have shown less interest in being any more forthcoming than they are, in Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II the listener anywhere near halfway, in making the slightest attempt at articulating their own ambiguous emotional terrain. SAW II can be warm and it can be chilly; it can be sentimental and it can be forbidding, but it would be hard to call it expressiveexactly. The album opens with a subtle tension: soft synth pads, the most basic, three-chord progression imaginable, cycling uneventfully round and round, while a breathy syllable—a voice, or something remarkably like one—bobs overhead, like a loosed balloon rapidly fading from view. Lilting harp accents turn to steel drums and back. The voice is detuned by just a few nearly imperceptible cents; the delay lags almost unnoticeably behind the beat. Across its 23 or 24, 25, or 26, depending upon the format and edition mostly untitled tracks, the balance tends to tip from one extreme to the other, like someone nervously shifting body weight from foot to foot. You just feel electricity around you. The four tracks that open CD2 both the Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II and UK editions; tracks of the digital release make for a particularly compelling stretch. Whatever anyone thought they knew about James, back inmust have dissipated as soon as they finished listening to this album. Where was the ginger enfant terrible with the barbed tongue? Where were the antic flights of fancy? For once, he appeared as if with a finger to his lips, head cocked, inviting us to stand beside him in his imaginary power station and revel wordlessly in the vibrations. Were these barely-there miniatures, these etudes for electrical outlet and tuning fork, meant to be taken as high art? Although the album title suggested an anthology, these pieces could hardly stand on their own: Pull them apart and most would seem lightweight or insubstantial, each one a passing experiment or sketchlike work in progress. But, like the notes of a chord, they drew meaning from their proximity to one another. Were there indeed more of them? It was so committed to its own hermetic world that it shunned even titles. Though unofficial, they have taken on the weight of historical fact: If you rip the CDs into your computer, the Gracenote database will automatically tag the tracks according to the fan-sourced titles. Sitting down with the LP or CD insert could feel like strapping into an alien spacecraft and trying to decipher a flight manual written entirely in pictograms and graphic code. SAW II was not initially greeted as an epochal event. In the world of Aphex arcana, those kinds of revelations can be momentous, discourse-shifting events. But the effect of this newfound knowledge was not like learning how a magician does his tricks. James Album. But it may be that he mapped every square inch of this otherworldly zone in those two-dozen-odd tracks give or take all the material that may have gotten left on the cutting-room floor. He was right. In that sense, SAW was out of step with its pre-millennial peers. While other landmark ambient records of the day hurtled toward the networked future, SAW II was radical in its purism, its refusal to admit anything beyond these Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II, quivering frequencies. We tend to think that culture today moves faster than it used to. We point to the rapid-fire emergence and collapse of a given musical trend as proof of an accelerated timeline. There was a palpable, self-conscious awareness of watching the genre evolve in real time. Criticism recognized it; marketing recognized it. It captured the essence of ambient, and in that act Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II capturing it, changed it, irrevocably. Skip to content Search query All Results. Pitchfork is the most trusted voice in music. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Open share drawer. Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II | Discogs

It was released by Warp in March Billed as a follow-up to James' debut Selected Ambient Works 85—92the album differs in sound by being largely beatless ambient music. James claimed that it was inspired by lucid dreamingand likened the music to "standing in a power station on acid. James stated that Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II sounds on Selected Ambient Works Volume II were inspired by lucid dreamsand that upon awaking, he would attempt to re-create the sounds and record them. He claimed to have natural synaesthesiawhich contributed to this album. You just feel electricity around you. That's totally dreamlike for me. It's just like a right strange dimension. Volume II differs significantly from the first volume in the seriesin that it consists of lengthy, textured ambient compositions with sparing use of percussion