Selected Ambient Works Volume II

Warp released the album on 7 March 1994 on double CD, double cassette and triple LP, with a US release on Sire following on 12 April. James said most of it was recorded in 1993 in his London and Cornwall home studios. He credited lucid dreaming, saying that on waking he would try to recreate the sounds, and compared the result to standing in a power station on acid. Blue Calx, the only track with an official title, had appeared on a 1992 Rephlex compilation, and the piece known as Tassels was recorded on an EMS Synthi A Mk1.

The tracks were represented in the artwork by photographs and pie charts rather than titles. Paul Nicholson, credited as Prototype 21, designed the artwork. Fan-made names by Greg Eden are still widely used, among them Rhubarb for the third track, Hankie for the fourth, Curtains for the seventh and Spots for the 22nd. The 19th track is missing from all CD pressings of the original release because of space limits.

It entered the dance albums chart at number 1 and the UK albums chart at number 11, and had sold more than 60,000 copies outside the US by July 1994. Reviews were mixed at first. Pitchfork's Philip Sherburne wrote in 2019 that it changed ambient music forever, and Pitchfork ranked it the second greatest ambient album in 2016, after Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports. An expanded edition remastered by Matt Colton came out on 4 October 2024.