Silence. Then a scrawl of static enters and forms the barest outline of a melody. The drums play two separate patterns against each other, sounding like blocks of wood pounding at various pitches and oddly resounding. The melody claws and fights its way to the foreground, stretching and vibrating like a strand of highly-tensed phone wire.

Then, just as it all seems to come together, it begins to fall apart. The heavy downbeat starts drifting into unsteady waters and everything picks up the hum and quiver of the melody, creaking and groaning under some sort of surface stress. At 3:40, neutral chords appear and hang motionless in the mix as percussion parts drop in and out, wearied but still vying to be heard. The overexposed brightness of the initial melody is gone and replaced by a a static-riddled minor-key motif, and the drums collapse into a soup of rhythm similar to "Pir."

As an opener, "Xylin Room" picks right up where "Lentic Catachresis" closed out Confield. The tones are the same, but somehow their execution is different. There's more air in the mix, and rather than a sense of panic, it engenders a queasy sort of exhiliration. Instead of the pieces piling together into a wavering edifice, they've managed to keep a sense of forward motion, even in the spots where it seems to sputter to a standstill.

Even though it's deceptively submerged beneath layers of finely-managed chaos, the large-scale structure of the track is recognizable, though far different from Autechre's usual methodology. Rather than simply layering elements upon each other over time and letting them work in relation to each other, they've chosen to pursue a more linear direction. Many of the elements from the beginning of the track are either absent by the end, or they've transformed so much as to be unrecognizable. The experience is more like taking a journey than examining an odd structure. It's a subtle but major change.