Selected Ambient Works 85-92 is a desperately sparse album: thin percussion and several haunted-synth lines are the only components on most songs, and
Richard D. James added only one vocal sample on the entire album ("We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams"). Also, the sound quality is relatively poor; it was recorded direct to cassette tape and reportedly suffered a mangling job by a cat. All this belies the status of
Selected Ambient Works 85-92 as a watershed of ambient music. It reveals no influences and sounds unlike anything that preceded it, due in large part to the effects
James managed to wrangle from his supply of home-manufactured contraptions. [
Selected Ambient Works was re-released on LP in 2013.] ~ John Bush