Selected Ambient Works 85-92 — Aphex Twin

The warmth was the innovation

Rated 9.0 / 10

Techno's critics called the machines cold, and this record's answer was not to argue but to detune. Every pad here wobbles slightly flat, like a memory of a melody rather than the melody itself. That wobble is the whole aesthetic — dance music made porous to nostalgia. The imitators copied the tempos and missed the tuning, which is why there is one of these and hundreds of them.