Aphex Twin's _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_ is ten years old

Obviously the occasional beat or two is another element that sets SAWII apart from many of its predecessors.

being boring shite is another element that sets SAWII apart from many of its predecessors

;-)

I'm not that familiar with Eno's ambient work
― Scary Move 4 (dog latin), Friday, June 8, 2012 1:33 PM

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"...it often reminds me of the new-age meditation records a friend of mine used to own, simple recordings of vibrating bowls or drawn-out synth noodles. like SAW II, they were lovely and rather indistinct, useful in the provision of a certain atmosphere, but usually too elementary to reward active engagement outside their intended, meditative context."

Contenderizer, I don't really understand this line of thought... I mean, do you know of a piece called "Music on a Long Thin Wire" by Alvin Lucier? On one level, it's just, well, a recording of the hum made by a huge wire strung across an auditorium. On the other, it's a sublime and enveloping sound environment that's undeniably engaging. Is this music "simple" or "complex"? The set-up and execution is simple, sure, but there is a level of "holy shit" awe that I'd argue is pretty complex. We can have complex responses to simply created music, in other words, and ambient is a genre that I think is very ends-oriented--if the music takes me there, I don't worry a bit about what's behind it. You bring up Rothko later as well, and I think his popularity w/r/t other minimalist color-field painters is indeed hard to explain by formal assessment alone--but I also think it's no accident that he's so beloved and popular. It's the fact that "one's personal perception of beauty and specialness" is shared by so many persons.

I often think SAWII an ambient record like Metal Machine Music is an ambient record.

I kinda think of SAWII as an ambient record like I think of Victorialands as an ambient record.

Which is not entirely facetious, as that was the path that I first came to both SAWs, from the ethereal end of 'gaze and the dronier end of drone.

And it strikes me as the same kind of thing - lots of shoegaze, etheregoth, drone, whatever bands have since tried to do what the Cocteau Twins did, and they never really got it right, because they got the drifting prettiness down OK, but they never got the undercurrent of terror that is shot through the Cocteau's ecstatic beauty.

SAWII often strikes me the same way - that it's not just chillout, there's often an undercurrent of sadness, or creepiness, or aggression, or more often good old Celtic hiraeth - sorry, that's me letting the ~personality~ get in the way of the music again - but this is an undercurrent through all of Aphex Twin's music, the way that that element does come through, no matter what style he's working in. It's not that I'm lionising a record *because* it's a Richard D James record, it's because all of Mr D James' records have that vein of hiraeth which I find so beautiful and appealing.

Well, to explain a bit I don't think I've heard enough ambient in the first place but have a strong idea of the type and types of music (so when it goes blurs into Lucier and devotional buddhist chanting).

However I do think of both albums as very unsettling except there is far more variety in SAWII -- but that's only because MMM is a set of continuous streams of sounds and SAWII has different tracks/melodies.

But what both do share is a strong core sound with undercurrents that undermine it at the sametime -- so I agree that in SAWII that there is an undercurrent of creepiness/agression in a seemingly elegiac core whereas MMM has an undercurrent of serenity in an aggressive and very nasty core set of sounds.

The comparison to MMM is intriguing. One of my favorite Eno observations was his connecting ambient music with the overdrive of metal. Basically, once music goes far enough in the other direction, toward in the red noise and aggression, it sort of transmutes into a similar warm blanket of ambient sound.

But what both do share is a strong core sound with undercurrents that undermine it at the sametime -- so I agree that in SAWII that there is an undercurrent of creepiness/agression in a seemingly elegiac core whereas MMM has an undercurrent of serenity in an aggressive and very nasty core set of sounds.

This seems very otm to me. I've always thought MMM was a very warm/approachable/listenable record and wondered if it was just me being weird.

For me, I guess ambient has never equalled "chillout", so while I see those undertones of aggression/creepiness/etc in SAW2--and they're a big parrt of what I love about the record--they don't somehow make it not ambient for me. I don't look to ambient to relax, I look to it to immerse myself.

Well, all music can be ambient music, then. I'm not averse to that reading.

I don't think those undertones of aggression/creepiness/sadness/hiraeth make SAW2 *not ambient* - I think that they make it good, interesting, evocative, lasting ambient as opposed to churned out by-the-yard stuff.

