I often use terms like “otherworldly” to describe the music I listen to; given that much of my music tends to be on the more experimental and atmospheric ends of the spectrum, it seems rather appropriate. But if I’m honest, it’s a bit of a misnomer, because I know the music was created by mortal humans who eat, sleep, and breathe here on good ol’ Terra Firma, same as I do. Which brings me to Selected Ambient Works Volume II, Aphex Twin’s first substantial foray into purely ambient music, and “otherworldly” feels almost inadequate to fully convey the effect of listening to its chilly, alien soundscapes.

Given that this is Richard D. James we’re talking about here, it’s hard to know where to divide the line between fact and fiction concerning Selected Ambient Works Volume II. James has claimed that the album was inspired by his experiences with lucid dreaming, and chronicles his attempts to recreate his dreamworld experiences using microtonal tunings. Further adding to the album’s mystique are the lack of song titles. Only after the album’s release did a fan on the IDM mailing list come up with actual titles like “Cliffs,” “Weathered Stone,” and “White Blur 1” — titles that, for all of their abstraction and ambiguity, are perfectly suited for James’s drifting, shapeless sounds.

So, just what, exactly, it it like listening to Selected Ambient Works Volume II? It can be playful, ominous, and disorienting, all at once (“Radiator,” “Curtains,” “White Blur 2”). Occasionally, it’s so harrowing (“Hankie,” “Domino”) that my daughter, who’s no stranger to my musical tastes, bluntly asks me why I’m listening to it. And there are moments where it’s so serene and heartbreakingly beautiful (“Rhubarb,” “Blue Calx,” “Stone in Focus,” “Lichen”), that it seems impossible to have been crafted by human hands. Rather, it seems more likely that James, through his lucid dreaming or acid-dropping, somehow tapped into and channeled a wholly other plane of existence.