Selected Ambient Works 85-92

James's first album was released in 1992 on Apollo, an ambient imprint of Belgium's R&S Records, and was the first official Aphex Twin album. The thirteen tracks were chosen from the box of cassettes he took to Renaat Vandepapeliere in Belgium. James said the music was recorded between 1985 and 1992 on homemade equipment built from synthesisers and drum machines, starting when he was 13 or 14, and that the songs were just tracks his friends selected, ones they liked to chill out to. The Independent noted that although it was marketed as a collection of old material, most of the pieces were relatively recent. Samples include dialogue from the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory on We Are the Music Makers and a sample from the 1987 film RoboCop on Green Calx.

In Britain it was at first available only on import, because a licensing deal between R&S and Outer Rhythm had collapsed, and it was priced as high as 20 pounds. It entered the dance albums chart at number 6 on 26 December 1992, and by June 1993 it had sold 30,000 copies. Pitchfork's David M. Pecoraro wrote that drum machines serve as its backbone, with synthesized bass and keyboards providing the meat, and that most songs introduce one element and add layers with each repeat until they become a dense swirl. He singled out the dancefloor beats of Pulsewidth, the industrial clanks and whirs of Green Calx and the headache-throb house beat of Hedphelym. In Melody Maker, Andrew Smith wrote that not since Kraftwerk had an artist understood texture in this way.

The sleeve carries the Aphex Twin symbol, designed by Paul Nicholson. Fact named the album the best of the 1990s in 2012, and NME placed it 92nd in its 2003 list of 100 best albums and 121st in its 2013 list of the 500 greatest. It is included in the 2018 edition of the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.