The supporting tour featured guest vocalist Earl Sixteen, who appears on the album, and attracted a following of crusties.

Dreadzone emerged in 1993, composed of former Big Audio Dynamite and Screaming Target members Greg Roberts and Leo Williams, alongside remixer and producer Tim Bran.

That same year, Creation Records released the band's debut album 360°, which showcased the group's distinctive dub style that incorporated heavy elements of electronica such as sampling.

"[3] According to Roberts, the music was inspired by filmmaker Michael Powell and how he would "[put] something of the national character of England or Britain into his art.

He explained that Dreadzone would mix up those British "elements" on the album with influences of Indian, Jamaican and dub music to create a "collage" that they felt represented modern Britain, noting: "It's something that doesn't have anything to do with an imperial past and wants to cut those ties, but something that also wants to breathe new life into the land.

[3] Phil Johnson of The Independent felt that the album's Celtic folk elements and "appropriation of the pirate tradition" on "Captain Dread" helped highlight a new age influence.

We were founded in the light of the new dance and techno movement in the early ’90s so have always straddled the two, and other influences including Big Audio Dynamite mean we cast our net pretty wide.

"[7] The record also incorporates Derek Walcott's war poetry and what Johnson described as "sundry ironic messages from the channel-hopping trawl of a stoned viewers' late-night television habit.

[3] The group intentionally sought a "no icons" and "no stars" stage presence, instead appearing silhouetted against a projection of Sabu from The Thief of Baghdad.

"[3] Paul Johnson of The Independent praised Second Light in an article, calling it a "big ideas album, deconstructing received notions of Britishness with the kind of multi-cultural perspective to be expected from two survivors of Big Audio Dynamite and the post-punk Notting Hill scene, plus their fiendishly clever knob-twiddling third partner."

He felt the album's quality made it an enthralling listen which "runs counter to the current renaissance of guitar-driven bedroom angst posting as serious pop," further lauding how "Dreadzone have the temerity to try to make us think, even while they're putting us in a trance.

"[17] In a less receptive review, Caspar Smith of Select wrote that the album's "relentlessly upbeat" sound was suited for the summer, but felt that "a pervasive sniff of novelty jollity" appeared on tracks like "A Canterbury Tale", and felt the album did not approach the "weirdness" of Lee Perry or Tricky.

[9] In his retrospective, three-star review for AllMusic, John Bush made note of how the album weaves influences of Celtic music into the band's heavy dub sound.

[8] In Rock: The Rough Guide, Chris Wright refers to Second Light as the point where "Dreadzone's ideas take off," and felt it was "to be compared favourably with the more celebrated efforts of Leftfield and Massive Attack.

"[18] Colin Larkin referred to the album as "excellent" in The Virgin Encyclopedia of Dance Music,[16] and he later elaborated in The Virgin Encyclopedia of Nineties Music that Second Light captured Dreadzone's varied sound better than their other albums, "notably the folk-influenced melodies and bouncy grooves of 'Captain Dread' and 'Little Britain', and the trancey 'One Way' and 'Zion Youth'."

He also highlighted "A Canterbury Tale" as "a lush more ambient track, blending synthesized textures with acoustic instruments such as the oboe, violin, piano and a female voice.

"[26] Second Light was re-released by EMI on 5 March 2012 as a double disc special edition including, among several bonus material, the Peel session instrumental "Maximum" and the band's previously unreleased 45-minute set from Glastonbury Festival 1995.