::::Everything you always wanted to know about the Aphex Twins Selected
::::Ambient Works II album (but were afraid to ask).
Title: Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works Volume II
Released: April 1994
Formats: CD\Vinyl\MC
Info: 25 track Warp LP21 (limited brown vinyl)(limited red/green/blue vinyl)
24 track Warp CD (RTD 126.1670.2)
23 track Sire CD (2-45482-A)
::Layout
The layout for SAWII can be kind of confusing. Here's what I wrote about
the CD when I first got it. It is applicable to all versions of the
album.
"There are 2 CD's, each with 12 tracks. Then in turn, the 12 tracks
are subdivided into 3 groups of 4 tracks using circles with "pie" slices
cut out of them to represent the length of the tracks. It kinda looks
like a trivial pursuit playing piece. Then inside, there are larger
circles with boxes laying on the perimeter, each holding a certain
picture, texture, or shape. The size of the boxes holding the texture
pattern also appear to be relative to the length of the track. Within, each
graphics box, theres is then another representation of the pie slice
showing which track each represents."
::Warp Vinyl Tracks (25):
A1 'light green'
- 07:21 track #1 "cliffs"
- 06:27 track #2 "radiator"
- 07:37 track #3 "rhubarb"
- 04:35 track #4 "hankie"
B1 'dark green'
- 08:46 track #5 "grass"
- 03:28 track #6 "mold"
- 08:43 track #7 "ropes"
- 05:03 track #8 "blur"
C1 'light brown'
- 06:48 track #9 "weathered stone"
- 09:48 track #10 "tree"
- 07:11 track #11 "domino"
- 02:39 track #12 "white blur 1"
D1 'orange'
- 07:20 track #13 "blue calx"
- 08:01 track #14 "parallel stripes"
- 05:34 track #15 "shiny metal rods"
- 04:46 track #16 "grey stripe"
- 02:05 track #17 "z twig"
E1 'red'
- 07:17 track #18 "windowsill"
- 10:04 track #19 "stone in focus"
- 05:57 track #20 "hexagon"
- 04:16 track #21 "lichen"
F1 'dark brown'
- 07:09 track #22 "spots"
- 07:31 track #23 "tassels"
- 11:27 track #24 "white blur 2"
- 05:40 track #25 "matchsticks"
::Warp CD Tracks (24):
Disc 1 'light green'
- 07:21 track #1 "cliffs"
- 06:27 track #2 "radiator"
- 07:37 track #3 "rhubarb"
- 04:35 track #4 "hankie"
'dark green'
- 08:46 track #5 "grass"
- 03:28 track #6 "mold"
- 08:43 track #7 "ropes"
- 05:03 track #8 "blur"
'light brown'
- 06:48 track #9 "weathered stone"
- 09:48 track #10 "tree"
- 07:11 track #11 "domino"
- 02:39 track #12 "white blur 1"
Disc 2 'orange'
- 07:20 track #13 "blue calx"
- 08:01 track #14 "parallel stripes"
- 05:34 track #15 "shiny metal rods"
- 04:46 track #16 "grey stripe"
- 02:05 track #17 "z twig"
'red'
- 07:17 track #18 "windowsill"
- 05:57 track #19 "hexagon"
- 04:16 track #20 "lichen"
'dark brown'
- 07:09 track #21 "spots"
- 07:31 track #22 "tassels"
- 11:27 track #23 "white blur 2"
- 05:40 track #24 "matchsticks"
* omitted track is "stone in focus" (red).
::Sire CD Tracks (23):
Disc 1 'light green'
- 07:21 track #1 "cliffs"
- 06:27 track #2 "radiator"
- 07:37 track #3 "rhubarb"
'dark green'
- 08:46 track #4 "grass"
- 03:28 track #5 "mold"
- 08:43 track #7 "ropes"
- 05:03 track #7 "circles"
'light brown'
- 06:48 track #8 "weathered stone"
- 09:48 track #9 "tree"
- 07:11 track #10 "domino"
- 02:39 track #11 "steel plate"
Disc 2 'orange'
- 07:20 track #12 "blue calx"
- 08:01 track #13 "parallel stripes"
- 05:34 track #14 "metal grating"
- 04:46 track #15 "windowsill"
- 02:05 track #16 "b+w stripes"
'red'
- 07:17 track #17 "siding nails"
- 05:57 track #18 "corrugated tubing"
- 04:16 track #19 "lichen"
'dark brown'
- 07:09 track #20 "leaves"
- 07:31 track #21 "tassels"
- 11:27 track #22 "rusty metal"
- 05:40 track #23 "b+w stripesII"
*omitted tracks are "hankie" (light green) and "stone in focus" (red),
which has been replaced by a white box on the Sire release.