and occasional vocal samples, in a vein Rolling Stone related to Brian Eno 's early ambient works and John Cage 's minimalism. Simon Reynolds commented Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II on Volume II James changed styles "from the idyllic, Satie -esque naivete of early tracks like " Analogue Bubblebath " to clammy, foreboding sound-paintings. Isolationism is ice-olationist, offering cold comfort. Instead of pseudopastoral peace, it evokes an uneasy silence: the uncanny calm before catastrophe, the deathly quiet of aftermath. The artwork for the album was designed by Paul Nicholson, [13] who was credited as Prototype 21 in the liner notes. Different crops of the images were used for the cassette booklet and vinyl labels. Furthermore, many images were altered for the US CD pressing: several of the blurry or out-of-focus photographs were replaced with Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II new, in-focus images; and the image for "[Stone in Focus]" was replaced with a blank space. The front cover is the result of James scratching the Aphex Twin logo onto the back of a leather travel case, which Sam took a picture of. Of the pie charts and size of the photographs in the artwork, Nicholson said that they were "related to the Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II signatures, how long they were. Sire released the album on compact disc on 12 April ; this US pressing also removes the 4th song. By Julyit had sold over 60, copies outside the United States. Spin gave the album a positive review, with critic Simon Reynolds stating that the album has "plenty of the shimmeringly euphoric and majestically melancholy tunes that have won James so many devout fans," but that it "will leave you not so much blissed as spooked out. Other reviews were less favourable. Considinefinding that "James is rarely as rich as good [Brian] Enonot to mention good Eno- Hassell or Eno- Budd ", and that "these experiments are considerably thinner "purer," Owen wishes and more static "pulse dreamily," Considine dreams than Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II overpriced juvenilia on the import-only Volume I. More often, it's chamber music for humorless cyber-nerds". The first dance album to celebrate the rhythms in your head. Pitchfork noted that Selected Ambient Works Volume II was "a very early example of a record being anticipated, experienced, and, ultimately, analyzed in minute detail through online communication. Simon Reynolds noted that the album signaled a shift in techno and ambient music toward a darker sound reminiscent of Brian Eno 's notion of "environmental music". A book written by Marc Weidenbaum a music journalist and former editor of Tower Records ' in-store magazine Pulse! With the exception of "Blue Calx" and bonus track "th1 [evnslower]", James didn't give the tracks official names, instead representing them with pictures in the album's artwork. Unofficial titles based on the pictures were made popular by fan Greg Eden [27] and are listed below. CD pressings [a]. UK Vinyl [b] and cassette pressings. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. For the film, see Saw II. Aphex Twin. Ambient [1] [2] dark ambient [3] [4] drone [5] post-industrial [6]. Warp Sire. In Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian eds. Retrieved 13 June Retrieved 23 July Retrieved 19 March Retrieved 20 September Retrieved 20 October The Face. Retrieved Aphex Twins Selected Ambient Works: Volume II January In Buckley, Peter ed. The Rough Guide to Rock. Rough Guides. Official Charts Company. James speaks to Tatsuya Takahashi". Retrieved 30 January Artforum International. Artforum International Magazine, Inc. Resident Advisor. Retrieved 14 April Retrieved 19 September Archived from the original on 18 November Retrieved 7 February Music Week. Intent Media. Retrieved 29 September Retrieved 8 February Retrieved 2 May Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on 28 February Retrieved 16 October Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved 5 May November Retrieved 7 March Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 22 February The Village Voice. Retrieved 13 February Marks, Craig ed. New York. Retrieved 16 November Soft Skull Press. British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved 1 May Select albums in the Format field. Select Silver in the Certification field. Weisband, Eric; Marks, Chris, eds. Spin Alternative Record Guide. Vintage Books. James Album Drukqs Syro. Classics 26 Mixes for Cash Chosen Lords. Confederation Trough Rushup Edge. Surfing on Sine Waves Quoth. Bradley's Robot Bradley's Beat. Expert Knob Twiddlers. Namespaces Article Talk. Views Read Edit View history. Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Download as PDF Printable version. On GAK Selected Ambient Works 85—92 Classics C [22].