Selected Ambient Works Volume II is a 1994 album by Aphex Twin, the English producer Richard D. James, released by Warp in March of that year. From an artist then associated with rave and techno came a long sequence of slow, mostly beatless pieces: dank, buzzing synthesiser drones, distant bell tones and half-heard melodies, far darker and more uneasy than the gentle ambient associated with Brian Eno.
The original release gave the tracks no titles, only pie-chart symbols paired with photographs of everyday objects and scenes; the names most listeners now use, such as Rhubarb, were coined by a fan and later spread through online music databases without the artist’s approval. James told the writer David Toop that much of the album came out of lucid dreaming, a claim impossible to verify and sometimes read as a joke. Early reviews were mixed to hostile, but the record is now counted among the most influential ambient albums.