**note that though some tracks on the Sire release have different
pictures to those on the Warp version, they are still the same tracks.
:::Related works
Title: Aphex Twin - Words & Music (Promo only CD w/ SAWII and Interviews)
Released: May 1994
Label: Sire (PRO-CD-6878)
Tracks: - 00:27 Intro Words
- 07:15 Track #1 "blue calx"
- 00:33 Words
- 07:55 Track #2 "parallel stripes"
- 00:47 Words
- 05:50 Track #7 "stone in focus"
- 00:22 Words
- 05:02 Words (Processed)
::Words Transcript
1. 00:27 Intro Words
"I mean, I like original music basically and then to go further, I just
like extremes of music whether it be totally chilled-out ambient music,
the strangest bizarre music, or totally most aggro fucking mental
hardcore. You know, it's just like, you know, I seem to go for the extremes"
3. 00:33 Words
"So I expressed a very strong interest in putting the stuff out which,
errm, I just thought they were gonna think `oh, this fuckin' artist', you
know, `not Aphex Twin, he's a pain in the arse. He wants to do triple
albums and not call any, put any track tiles on his albums' and things
like that, and I just though they were gonna go mental but they've been
really cool, not bad at all actually. So, you know, when I signed this
deal, errm, I have total control and, you know, my own label, which is
brilliant - about the biggest loophole that any artist has ever gotten at
Warner Brothers probably."
5. 00:47 Words
"I mean the way I do live stuff, errm, varies a lot even within the set
and then different sets vary with the setups, depending on what tracks I
wanna play, different tracks requiring different setups and the whole
process is fuckin complicated, it really really, its is difficult to do
for me. But for the stuff that I play that has already been released and
recorded, errm, I usually try to stick to the originals as good as
possible just for my own challange basically 'cos its impossible for me
to ever do it exactly the same. But, errm, I just felt like just enjoying
trying to get it the same and, you know, its quite funny 'cos it never
turns out like that *laughs*"
7. 00:22 Words
"I just like, I dunno, I get a bit scared sometimes cos, errm, I just get
too may ideas and that where my only problem comes in really. Its a bit
like when someone asks you for your top ten records of all time and, you
know, you know so many records that you can't actually think of 'em that
easily. You get this sort of mental block."
::::Reviews
[by fluid@freezer.cns.udel.edu]
Aphex Twin : Selected Ambient Works Volume II (RTD 126.1670.2)
CD1: 78:27
CD2: 77:04
After listening to this for about half a day now, I somehow still feel
that I coudldnt tell you that much about it. Someone mentioned that it's
an album you cant really listen to, you just hear it, and thats exactly
what I feel. There are no melodies as such, no formal construction, just
raw sounds. I was amused at first when I heard that most of these tracks
were composed through "lucid dreaming", but thats exactly what it sounds
like. Consisting of long sustained single notes, chimes, huge amounts of
reverb and echo, we are presented with vast amounts of space. Talk of
soundscapes and images constructed within these pieces are truely valid -
lying on my floor with eyes closed you really *can* go places. The
presence some of these pieces give you is incredible. Though there are
really no beats to speak of, the afx sound is unmistakably there. For
those of you that enjoyed Blue calx, included on this CD, and the
beatless track 11 on Analogue Bubblebath 3, there is more of the same
here. This is still not your traditional ambient sound however, as somehow,
Rj manages to bastardize noise and add that afx edge to everything. The
general aura surrounding these pieces is one of darkness. You never seem
to feel truely comfortable in these new unfamiliar surroundings. With
burts of dissonance, those haunting somehow childlike chimes, and
brooding atmospheres, Im somehow left feeling rather vulnerable. when
strung together then, these add up to a considerable gloom and thoughts
of what this recording could do when combined with your favourite
chemical lay themselves upon me. Of course, there are moments of relief,
when it appears as if a beam of light suddenly finds you only to be
dimmed soon after. Also throughout are those twisted, usually
incomprehensible, vocal samples that Rj like to throw in. Sometimes that
are hardly recognizable as voices, more shadows, or signs from people
trapped within.
