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1990s. It is the beginning of the electronic era that will dominate the music scene. Warp will also release that famous compilation that kicked off IDM. But even before that, there was Aphex Twin, the alpha and omega of electronic music.
If you ask any DJ who their favorite artists are, 90% of the time he's included. The other 10% are David Guetta and Bob Sinclair. Anyway, Aphex Twin has experimented with everything imaginable in electronic music, even touching on classical in "Girl\boy song" (Richard D. James album). An eccentric mind, perhaps even snobbish in some cases (Moby recounts how he behaved like crap with him during a tour), but certainly one of the most unique cases in the electronic music landscape.
His discography, among the many side projects, began long before S.A.W., but it is with this first official album that he stands out not only as a local DJ. In S.A.W, in fact, techno is contaminated with more ambient and dreamy atmospheres, transitioning from some sound experiments (Green Calx, Hedphelym); thus anticipating subsequent experiments, Aphex Twin refreshed the genre with sounds perhaps never heard before, stripping it of its heaviness and applying a sweeter sound; from the second half, there's a darker incursion (We are the music makers, Actium) with the use of some samples taken from movies or soundtracks.
Despite a sound that's not exactly clean (the album was recorded with rather scant means), the music of Selected Ambient Works is the manifesto of that generation of experimenters that will revolutionize electronic music in the following years: among the many inspired by him are Autechre, Boards of Canada, and even musicians outside of that context like Linkin Park. But even Skrillex and the like are declared fans of AFX; a clear example of how a musician, perhaps somewhat underrated, has been so revolutionary for music even today.
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