One believes anything that Richard D. James says about himself or his music only at one’s risk, and Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is at the heart of a mass of half-believable statements, rumors, and insinuations that seem difficult to untangle. Despite its title, not one cut on it had ever been previously released in any form — in fact, it was James’ first full-length album as Aphex Twin. Was there anything on it that had actually been recorded in ‘85 (when James would have been 14!) or even relatively close? Had James actually constructed all the synthesizers used in its creation himself? Had it really all been recorded to a cassette tape that had then been mauled by a cat (which would explain why the finished CD is full of tape hiss and other low-fi sound artifacts)?

There is, of course, no way to know, but it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the music itself. It’s not what I usually think of when I think of ambient — it doesn’t sound like Brian Eno, or The Orb, or even, for that matter, Aphex Twin’s own later Selected Ambient Works, vol. 2. It’s got more percussion than I’d expect, for one thing — “Ptolemy” and “Green Calx” especially sound like something that could be played at an underground club somewhere without anyone moving off the dancefloor, which is not true of, say, Music for Airports.

It is, however, hauntingly spare. It has none of the twisted goofiness of Come to Daddy or Windowlicker, it’s not coy like Drukqs or overtly difficult like Vol. 2; rather, it’s the sound of someone making music purely for himself, and you can almost hear the Twin’s sense of wonder as he explores each of the sounds and patterns he can get out of his synths. In a strange way, I think it’s James’s most honest album; unlike the others, there are no masks, or poses, or endless anagrammed inside jokes. There’s just the music.

It’s very long (running time: 74:20), and I don’t usually like that, but listening to 85-92 is a hypnotic experience. “We are the music makers,” Gene Wilder’s echoing, sampled voice declares in the only intelligible vocal part on the album, “and we are the dreamers of dreams.” 85-92 sounds like a dream, or like the space between waking and dreaming: the half-distorted sine-wave bass that unfolds over and over again throughout “Ageispolis” sounds just like it feels to me when I’m just starting to come out of sleep, there’s no one else in the house, and for a few seconds, I can’t remember where I am, or even who — but instead of being frightening, it’s strangely comforting.

Despite the fact that the synth patches don’t sound like anything “real” — or even much like other pure-synth albums — it’s a very human album, in a way that a lot of electronic music isn’t. The looping, cyclical melodies on 85-92 aren’t mechanistic in any way, and perhaps that’s James’s ultimate triumph: wringing real emotion from emotionless machines.

And that’s why this is #10 on my top 10.

Release Date: 1993
Label: Apollo
Rating: 10/10

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