Richard James has shown us once again what he is capable of and with this
album, has opened up another infinate number of doorways. If you dont
have this in your ambient collection, than you have a huge hole that
little else could fill.
[by jdrukman@us.oracle.com]
Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works Volume II
Warp RTD 126.1670.2
7:15 pretty chords and vocal samples
6:21 discordant chimes
7:28 mushy pads
4:28 ominous string
8:44 hand drum and flute
3:24 tum tum
8:34 arpeggios and plinks
4:58 electro beat
6:39 beat and subbass
9:40 sweeps and shimmers
7:03 delayed plinks
2:38 rumbling, talking, tubular bells
7:17 blue calx
7:55 eno pads
5:29 distorted beat
4:39 resonant squirty noises
2:02 delayed pretty melody
7:14 flutey ascension with percussion
5:51 muted melody with medium beat
4:08 windham hell
7:03 massively reverbed speech and whispers
7:25 buzzy growl
11:22 slight dissonance and laughing
5:39 majestic soundtrack
Funny. I was prepared to hate this. But it's not bad. Mind you,
it's not *great* either and anyone who seriously thinks that Richard
James has created anything strikingly (or even vaguely) new or
innovative here needs a *major* lesson in industrial culture, but hey,
it's pleasant enough background music.
[from peter.gebert@attis.rz.uni-konstanz.de]
ok guys,
you managed to make me give richard james a last chance. i bought saw2
yesterday (i didn't even have to order it - that indie shop here had it!
what does that tell us about ladders that the press raises?), and i got
quite surprised. this post is (too) long, so delete it now if you think you
have to.
is this eno? no it isn't. is it? this record, apart from some chords in
D5/17/z-twig and the sounds in f2/22/tassels, doesn't remind me of previous
afx stuff i know (from order to dance 4; pw: surfin; pw: quoth single) at
all, most of which has left me impressed only very little (apart from
supremacy 2). but this record is very different, and it's very good. this
from someone who was quite suspicious from all the praise that polygon
window got, those comparisons to kraftwerk and lfo, that were not backed up
by what was on the records.
i'm not so sure how "new" all this stuff is from an artist's point of view,
my knowledge of "ambient" is limited basically to eno, but the whole makeup
of this record and the stories that are told about it combine to something
coherent that is less worthy because of its innovativeness, but for its
seriousness and dedication. the difference to eno is that as much as i
know, he was interested in a) sound experiments, broadening the field of
"music" (see also cage, john), and b) in listening experiments of the sort
satie had conceived: music not to be listened to, music that should
influence your mood but no more (that's the ambient/music for films part).
(let's forget about his songs and so on for here.) now of course this saw2
goes very well with reading (hardly anything else goes, in my case), but
this does not seem to be the idea. also, the envelope has already been
pushed that far, rdj does not make sounds or structures that you have to
get used to to be able to appreciate. so what's the thing that makes this
album stand out?
instead of all this "ambient!" rattling, that talk of his about lucid
dreaming, the state in the morning (?) when you're still only half awake
and full of dreams, or the state you get into under sleep deprivation,
seems to make very much sense to me when i hear his saw2. the first
impression i had, with all this talk here about the cover, was that this is
meant to be something futuristic, a code to be intelligible to an
extraterrestial - but that seems wrong. now i think the voidness of
language of the cover nicely conveys the idea that what the sounds and
pictures talk about is just not something that can be spoken of in words...
that it's very intimate (not really personal - it may well be familiar to
most people). it's not so much new in terms of means than of what the music
stands for or relates to. in this respect, i think the pictures are very
well chosen, in fact, an integral part of the whole.
to respond to some earlier postings: i don't get the impression that the
spaces he creates (and i think the sheer wealth of spaces on this release
is amazing! one dream follows another) are uncomfortable spaces. i'd much
rather call its air one of a combination of wisdom and tenderness that
results in serious poetry. true, some spaces come out dark and threatening.
but lots don't. whether they're dark or not (crude description) is also
less important for judging the record than the overall approach that is
made. ...melancholy, maybe even nostalgia (my bloody valentine, esp.
