Red, White, and Blue Calx: The Story of Marketing Aphex Twin in America

For its 30th anniversary, an oral history of bringing Selected Ambient Works Volume II to the U.S.

Richard D. James (Photo by Sam Robinson)

It’s the tip of the iceberg to call Aphex Twin an anomaly among any set of musicians (hell, minds). But on a major label in 1994, forget about it. America was still a couple years away from the “electronica” boom that bent dance music closer to alternative and hip-hop abrasions rather than house’s specialized function for raves or its poppier cousin, jock jams. And despite his own ravey beginnings, Richard James was about to debut stateside under his most well-known guise with Selected Ambient Works Volume II, a 2xCD or triple vinyl challenge for newcomers devoid of beats, words, concision, hooks, or even titles. “Ambient” was a word batted around by semi-famous electronic musicians like Moby and Brian Eno, but these were not household names. And this was hardly easy listening — darker, creepier fare than Enigma or the monks who took over Billboard with Gregorian chants.

For most of its three decades of existence I’ve loved the thing, the perfect aural mystery to beguile, soothe, and engulf me in high school (and irritate future sleepmates), and it’s now widely considered a landmark cult item to the tune of both great critical acclaim and renewable memeability. But I’ve always wondered how it got made. To be specific, how three hours of static instrumental repetitions whose lane didn’t yet exist and only sold some 60,000 copies didn’t end up a colossal failure (or lawsuit) in 1994 while more marketable pop and rock artists were constantly being hamstrung by their label deals even after they’ve already proven they had hits. And moreover, how did they promote the thing in the first place? What was the elevator pitch for an opus that made Kid A look like Carole King six years before Kid A even existed?