Following the crash-and-burn of "Surripere" and "Theme of Sudden Roundabout," "VL AI 5" sounds downright traditional and linear. A steady beat borrowed liberally from "Zeiss Contarex" guides the track through its first three minutes, and the moody synth washes that set up the harmonic structure seem to harken back to Amber, of all things. Were it not for the nervous undercurrents of electrical hum and flurry, it would be easy to mistake this for something from their pre-Envane period.

Eventually, the embedded interference rises to break the placid surface, and like the other pieces on the album, …

Track six comes off as an odd cousin of "Cfern". Perhaps the literal title is meant to indicate a sense of laziness and apathy, as it serves as a sort of coda to the wreckage of "Surripere."

It picks up the pieces that flew loose in the last track and does its best to reassemble them, but it's pervaded by a sense of exhaustion. Elements come together and gain cohesion slowly and deliberately while a lone snare drum tries to find its place, finally giving up and thumping insistently at a dirge-like pace as close as it can …

The fifth track serves as a centerpiece for the album. It starts out with a bouyant, gliding beat overlaid with hazy drones. It takes its time setting up an atmosphere similar to "Uviol" for the first three minutes. A rattling chord progression similar to the distorted banjo on "Drane2" enters in the center channel as the tempo begins to speed up slightly, then the beat drops out, replaced by a malfunctioning drum kit and subterranian bass lines. The track chips away and crumbles for the next seven minutes.

The chaos isn't complete, though. Even as …

I've put the finishing touches on the initial revision of the Autechre Faq. Since the original has been gathering dust for about four years now, it's quite out of date. I've been concentrating on markup and structure so far, and I haven't had the chance to do much with the content. Let me know what needs to be included.

Put the finishing touches on the initial revision of the Faq. Check it out here. I've been concentrating on markup and structure so far, and I haven't had the chance to do much with the content. Let me know what needs to be included, as the faq I'm basing it on hasn't been updated since before Confield.

The clouds break abruptly in the third track. A surprisingly conventional and aggressive backbeat is outlined with a skeletal bassline, harkening back to "Laughing Quarter" in tone, although the tempo is slower and more deliberate. At the three-minute mark, the drums drop out, replaced by a sparse scurrying pattern and a quivering melodic figure similar to the strings on "Eidetic Casein."

What makes this track so unique is that it's almost an anachromism. It comes close to being, well, standard, and although it's adorned with the same subsurface interference as the rest of the record, it …

I've decided to run the Autechre info on a separate page parallel to this one. That's where I've moved the ongoing Draft 7.30 review.

Eventually, I'd like to run it as a sort of central hub for collected Autechre information. As it stands now, Autechre.nu has been stripped of most of its content, and most other sites out there present only small pieces of the whole. This is still in the early stages, and I'm in the process of gathering material and contacting the authors of several other pages.

The first order of business is mirroring and …

While "Xylin Room" is a tightly-wound forward hurtle, the second track is an exercise in stasis. It opens with a modulated wind noise and an almost half-hearted snare-bass-drum pattern that never seems to find a beat. Nothing holds together for more than a few seconds. Extraneous sounds mingle at random to create brief motives, but there's no overall structure beyond a vague tonality implied by the strings.

"IV VV IV VV VII" reminds me strongly of FSOL's Dead Cities in that it seems to survey some decaying urban landscape where the radio stations are still churning out signals …

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 …

Confield stands in retrospect as one Autechre's best records. It's certainly not their most widely beloved or even accepted album, but it represents an important step in that it clears the slate for their entire catalog.

I suppose it was about time. They've become an influence not just in their own lifetime, but in less than a decade after starting out. In almost every new electronic record I hear, I can spot their fingerprints somewhere. For all the praise given to Richard James, it's clear that Autechre has had the greatest effect in steering the electronic …

It's been awhile since I wrote the Autechre Guide, and I've gotten alot of reactions. Most have been surprisingly flattering, though the critical ones have been even more pointed. Good or not, I must be doing something right.

That said, I've never implied that it's some sort of scholarly treatise, nor have I pretended to any sort of objectivity. The more merit the material under review has, the more divided opinions on it are bound to be, and Autechre fans have some pretty strong opinions! The Guide is just my interpretation, and a highly personal (and …