5. Aphex TwinSelected Ambient Works 85-92

‘Xtal’ and ‘Tha’ were the first two Aphex Twin tracks I heard; the latter was the first I think. I was so captivated by it, and found it so haunting and beautiful in an unexplainable way somehow. It’s hard to talk about this record, but it’s one of those few that I’ve come back to again and again over the years. It’s such a beautifully timeless and self-contained body of music. It was also a very relatable record for me coming out of the Kid A headspace, and one of those albums that worked very emotionally ambiguously to me, which is attractive as a teenager still discovering themselves. I didn’t listen to Selected Ambient Works Volume II until much later.