Read Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II for Free Online Page B

do when he reaches the age at which Paul himself began to slow down.
    The parallels between Aphex Twin and Eno are strong. Both moved from a pop form (in one case club-oriented techno, in another Roxy Music) to something more experimental, and both men lack a certain enthusiasm for performing for live audiences. Both started small record labels to support music no one else might, and also as a means toward self-expression and independence. And, of course, both embraced ambient sound.
    Perhaps, then, the aged Les Paul can also provide a model for understanding Aphex Twin, who like him is both a fabled tinkerer and jokester. Listening to
Selected Ambient Works Volume II
, one might wonder if this is pop music after pop music had lost its stamina, after it had gotten old, after it had had to learn to be slow, how to be emotional at a modest pace, out of necessity. Then again, pop music is an eternally young music; its audience has always been young, by definition. Pop music gets a fresh set of youthful listeners with each new generation. And with that as the case, then this Aphex Twin album is both old and new at the same time, an old version of pop at the end of its time, and something new for the next generation to call its own, to recognize as its own. It is both the zenith and nadir of a cultural sine wave. What arguably marks that moment, that shift in eras, is the manner in which electronics are perceived: from a time when they were invisible technology behind the production booth, to when they were on stage, front and center.
    Eno’s eventual decline was hinted at in his
Discreet Music
liner notes, which bear a distinct world-weariness. Despite a firm desire to not be confined to a bed, he was not longing for the stage. He described his optimal role in the work as a fellow member of the audience, and the note closed on a compositional approach based on an acceptance of entropy: “the sequences are of different lengths so that the original relationships quickly break down.” If Eno’s
Discreet Music
is about reflection, the chill-out room was about re-upping: wellbeing rather than attenuated recovery, getting back on the dance floor rather than merely getting back on one’s feet.
    The idea of dance music was nothing new in the 1990s. There has always been something playing in clubs at night and there always will be. Techno, a default term for all manner of driving club music with a pronounced electronic framework, drew from disco, hip-hop, exotica, and other late-night precedents. And techno was going through a transition at the same time when Aphex Twin was making a name (well, several names) for himself. Techno was moving from a club music to music one might also listen to outside of the club. Techno was moving from house music to home music. And while there would always be a dance music prosumer—to use a term favored by the gadget industry—who bought the commercial releases perhaps as often for armchair DJing as for actual DJing, there was increasingly an aspect of the music for which home listening was the likely and largely intended environment.
    Around this time, the term IDM (for Intelligent Dance Music) arose, which has been the subject of enough back and forth to fill a book unto itself. That debate, that conflict, inherent in IDM often comes down to the word “intelligent,” which by some is read as a progressive opportunity for abstraction and complexity, and by others as an implied condescension in regard to music to which people actually dance. Complicating this is that IDM was not just for homebodies. Music that came to characterize it, from Autechre to Kid 606, developed its own concert audience—evenings out for those who enjoy music for evenings in. The version of this IDM conflict that provides a wishful third way is that IDM was rave music with the home—a third place, as it were, in contrast with the main rave and the chill-out room—in mind. The term IDM originated in part due to the name