What to say about Aphex Twin’s second album for Warp, a double disc exploring the liminal space between sleep and wakefulness?
I don’t know if this is what Warp were expecting, when RDJ turned in 2.5 hours of largely beatless experimental music. Maybe they were hoping for another Lifeforms (FSOL) or Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld (The Orb). Either way, while the format certainly fits the ‘ambient house’ boom, when extended records to soundtrack post-rave chillout sessions were the flavour du jour, SAW2 was always too ominous and just plain weird for me play it on a post-club comedown.
These pieces were supposedly inspired by sounds James would hear while lucid dreaming, as well as perhaps other sensory experiences he would translate into sounds thanks to his condition of synesthesia. Sleeping in his studio for short bursts, he’d then wake and try and preserve the dream fragments in audio form.
How much of this is true, who really cares? SAW2 is both dreamlike and nightmarish, at times serene, lush and pleasant to listen to, at others, creepy, menacing and unsettling. For this reason, it’s seldom been an album I’ve sat down and listened to all the way through, never mind both discs.
But as something to dip into, there’s some of Aphex’s best work here, much of which defies categorisation. #1 (aka Cliffs, to give the ‘official’ unofficial title) has a tinkling piano refrain that gradually emerges out of eerie haze into sun-dappled space. #13 (aka Blue Calx) is stately and serene, moving at the pace of an object orbiting the outer solar system. And the otherworldly drone of #14 (aka Parallel Stripes) sounds like the background hum of the universe if you could just turn everything else off.
Was it an attempt to wrongfoot critics; confuse and confound his burgeoning fanbase; mess with his record label, or simply to resist being pigeon-holed? Probably all of the above, but now it’s long since assured its place in the lineage of ambient music and has been cited as inspirational by artists as disparate as the novelist Ian Rankin, to musicians like Bjork and Daniel Avery.
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