Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works 85-92 (2LP) [APOLLO]

Why you'll love it

Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is regularly named one of the greatest electronic albums ever made, and it still sounds otherworldly 30-plus years on. "Xtal," "Ageispolis" and "Heliosphan" are all here, spread across four sides.

This edition

• 2LP set, 13 tracks over four sides
• Apollo pressing (cat# AMBLP3922)

About the album

Richard D. James was cooking up these tracks in his bedroom in Cornwall as a teenager, on gear he'd built and bent to his own will, and when Belgium's R&S Records gathered them on its ambient imprint Apollo in 1992 they rewrote the rules for what electronic music could feel like.

Selected Ambient Works 85-92 sits somewhere between the club and the cloud: soft, woozy synth pads drifting over dusty breakbeats, melodies that sound like half-remembered dreams, and a lo-fi warmth that no amount of studio polish could ever fake. "Xtal" is the gentle front door, "Ageispolis" the one that gets stuck in your head for a week. A cornerstone of any record collection that takes electronic music seriously.

Also at Kops: more Aphex Twin on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On Apollo (cat# AMBLP3922), a reissue of the 1992 album.