There is no book that comes before this book. There is no book titled Selected Ambient Works Volume I, just as there is no Aphex Twin album titled Selected Ambient Works Volume I. There is, however, an album called Selected Ambient Works Volume II. This is a book about that record.
Aphex Twin is one of the most important electronic music composers of the last twenty-five years and Selected Ambient Works Volume II is his second studio album. In this book, Weidenbaum not only meticulously analyzes each component of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, but its context: he traces the origins of ambient, the operation of record companies when the internet was not massive, and the phenomenon of chill-out spaces in raves. British songs in the early 90's. And how the album transcended that same context to become the music of traditional films, choreographies and orchestras. But above all it questions the reception of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, an album that, within the Aphex Twin discography, is curiously ambient: despite its reputation of being a "beatless" album, as it was largely defined From the critics at that time, it features rhythmic sequences born from the exploration of the ambient qualities of the beat that will call into question the traditional definition of the genre.