Rite 2 is an ambient music

Ambient music

Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...

 album

Album

An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...

 by Julian Cope

Julian Cope

Julian Cope is a British rock musician, author, antiquary, musicologist, poet and cultural commentator...

, released in 1997. It is technically Cope’s fourteenth solo album, but is also the follow-up to the earlier album Rite

Rite (album)

Rite is an ambient album by Julian Cope and Donald Ross Skinner, released in 1992. It is the first album in the Rite series and has been described as "a series of lengthy, mostly instrumental jamming freakouts influenced by both Krautrock and psychedelic funk."-Track listing:#"The Indians Worship...

(released in 1992 and credited to "Julian Cope & Donald Ross Skinner

Donald Ross Skinner

Donald Skinner is a guitarist, songwriter and producer born in Edinburgh, UK primarily known for his work with Julian Cope. Skinner is commonly known by the name Donald Ross Skinner with the addition of the middle name of Ross attributed to him by Cope after Glenn Ross Campbell, the pedal steel...

") and is the second in the Rite series.

For Rite 2, Cope collaborated extensively with synthesizer player Thighpaulsandra

Thighpaulsandra

Thighpaulsandra is a Welsh experimental musician and multi-instrumentalist known mostly for performing on synthesizers and keyboards. As Tim Lewis, he began his career working with Julian Cope. A collaboration with Cope in 1993 followed, as the experimental duo Queen Elizabeth...

 (Coil

Coil (band)

Coil were an English cross-genre, experimental music group formed in 1982 by John Balance—later credited as "Jhonn Balance"—and his partner Peter Christopherson, aka "Sleazy". The duo worked together on a series of releases before Balance chose the name Coil, which he claimed to be...

, Spiritualized

Spiritualized

Spiritualized are an English space rock band formed in 1990 in Rugby, Warwickshire by Jason Pierce after the demise of his previous outfit, space-rockers Spacemen 3...

) although the album was credited to Cope alone. The album has been described as a tribute of sorts to Krautrock

Krautrock

Krautrock is a generic name for the experimental music scenes that appeared in Germany in the late 1960s and gained popularity throughout the 1970s, especially in Britain. The term is a result of the English-speaking world's reception of the music at the time and not a reference to any one...

 bands such as Amon Duul II

Amon Düül II

-Studio Albums:-Live Albums:-Compilations:-Singles:-External links:*...

 and Tangerine Dream

Tangerine Dream

Tangerine Dream is a German electronic music group founded in 1967 by Edgar Froese. The band has undergone many personnel changes over the years, with Froese being the only continuous member...

 and is based on the sound of the Mellotron

Mellotron

The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape replay keyboard originally developed and built in Birmingham, England in the early 1960s. It superseded the Chamberlin Music Master, which was the world's first sample-playback keyboard intended for music...

 and the wah-wah

Wah-wah pedal

A wah-wah pedal is a type of guitar effects pedal that alters the tone of the signal to create a distinctive effect, mimicking the human voice...

 guitar, although it also employs miscellaneous tone generators the ARP 2600

ARP 2600

The ARP 2600 is a semi-modular analog subtractive audio synthesizer, designed by Alan R. Pearlman , and manufactured by his company, ARP Instruments, Inc...

 synthesizer and the Hammond B3 organ

Hammond organ

The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond in 1934 and manufactured by the Hammond Organ Company. While the Hammond organ was originally sold to churches as a lower-cost alternative to the wind-driven pipe organ, in the 1960s and 1970s it became a standard keyboard...

, as well as vocal chants.

Rite 2 was the debut release on Cope’s Head Heritage label, which would be the home of almost all of his future recordings.