This is a difficult one to separate from its context. Of course ambient music existed before this, and of course people had listened to the likes of Eno and Tangerine Dream in all kinds of states of intoxication for years before this record, but in the white heat of the acid house / rave explosion, released just a month into the 90s, this seemed like a revolution in the head, a severing of all rules including the law of gravity, a smashing open of the boundary between dreams and reality. People of all classes and creeds were laying sparked out after clubs with waves of birdsong, whole sections of Boy George's “After the Love,” Elvis Presley's “In the Ghetto,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Albatross,” deranged radio preachers yelling  “all the way down the east coast, come back fat as a rat,” gliding pedal steel guitars, lush washes of synthesiser, and sheep bleating. And it felt like the most beautiful thing in the world. It’s dada collage, it’s both as psychedelic and as punk as anything could ever be, it’s so far beyond weird it makes a new normal, and it could never be replicated or repeated — however many peculiar and wonderful ambient records followed through the 90s and beyond. Sometimes you’d wonder if what you’d just heard was even real, and frankly it still seems that way decades on. Sadly, a streaming reissue with odd bits removed — presumably due to sample clearance — couldn’t touch the original, but track this down, give yourself fully to it, and you’ll never be the same again. Or maybe you will… context, right?

– Joe Muggs