"loveless", comes to mind, imo) might also be words to describe the mood
you get into, but the content though is very abstract, not as clear as the
places in ambient 4 on land, for example. so it's also not easy to say
whether e2/*/stone in focus, the track that's missing on the cd, is worth
the purchase of the vinyl version. there's nothing really special about the
track, despite it's the longest track that works well (i'll come back to
the longest one, f3/23/white blur 2).
also, this record definitely contains melodies, harmonies and rhythms,
though it's pretty clear that they (except for the pieces that are heavily
structured rhythmically) just serve to carry the timbres (lots of them as
blurry as most of the pictures - something i find particularly
interesting), their tremulations, the fantastic harmonics reverb, and the
overall spatial structures, that are the real music. to take up a
suggestive picture from another thread: quite the opposite from traditional
western music, the melodies and such are the canvas on which the sounds are
painted. they're just there to give the whole thing a temporal structure,
but they're not the material. and i think they're well chosen for that
purpose: none of them are haunting earcatchers. the only thing getting
annoying on the record, i thought, was the laughter sample on f3/23/white
blur 2.
after the first listen, the pieces i immediately wanted to hear again (that
had "caught my ear") were c2/10/tree (this being really one of the
uncomfortable ones, tritonus and all. the grumbling bass sounds of eno's
ambient 4 on land, track 2, are also present here. do they sound like a
tank? i once played eno's record while a friend was asleep in the same
room, and she woke up after that track having dreamt of tanks (she hated
the record after that). now as rdj seems to be a tank fan himself...);
hexagon (one of the rhythmic ones, and one of those that call for equipment
that can deal with low frequencies; and of course the already praised very
last one f4/24/matchsticks (definitely wrong name, i think). this last one
though suffers a bit from the familiar deep-space-mood it carries - it
sounds like it could be the title track of a sci-fi movie, and this turns
me off a bit - it doesn't fit well with the abstractness of the rest.
the pressing quality of my black vinyl pressing is low, especially records
2 and 3 are crackling a lot, and there are a real variety of extra noises
and stuff that don't seem to have been intended in the first place. (the
hole in record 2 was also too small.) on the other hand, those noises fit
very well into the mood and concept of the album, so they're not a big
problem. moreover, the recording is quite loud, so the music isn't drowned
in noise, the noise is rather adding warmth. the occasional repeating pops
that are there are also sometimes in the music itself, like the soft
ticking in d1/13/blue calx. do other people than i also sometimes lie
sleepily on the bed playing rhythms with their fingers on the mattress,
with the ear on the mattress too, listening to the really thumping sounds
that result...?
the color coding, btw, has proper matchings on my sleeve/records, except
for the fact that b has exactly the same color as a, on the record itself.
obviously a mistake. the labels for side c and d were correctly placed.
extra stuff like stickers and credits sheet were missing.
does some of all this make sense to anyone?
final remark: i'm impressed. unexpectedly (to me), this turned out a
master's work.
i guess that it's more probable that this guy is going to open a funny
restaurant than return to idm.
[by Details magazine]
"now that techno has conquered the body with rapid-fire bpm's, the latest
mutations of electronic dance music want to chill you out and feed your
head. And as this magnificent double CD makes clear, the cutting edge
belongs to Richard James - a.k.a. Aphex Twin. Squeezing haunting and
original sounds from his self-designed gear, James crafts spacious grooves
that are more textured and nuanced than the average acidhead soundtrack
and more emotionally generous than `serious' electronic avant-garde music.
These twenty-four untitled tracks conjure up visions you didn't know
existed: orbiting cathedrals, vast plateaus of crystal, underground
waterfalls of white noise. Selected Ambient Works II drops even fewer
dance beats than the Twin's import-only cult classic Selected Ambient
Works 85-92. Here James grapples with moods more than melodies, opening up
feelings at once intimate and alien: the melancholy of departure, the
childlike pleasure of exploring a new toy, or the eerie sense that you're
overhearing the secret life of machines"
:::End
_______
(__,-, \
/ /\ \ f l u i d <finger me for PGP key>
/,_) \ \ flu'id (floo'-)
(/ \\ brit@chopin.udel.edu :65 FD F9 9F F2 23 F8 CF:
\) fluid@freezer.cns.udel.edu :80 9C 11 AA 9F 92 0D 27: