Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II Read Online Free

former editor of
The Wire
and a musician as fine as Scanner all embrace the idea of “beatless-ness,” that has an impact. The use of the term does not terminate with criticism. It may not originate there either, but journalism certainly promul-gates from it. In 2010 the
New York Times
interviewed the author Jon McGregor, a novelist, about his working habits. He provided an annotated playlist that was the result of his ongoing refinement of the perfect listening for writing. “I kept inventing rules—no vocals, no beats, minimal chord changes, yadda yadda—but they were all aimed at finding something which would barely be music at all,” he explained. He provided two key examples of this. The first was the drone-rock band Sunn O))), which strives to turn white noise into something that might be imagined to be the spawn of Black Sabbath. The second: “the second volume of Aphex Twin’s ‘Selected Ambient Works.’” The list McGregor provided came across like he had sought out music that collectively might create aspects of the Aphex Twin album. He recommended Thomas Tallis’ choral
Spem in Alium
, which he explained he first heard in the sound art project by Janet Cardiff, who set up 40 speakers to invoke an immersive environment, allowing the listener to navigate the choir as a ghost or a character in
The Matrix
might. And he recommended Richie Hawtin’s prolific Plastikman moniker, under which the musician has recorded a vast amount of minimalist techno that, for all its beats, has an ambient quality thanks to its minimalism, the amount of space it leaves unfilled.
    These collected descriptions evidence a particular moment’s understanding of the album, having mostly been written shortly after the initial release, and in the first decade following that release. It is helpful to think about that first decade, and about the role served by descriptions of music at the time. Description in print reviews along with, increasingly if slowly, online was, with the exception of radio and TV play, the primary means by which music was experienced by inquisitive consumers. In the case of an album like
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
, a word like “beatless” became essential, canonical shorthand before individuals even heard the music. Such words described the seeming ethereal at a time when music was ethereal, in that it was not widely accessible. It was mediated, given form and shape, through language and physical recordings. Often one’s first experience of a record was preceded by description—in a review, or a profile of a musician, or the enthusiastic depiction by a friend or record store clerk.
    Perhaps, though, the record did seem more beatless at the time of its initial reception. Perhaps the world is quieter now in some respects. Electric cars motor by with no engine sound. Solid state drives in computers and portable tablets have virtually eliminated the hard-drive whir that for many years served as digital music’s equivalent to the surface noise of vinyl and cassettes. There is ever more abundant use of headphones, isolating listeners from the world around them. Sound design is increasingly a considered—that is, restrained—component of product design, so the sounds we do experience in consumer goods—from alarm clocks to microwaves—are more tasteful. Movies and TV shows now feature the so-termed “underscoring” techniques pioneered by the likes of Lisa Gerrard (
Whale Rider, Gladiator
), Clint Mansell (
Requiem for a Dream, Black Swan
), and Cliff Martinez (
sex, lies, and videotape
;
Solaris
), rather than the foregrounded, melodramatic orchestral techniques of an earlier generation, or the synthesized renditions of those orchestral techniques that served as a bridge from orchestra to our present era of ambient movie scoring. Perhaps we only can hear the beats inherent in
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
two decades after the fact because those elements are, in cultural terms, louder now. Or