Not really an ambient album by today’s criteria as all the tracks have some kind of percussion, SAWs is a collection of hazy, dreamy, emotive techno and break tracks. It was famously recorded onto cassette, the technical limitations of the format — hiss, gentle distortion and tape compression — lending the album a murky and emotive atmosphere that artists have been emulating ever since. It was notable at the time for its warm and soothing aesthetic which was in clear contrast to the bombast of contemporary hardcore rave, the twisted intensity of acid house or the uncompromising thud of techno. SAW drew on those genres but put them through a post-rave comedown soft focus filter, downplaying the drums and dynamic drive, and exploring gentler, introspective moods and emotions and still retains substantial emotional impact all these years later.

The most famous album in Warp’s history isn’t on Warp—it’s on R&S, and was released in 1992, a year before Richard D. James joined Warp. As has been pointed out many times, this album isn’t much like other music that gets called ambient. There are rhythms on almost every track and the music doesn’t really recede the way “traditional” ambient does. (Selected Ambient Works Volume II does that.) “Heliosphan,” for instance, is a kind of uptempo breakbeat track, without the breakbeat. What SAW 85-92 laid the groundwork for was the lo-fi-chill-beats-to-study-to nation, where structures and sounds are all pleasant and things are neither upsetting nor boring. You find your brain being lightly palpated when this is on. There is a relation of form to boutique hotel soundtracks and trip-hop and the fringes of acid, all of which is more demonstrative than anything on this album. Apparently James played this at the end of gigs while his friends were coming down, and it would have been perfect for that. It’s just one or two clicks east of anonymous, like a really good restaurant.