Selected Ambient Works Volume II

Selected Ambient Works Volume II is not a horror record and it is one of the most frightening things in this index, which is a distinction worth holding onto.

It arrived in 1994 as the follow-up to an album of melodic, danceable, broadly beloved ambient techno, and it is nothing like it. Across more than two and a half hours there are almost no drums, almost no melodies that resolve, and no track titles at all — the pieces are identified on the release by small circular photographs in the artwork, which is why everybody refers to them by invented names derived from those images. James's own description of what he was after, that it sounded like standing in a power station on acid, is the most accurate single sentence anyone has produced about it.

What makes it belong here is the specific quality of its space. The record is drenched in reverb of a kind that sounds wrong — too long, too metallic, applied to sources that are already decaying — and most pieces consist of two or three detuned elements circling each other without ever lining up. There is a piece that is a bell in an empty hall. There is one that is a choir heard through a wall. There is one that is just breathing and a tone. Nothing on it is hostile, and almost nothing on it is comfortable.

The fear is architectural rather than intentional

James was twenty-two and making this out of dreams — he has said repeatedly that much of it came from lucid dreaming and that he was trying to reproduce sounds he had heard asleep. That origin is audible. The record's pieces behave like places rather than compositions: you are put somewhere, nothing happens, and the somewhere is slightly wrong. That is a horror mechanism arrived at by accident, and it is more effective than most things arrived at on purpose.

The two pieces everybody knows

The one usually called "Rhubarb" is the most beautiful thing on it — a slow, sad, four-chord pad figure that has since scored a hundred documentaries about grief. The one usually called "Blue Calx" is the only piece with a credited title on the release, and it is the coldest. Between them they describe the record's whole range: unbearable tenderness and unbearable emptiness, produced with the same reverb.

Where it is a difficult recommendation

It is very long. Two and a half hours with no beats, no titles and no arc, and the sequencing on the CD differs from the vinyl — most notably the piece known as "Stone in Focus", which was on the vinyl and left off the original CD entirely, and which is one of the best things James has ever recorded. There is also no version of this album that will hold a casual listener's attention, and it is not trying to.

For the same vast cold reverberation made on purpose, Heresy; for the same sustained unease in a single tone, Time Machines; for the record that does this to memory itself, Everywhere at the End of Time.

The short answer: it does not end so much as run out, and which piece it runs out on depends on the format. The original CD release closes the second disc on a short, quiet, almost formless piece and simply stops; the vinyl has a different configuration and includes "Stone in Focus", which the CD omits altogether and which is the record's most expansive track. There is no arc across the two and a half hours — no build, no climax, no return of earlier material — so the final piece is not a resolution of anything. The album's structure is a set of rooms, and the last one is simply the last one you are shown. If you want the ending that feels like an ending, seek out "Stone in Focus" and put it last yourself, which is what a good many listeners do.

Why do the tracks on Selected Ambient Works Volume II have no names?

Because James did not give them any. The release identifies each piece with a small circular photograph in the artwork — a plant, a radiator, a stone, a handkerchief, some rhubarb — and the names in universal use are listener-invented descriptions of those images. The practical consequence is that the record's track names are a folk taxonomy rather than a credited one, and streaming services now carry them anyway.

Is this a horror record?

No, and we score it in this index because the effect is independent of the intention. There is nothing malign, violent or frightening in James's aims: this is an ambient record made partly out of remembered dreams. But the combination of unnatural reverberation, detuning, absolute stillness and complete absence of human presence produces dread as reliably as anything written to. We score it 092 on reality anchor, among the very highest in our index, for exactly that reason.

What is "Stone in Focus"?

A long, slow, extraordinarily spacious piece that appeared on the vinyl edition and was left off the original CD. It is widely considered the best thing on the album and its absence from the most common format is the single strangest fact about this release. It has since appeared on reissues and streaming, and it is the track to play first if you want to know whether this record is for you.

How long is Selected Ambient Works Volume II?

Around two and a half hours, across two CDs or three LPs, with the exact contents and running order varying between them. There is no abridged official version. Listening to it in one sitting is the intended experience and almost nobody does it more than once.

Is this the same as Selected Ambient Works 85-92?

No, and the difference is the point. Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is melodic, rhythmic and warm, and is one of the best-loved electronic records ever made. Volume II is its opposite in almost every respect: beatless, nameless, enormously long and cold. Listeners who arrive at the second expecting the first are routinely alarmed, which is the correct response.

Scored against the published rubric, here is what the numbers mean.

Reality anchor 092 is near the ceiling — only 3 works score higher. The reverberation is impossible, the elements are detuned against each other, and there is no metre or key to hold across most of the record.

Pace 006 is near the floor — only 4 works are slower. There are almost no drums across two and a half hours and most pieces do not develop at all.

Viscera 008 is near the floor — only 4 works score lower. There is nothing bodily anywhere on the record; it is the least physical thing we hold.

Tone 016 is bleak — 40 works score lower, though this is the one axis where the record argues with its score: two or three pieces on it are among the most tender in electronic music.

Era bias 040 is just under the midpoint. 1994 hardware samplers and tape, which now reads as a specific historical moment rather than as either analog or modern.

The threat at 035 is on the supernatural side — 47 works score lower. There is no agency in it of any kind, which is most of why it unsettles.

On shocks: none. There is not a single transient on the record designed to startle.