It sounds overblown not to mention a little pretentious to state that with the release of Selected Ambient Works 85- 92 in 1993 Richard D. James invented a new language for electronic and ambient music. Many of the elements he used- basslines from house and techno, spongy synth tones, clicky, repetitive rhythm tracks made from drum samples, a sound that felt ultra- modern and futuristic yet seemed anchored in something from the past- were already familiar but the way he put them together, the way as Aphex Twin he constructed and layered his tracks, was something else and new too. A problem with Selected Ambient Works is that it is almost too good, so full of beauty, ambient/ dance music with ambition and nuance, that what came after would never sound as good. Richard continued to make many, many great records, tracks that flipped what electronic music could be, but the magic he conjured up on the thirteen tracks that make up SAW is almost unique to that record.
This is Tha, a nine minute odyssey that starts out with the sound of a tap dripping and then transforms into ambient/ techno, outer/ inner space, excursion.
Hiss, clicky drums, a warm bassline that dances about that I can almost see (I can definitely imagine it visually), the hint of voices, keyboard notes in a space above the rest of the track and a murky, middle of the night feel- an otherworldly, dream energy.
Some of the music on it was made by a teenage Richard, using homemade equipment and recorded onto cassette. Jon Savage, a man who knows about many things but especially music, said that Selected Ambient Works 'defined a new techno primitive romanticism' and the primitive nature of the music is absolutely part of its beauty.
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