Aphex Twin

The year is 1992, and we're at the dawn of the Nineties revolution that will give birth to so-called "intelligent" electronic music, thanks above all to the work of the Warp Records label and its standard-bearers.

The context in which this new genre takes shape stems from a number of factors, all emerging almost simultaneously in early-Nineties England. Essential, without doubt, is the European spread of techno, still tied to Detroit sonorities and light years away from the commercialization that would come mainly in the following decade; alongside this is the sudden success of rave culture, all too indebted in its locations to the hippie movement but of a wholly different musical and cultural stature. The past also plays a fundamental role, both in the new, disruptive passion for the electronic experimentation of the Seventies (especially the German cosmic and kraut scene – the teeming architectures of Klaus Schulze, the cosmic journeys of Tangerine Dream, the robotic scores of Kraftwerk) and in the rediscovery, thanks also to the new age movement, of ambient music's atmospheres, coined some twenty years earlier by Brian Eno's treatise "Discreet Music".

It's within this historical-temporal strand that the innovative figure of Richard David James fits in, better known by the main one of his countless pseudonyms, Aphex Twin.

James, after spending a childhood surrounded by electronic circuits and transistors, and an adolescence as a DJ at rave parties, begins his eclectic career by forging a harsh, jagged musical style, derived entirely from the rave experience but at the same time influenced by the most extreme results of years and years of experimental research in the electronic field (drawing on the background mentioned above, as well as a certain attraction to the more extreme paths of the mid-twentieth-century avant-garde-conceptual tradition). All of this across countless monikers, limited-edition vinyl-only EPs, and a myriad of live sets still tightly bound to rave culture.

But in 1992, with this full-length debut, the Irishman raised in Cornwall completely reverses course, giving life to what can be considered the first manifesto of the intelligent revolution.

Warp's "Artificial Intelligence" series doesn't exist yet, most of its future standard-bearers are still preparing their debuts, but James has already released "Selected Ambient Works 85-92": the album that theorizes, even before the (only slightly later) debut of Autechre, the genre that would soon come to be known as ambient-techno. It's a work profoundly different from anything the artist had put out until then: distancing himself from the jagged, experimental sounds of his earlier EPs, James, using exclusively analog synthesizers, various sound modulators and an already pronounced use of sampling, forges a perfect fusion between the ambient of Brian Eno and Harold Budd and the most deeply rooted techno (Detroit pioneers like Kevin Saunderson, but also figures like Carl Cox and Richie Hawtin who would come later).

Across its 13 tracks, officially composed between 1985 and 1992 but much more likely dating from the two years preceding the album's release, light touches of vintage-flavored analog synths merge with dance rhythms softened in execution by the use of ethereal, muted drum machines. These are essentially dancefloor tracks with every trace of groove entirely drained out of them: stripped of their heaviest layers, what emerges is their beguiling nakedness, the almost metaphysical balance that lies at their deepest, most intimate core.

The dancing opens with "Xtal", a track with a danceable rhythm deprived of its vital energy and reduced to a hazy mix of dreamy melodic layers, light and soothing drum machines and angelic choirs: it's the perfect synthesis of the ambient-techno to come, as well as the creative peak of the album and of James's entire ambient phase. Next, the hypnotic mantra of "Tha" offers a crescendo of synthetic expanses accompanied by an obsessive, almost dub-like rhythm: a symbiotic middle ground between the Harold Budd of "Abandoned Cities", the Tim Story of "Wheat And Rust" and the Michael Stearns of "M'Ocean".

"Pulsewidth", an overdub of deep-flavored rhythms and a danceable, looped melody, is pleasantly roughened up by the intervention of a seventies-sounding keyboard, brought back from the past to once again traverse boundless oneiric expanses. Alongside it, "Ageispolis" is the album's most vintage track: another deep watercolor built on Eno-esque lines alternating with a looping electronic music box. Small nods to the likes of Jarre, Roedelius, Fricke and Schulze, both in the minimal, cyclical progression so dear to the latter, and in the sonic and rhythmic perfection of Jarre, as well as in the almost mystical concept of the remaining two.

The interlude of pure (once again Eno-esque) ambient, "I", introduces "Green Calx", a liquid rush of sound and beat fully in the style of "Incunabula": almost a deliberate anticipation of the evolution that Autechre would bring to the genre a year later — so much so that it becomes hard to tell Aphex's style apart from the one that would come to define the two icy producers. "Heliospan" ideally closes the first part of the album, slightly speeding up the drumming to frame a sweet, melancholic melodic line, almost in the style of Vangelis.

The second half of the album, by contrast, is characterized by a greater prevalence of dark, hypnotic elements, which take over from the ethereal, subdued rhythmic-melodic constructions of the first side. "We Are The Music Makers" is exemplary in this sense, a spectral, icy ride that alternates the sound of an almost whispered keyboard with a martial, syncopated march. "Schottkey 7th Path", meanwhile, is a bow to the immense analog-sounding cosmic sculptures of the most introspective Klaus Schulze (the one of "Mirage"), with its trip-like progression over an open backdrop of unfurled synthesizers and a melodic line poised between unease and darkness.

"Ptolemy" stands out in particular from its predecessors for a purely deep-house construction (perhaps the only nod to that genre on the whole album), while "Hedphelym" and "Delphium" are the only two examples that call back to James's recent rave-hardcore-acid past: the former seems to come straight out of one of the "Analogue Bubblebath" EPs, though it doesn't shy away from filtering down its rhythmic power; the latter is instead another march sped up with a spectral mood, rich in acid-dance reverb, particularly in the rhythmic bassline.

The album's close is entrusted to "Actium", whose proto-cardiac pulse seems to try to break free from the keyboard cage enclosing it without ever reaching the explosion that the whole track seems to promise, replaced instead by a soft, almost Jarre-like melody. The second creative peak of a hugely inspired album, it's a fitting close to the journey of ambient-techno's birth.

"Selected Ambient Works 85-92" was the manifesto for an entire generation of musicians tied to that Warp label which James himself would join shortly after (LFO, Mike Paradinas aka µ-Ziq, Luke Vibert, Jeremy Simmonds aka Voafose). But its further importance lies in having represented, even more so (for reasons of timing) than Autechre's debut, the main source of inspiration for a musical movement that would keep developing in the years that followed, taking incredibly different paths from a common origin: just think of current exponents of ambient-techno like Taylor Deupree (and the whole movement tied to Istinct Records); artists capable of revolutionizing, starting from these foundations, the very concept of ambient, like Eluvium or Loscil; the innovative movement of multimedia artists who pioneered sound synthesis (Alva Noto or the Japanese school of Ryoji Ikeda); or again the birth of a genuine ambient-noise aesthetic with the glitch music of Christian Fennesz, itself a starting point for current movements such as drone or the (new) wave of field recordings; all artists and genres united by having been strongly influenced by the "intelligent" revolution ideally kicked off by this album.

The direct forefather of one musical generation and the indirect forefather of at least two more, a decisive turning point and starting point for a decade defined by evolution and innovation, "Selected Ambient Works 85-92" is a fundamental piece in the evolution of electronic music, and indeed of its very history.

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15/04/2012