Yeah, that's what I said a few posts above. This is no guy pressing random pre-programmed mush pads.

Anybody who grew up playing Metroid will feel absolutely no need to justify SAW II's beauty.

http://gamingirresponsibly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Samus.png

http://gamingirresponsibly.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Samus.png

Why is Richard wearing a bikini again?

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTdqVIqn-Pfnp1f2p-uheXFP40hgUrnuid68KB-5YMP5Anhk6j9cw

had planned to do a big is this cunt banned yet? compilation but the obviousness of the referents outweighed the effort of the compilation

Weirdly, listening to Loveless makes me think of Super Metroid. SAWII is synonymous with Five Letters From An Eastern Empire in my mind

wll u know yr the same old hangman who ratnalises hope

Sorry, did I say 'ten'? I meant 'twenty.'

it's about time he put a new record out!

Ned, you bastard. I've been patiently waiting for years to make a parody thread about how it's 10 years since the '10 years since SAW II' thread started.

Zing.

Just wait for the thirty year event.

Well, I'll have to now

Still one of my ten favourite albums.

I love this album (duh), and it's one of the few that I prefer to listen to digitally. My freshmen year in undergrad I had a weird moment with the second disc, late at night. I was kind of bumping my head against my computer monitor repeatedly with my eyes closed when my roommate walked in. If he didn't already, he identified me as a total weirdo from there on out.

lol, my dog is losing his shit at "Radiator"

Looking forward to reading the 33 1/3 that is about to be released (or is now available?).

Amazon delivered my preorder a couple weeks ago. It's good. I'm glad he doesn't go track-by-track.

I recently burned a 3CD version of this with the non-cd tracks inserted.. each CD corresponds to each vinyl disc. fun permutations, recontexified

which are the other nine, marcello?

Anyway in celebration -- um, me:

http://thequietus.com/articles/14552-aphex-twin-selected-ambient-works-volume-ii-review

Brilliant album. I wish I had more things like this in my collection, and that more things were out there that conjure this atmosphere.

Bought this on vinyl when it came out, brown vinyl which became unlistenable after a few plays. Listened to this again a few weeks back and couldn't get into it

The legendary unplayable vinyl. I mention in the article how I heard people complaining about that from the get-go online.

I have the brown vinyl too and it's a mess of crackle and surface noise.

Ned - is that Marc Weidenbaum book worth buying?

I've not read the whole thing but what I've seen is good stuff. As a friend noted, the fact that he's not doing it track by track is a plus. Marc also mentioned this tidbit over on FB in response to my article:

"Rhubarb" is a favorite, up there with "White Blur I." I have a small chunk of text in the book specifically about "Rhubarb," about my sense of how in essence the main thing that "happens" in the track is that what begins as a five-note phrase becomes a six-note phrase. As melodic development goes, that is way minimal, to say the least. In the course of my research I interviewed two musicians (one in San Francisco, another in Portland) who had independent of each other transcribed "Rhubarb" for solo acoustic guitar, but in the end I had no room in the book (35,000 words total) to fit their comments in appropriately.

Give it another spin thanks to this thread. I think I'm coming around to it now.

i never got into this, not 20 years ago, not ten years ago and not now. the cd in six words: too much repetition, too few ideas.

I still have the double cassette that I bought from King’s Road Our Price at the time and it still plays perfectly. Soundtracked innumerable Oxford Tube coach journeys and psychogeographic wanderings around London. An awesomely emotional album, I feel.

Like many ITT I dug this out again for the first time in years. So much I'd forgotten about it. Obviously Rhubarb is the stately easy-listening highlight, but this is a really diverse album. I fell asleep after about three songs, woke up at 4:30am with all the lights on. Woops.

I still prefer SAW85-92 but every time I listen to this album (yup, me too last night) I start out going "why do I even like this, it's so flimsy, so nothingy" and by the end I'm like "THAT WAS AMAZING HOW DID HE DO THAT."

I am all about Shiny Metal Rods. Always.

(It is funny how we all just know and use the "fan fiction" names.)

To be honest I don't really know it by the FF names, I'm more likely to know songs by track number.

this is still one of the best suites of music ever recorded and, y'know, the album is not on trial here etc