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TAV ESSENTIAL LISTENING

‘Selected Ambient Works 85-92’ was the creation of the fevered imagination and unique musical mind of Richard D James, an artist who’s gone under a huge number of monikers but who is most infamous as Aphex Twin. Released in 1992 on R&S ambient subsidiary Apollo Records, it’s an album that remains a constant muse for experimental and mainstream musicians alike. From this record sprang the IDM genre (and Aphex Twin’s preferred term “braindance”), and a freeform attitude to electronic music that’s become prevalent again in the last few years, as genre becomes increasingly meaningless and dance music yearns for the fluidity of the past. Inspiring everyone from Machinedrum to Radiohead, Björk to Kanye West and Daniel Avery to Paul White, Aphex Twin’s first album is a touchstone that, unlike many other records of its era, has barely dated at all. 

Aphex Twin’s back-catalogue is vast, and encompasses delicate classical (‘Aisatsana’ or ‘Avril 14th’, as sampled by Kanye), brutally noisy drum & bass (‘Come To Daddy’), industrial hip-hop (‘Ventolin’), queasy techno breaks (‘180db [130]’, even mellow Mr Fingers-esque house (‘Laricheard’). His most famous moment is ‘Windowlicker’, a track that managed to cross over thanks to its typically weird Chris Cunningham directed video — and in spite of its uncompromising cyborg R&B sound. ‘Selected Ambient Works’ remains his seminal work, though: its synthesis of elements from hip-hop, hardcore, ‘true’ ambient, house and techno is a prescient window to the future that producers are still glimpsing through. - DJ Mag