Aphex Twin Whats so great about Selected Ambient Works 85-92?

Look at dates in Album-title. Look at Aphex' birth date. Go "whaaaat?" - there you go.

i heard stuff like CTD and RDJA album first

the main reason for this album's popularity is that it has influenced so many since its release. like someone posted earlier, it's the Oxygene of the 90's.

it happens with most popular artists, their debut is the one that people seem to remember the most

i love SAW but most got into it well after its release (inc me) and RDJ didn't own the 90's by stretch as there was plenty of other decent electronic music in the same ball park around that time but SAW still has a timeless charm

xtal and tha : )

xtal is the best track Rich has ever done. Its simple but so ahead of its time and balanced so perfectly. Ive been into aphex since 93 though. So its been a nice journey

Tha, Ageispolis, Heliosphan, We Are The Music Makers, Actium, Schottkey 7th Path

so many all time favourites

every track is a jewel. i can't wrap my mind around not getting into it...

  On 11/23/2010 at 11:34 PM, Dissolvedpaul said:

XXX pretty much sums it up well.

 

The fact this site is the namesake of the track on SAW85-92 surely must have made you have a wee think about why it's

an important loved album. It's pretty timeless, warm, beautiful, full of idea's, very re-listenable and no doubt inspired a generation of bedroom programmers, yeah its popularity isn't that hard to understand.

 

I agree with XXX too, It's easy to understand also that fans who's first exposure to Aphex was Windowlicker or Come to Daddy

might see this album as a bit alien or somehow not as outrageous. At the time Saw was like very little else.

I think it's a simple case of accepting that he's not an artist to pigeonhole and just listening to his work as a whole.

He's not tailoring for the fanbase.

  On 11/23/2010 at 11:53 PM, Murveman said:

  On 11/23/2010 at 11:34 PM, Dissolvedpaul said:

The fact this site is the namesake of the track on SAW85-92 surely must have made you have a wee think about why it's

an important loved album.

Eh, I always thought of the Caustic Window remix as the namesake for this website.

Bingo! I named this site after the Caustic Window track, not the frankly boring version on SAW 85-92.

  On 11/24/2010 at 6:38 PM, Joy Rex said:

Bingo! I named this site after the Caustic Window track, not the frankly boring version on SAW 85-92.

Noooo! My worldview, shattered!

But I really do prefer the 85-92 track and think it's absolutely marvelous.

For me it's one of those albums where when I'm in the mood for it it's the best thing ever. When I'm not it's still nice to listen to but a lot of the tracks feel too long.

memories of sunday afternoons being totally smashed in my student digs after a heavy weekend... zoning out to SAW2 (amongst other things...)

Very inspired, summery album... with great melodies. You can almost feel the heat off some of those tracks IMO.

Xtal is like waking up to a beautiful summer's day after a perfect nightclub experience.

I can't believe people deleted this album

It's one of the most honest and unforced sounding albums of all time. I love the rough sounding production as well.

'I' is so beautiful

edit: I mean rough in a good way, raw is a better word maybe

  On 11/24/2010 at 6:38 PM, Joy Rex said:

Bingo! I named this site after the Caustic Window track, not the frankly boring version on SAW 85-92.

I stand corrected! : )

Hey, it's been a a long time since the inception of Watmm/end of Joyrex.com so my memory's a bit faded.

Damn epilepsy meds I tell you.

Am I the only one who gets a very strong image of an overview of a sleeping city from this album? Lots of streetlights and chilling/dancing alone. Especially with i and Heliosphan. I don't know why but I find this album very urban, not really summerish as mentioned above.

Agree on it sounding urban, yeah. Love that kind of sound, that's what I love about drexciya and such as well

  On 11/24/2010 at 5:19 AM, marf said:

xtal is the best track Rich has ever done. Its simple but so ahead of its time and balanced so perfectly. Ive been into aphex since 93 though. So its been a nice journey

It really is--I love the feeling of being enveloped by this track.

  On 11/23/2010 at 12:30 PM, o00o said:

Why are these tracks even more popular than for example tracks from Drukqs or the Richard D. James Album?

Because it's less dated?

  On 11/24/2010 at 8:19 PM, Terpentintollwut said:

  On 11/24/2010 at 6:38 PM, Joy Rex said:

Bingo! I named this site after the Caustic Window track, not the frankly boring version on SAW 85-92.

 

Noooo! My worldview, shattered!

 

 

 

 

But I really do prefer the 85-92 track and think it's absolutely marvelous.

i know i've given enough positive comments already, but the SAW version is fantastic. those really lighthearted, subtle melodies that come in at around 4:06 for example, are perfectly serene.

  On 11/23/2010 at 9:58 PM, ruiagnelo said:

  On 11/23/2010 at 9:50 PM, xxx said:

He owned the entire decade. Plenty of rave/electronic/techno was being squidged out but there was not a "Heliosphan" or "Xtal" in sight. This minimal craze of late would have literally been impossible without "Tha", "Delphium" and "Actium"--respect to Robert Hood/UR first and foremost though in the case of minimal because RDJ couldn't have done it without them.

 

 

this is so far from my time, from my generation, but i can't understand it so well!

SAW I won't age for me, ever.

it's actually difficult to grok how completely RDJ, the orb, and FSOL just dominated the musical landscape around 1996. i remember being totally addicted to ultraworld, and my hot chick friend's older brother getting SAW on vinyl. sitting in her bedroom with a badly rolled joint, putting the needle to the groove.

it's a special album partially cos of memories, and i reckon possibly the same for a lot of other people.

lol new thread topic does anybody end up not listening to much Aphex Twin LPs and listens to AFX Polygon Window weird singles and obscure stuff instead? I keep forgetting about certain Aphex tracks/textures/ideas and they could be on SAW 85-92 for all I know. overlooked because I know it so well

and I dunno it just makes me think of open abstract sort of spaces. Tha for one, somebody said an overview of a city I think? well substitute skyline of some weird undefined sort of place instead

I dunno I like that quality of SAW 85-92, it feels like some sort of slowly shifting scene on the horizon instead of even later ambient stuff it sort of jump cuts between things, like first-person perspective instead of this distant view

like something like Flim is good but it feels like it's trying to suggest Christmas claymation special with shifting scenes and jerky animation

This album was already obsolete in 1993 (seeing 70/80's ultra-wide and elaborated electronic music landscape) but it is sincere, that surely is why I like it so much. Like 82% of soul and 18% of technical abilities, which is inverted with Drukqs.

If only "IDM" wasn't so contemptuous...

LOL just heard We Are The Music Makers used on German boulevard-news fucking tv show "Punkt 12", one minute ago - they used it for a clip in which some rich girls buy stupid expensive jewel shit. What the fuck.