Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II

by Marc Weidenbaum

Overview

Extravagantly opaque, willfully vaporous — Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II, released by the estimable British label Warp Records in 1994, rejuvenated ambient music for the Internet Age that was just dawning. In the United States, it was his first full length on Sire Records (home to Madonna and Depeche Mode), which helped usher in Richard D. James, for whom Aphex Twin is but one of numerous monikers, as a major force in music, electronic or otherwise.

Faithful to Brian Eno's definition of ambient music, Selected Ambient Works Volume II was intentionally functional: it furbanished chill out rooms, the sanctuaries amid intense raves. Choreographers and film directors began to employ it to their own ends, and in the intervening decades this background music came to the fore, adapted by classical composers who reverse-engineer its fragile textures for performance on acoustic instruments. Simultaneously, "ambient" has moved from esoteric sound art to central tenet of online culture. This book contends that despite a reputation for being beat-less, the album exudes percussive curiosity, providing a sonic metaphor for our technologically mediated era of countless synchronized nanosecond metronomes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781623568900
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	02/13/2014
Series:	33 1/3 Series
Pages:	144
Sales rank:	446,697
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Marc Weidenbaum founded Disquiet.com, which is focused on the intersection of sound, art, and technology, in 1996. A former editor of Tower Records' Pulse! magazine, he's written for Nature, Boing Boing, and the website of The Atlantic. He's commissioned compositions from such musicians as Scanner, Steve Roden, and Stephen Vitiello, and lectures on the role of sound in the media landscape. He lives in San Francisco.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Background Beats

A Chill-room of One's Own

Bookending Eno

Music for the Ethernet

Runic Tendencies

Volumes I & III

Transcribing & Embedding

Editorial Reviews

Like all good critical studies, Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II doesn't provide the illusion of closure; rather, it expands minds, fostering the creation of textual meaning. I can offer no higher praise

Caught in the Carousel Paul Gleason

A must-read for those interested in the artist.

Alarm Will Sound

The chillout room masterpieces of Aphex Twin get the business from incisive writer Marc Weidenbaum. And really, the pairing couldn't be any more delicious.

San Francisco Bay Guardian Marke Bieschke

I love how it evokes the way music circa 1994 was suffused with unknowable data.

Rob Sheffield

If you're already a fan of Aphex Twin, you'll revel in Weidenbaum's deep dive into one of the artist's signature works. If not, you'll be surprised to learn that you've likely already heard his music in one form or another.

S.T. Vanairsdale

Mentioned on Line Out (The Stranger.com), February 2014
 
"If you're already a fan of Aphex Twin, you'll revel in Weidenbaum's deep dive into one of the artist's signature works. If not, you'll be surprised to learn that you've likely already heard his music in one form or another." – S.T. Vanairsdale"I love how it evokes the way music circa 1994 was suffused with unknowable data." —Rob Sheffield

"The chillout room masterpieces of Aphex Twin get the business from incisive writer Marc Weidenbaum. And really, the pairing couldn't be any more delicious." —Marke Bieschke, San Francisco Bay Guardian

"A must-read for those interested in the artist." —Alarm Will Sound

"Like all good critical studies, Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II doesn’t provide the illusion of closure; rather, it expands minds, fostering the creation of textual meaning. I can offer no higher praise" – Paul Gleason, Caught in the Carousel

From the Publisher