Selected Ambient Works Volume II

James stated that the sounds on Selected Ambient Works Volume II were inspired by lucid dreams, and that upon awaking, he would attempt to re-create the sounds and record them. He claimed to have natural synaesthesia, which contributed to this album.[9] James described the album as being "like standing in a power station on acid"; he continued that "if you just stand in the middle of a really massive one, you get a really weird presence and you've got that hum. You just feel electricity around you. That's totally dreamlike for me. It's just like a right strange dimension."[9]

Volume II differs significantly from the first volume in the series, in that it consists of lengthy, textured ambient compositions with sparing use of percussion and occasional vocal samples, in a vein Rolling Stone related to Brian Eno's early ambient works and John Cage's minimalism.[1] The album itself makes liberal use of microtonal musical tunings, which James was investing himself in at the time.[13] The 22nd track features a sample taken from an interview with a woman who had murdered her husband; the tape of the interview had been stolen from a police station by a friend of James' who worked there as a cleaner.[14]

Simon Reynolds commented that on Volume II James changed styles "from the idyllic, Satie-esque naivete of early tracks like 'Analogue Bubblebath' to clammy, foreboding sound-paintings."[15] Reynolds stated that, along with other artists such as Seefeel, David Toop and Max Eastley, James had moved from "rave into the vicinity of "isolationism", a term coined by Kevin Martin to label music which "breaks with all of ambient's feel-good premises. Isolationism is ice-olationist, offering cold comfort. Instead of pseudopastoral peace, it evokes an uneasy silence: the uncanny calm before catastrophe, the deathly quiet of aftermath."[15]

The artwork for the album was designed by Paul Nicholson,[16] who was credited as Prototype 21 in the liner notes.[17] He stated in an interview with Resident Advisor that the images were taken by "Richard's girlfriend at the time, Sam" and that most of the photographs were taken in a flat that the three were all living in together.[16] All images are in sepia tone, save the one used for "Blue Calx", which features the track's name against a blue field (this was changed to a plain light blue background in the US version). Different crops of the images were used for the cassette booklet and vinyl labels. Furthermore, many images were altered for the US CD pressing: several of the blurry or out-of-focus photographs were replaced with entirely new, in-focus images; and the image for the 19th track was replaced with a blank space.[18] The fan-created titles in the tracklist below are based on the original UK artwork.

The front cover is the result of James scratching the Aphex Twin logo onto the back of a leather travel case, which Sam took a picture of.[16] The textual Aphex logo is a "broken" version of the one Nicholson had designed for several EPs by James.

Of the pie charts and size of the photographs in the artwork, Nicholson said that they were "related to the track signatures, how long they were."[16] The timecodes of a track would be converted into a decimal, then into the percentage of the total length of the side of the record the track is on, and then into a degree to be used on the pie chart.[16] All six pie charts were colour-coded, and those colours are used throughout the artwork, including the textless CD and vinyl labels.

At the end of the decade, Selected Ambient Works Volume II was included on several publications' lists of top albums of the 1990s including Rolling Stone and Spin.[33][34] Commenting on the audience's reaction of the album in 1999, Simon Reynolds stated that "many in the Aphex cult were thrown for a loop" and that "Aphex aficionados remain divided" on the album.[33] Rolling Stone stated the album was James creating "an enriched, wraparound style of burp-and-whoosh programming, the perfect soundtrack for pulling the pieces of your brain back together after spilling them all over the club floor. The first dance album to celebrate the rhythms in your head."[34] Spin placed both Selected Ambient Works 85–92 and Selected Ambient Works Volume II at number 56 on its list of the top albums of the 1990s, calling it "an awe-inspiring feat of avant-techno texturology".[33] Online music magazine Pitchfork placed the album at number 62 on its list of top albums of the 1990s, stating that it "spurred on one of the great trajectories of pop music in the 1990s, influencing everyone from Radiohead to Timbaland".[35] Pitchfork later ranked the album second on its 2016 list of the best ambient music albums of all time.[36] Giving added historical context of Volume II initially confusing some listeners expecting a techno LP based on its name, Resident Advisor gave the album a 5/5 for its 25th anniversary, stating that it brought "atmospheres to life with intensely vivid sonic textures" and "[as] artists and fans alike, we all owe something to this strange masterpiece."[29]

Pitchfork noted that Selected Ambient Works Volume II was "a very early example of a record being anticipated, experienced, and, ultimately, analyzed in minute detail through online communication."[37] Pitchfork noted that the Electronic mailing list titled IDM (Intelligent dance music) had a profound influence on how the album would be received in the future, noting that the community's influence has to do with the album's mysterious non-titles.[37] List member Greg Eden, who kept a detailed discography, gave the tracks names based on a word or two that related to the corresponding images.[37] Eden would later work for Warp, the original label that released Selected Ambient Works Volume II.[37][38]

Simon Reynolds noted that the album signaled a shift in techno and ambient music toward a darker sound reminiscent of Brian Eno's notion of "environmental music".[39]

A book written by Marc Weidenbaum (a music journalist and former editor of Tower Records's in-store magazine Pulse!) about the album was released in the 33⅓ series on 13 February 2013.[37][40] The series are short books inspired by or focused on albums and are generally written as longform essays.[40]