As usual, I never know what to expect from a new Autechre record.  The fact that the Designers Republic was back on board for artwork should have been something of a clue.

This is certainly the most consistent and approachable that they've been in years.  The record is restrained and focused, and there's a real emphasis on melody.  They've jettisoned the hyper-abstraction and claustrophobic mixing of Untilted, and the disjointed chaos of Quaristice has been reined in.  What's left is an album that doesn't convey the need to prove anything.

It's all the more satisfying for that.

This is a patient record with a unified character.  There's a sense of space and breathing room that's quite welcome.  The atmosphere is reminiscent of Envane's quieter moments and several tracks lack percussion entirely.

Before everyone starts screaming, "OMG ambient record!  They remade Amber FTW," bear in mind that this is a more mature animal.  It's learned a few things since then, and its teeth are a bit sharper than they were fifteen years ago.

I doubt there's ever been a piece of music that's had as much of an effect on my life as Revolver.  Never mind that it was recorded half a decade before I was born.  In fact, I wouldn't hear it until the early 1980's, when the survivors of the "psychedelic culture" supposedly inspired by this record had gone on to become corporate raiders and investment bankers.

According to some sources, the Beatles were somewhat influential on musical trends and cultural movements in the late 1960's.  I wasn't around for that, and I couldn't have cared less.  What attracted me to them was the sheer talent they had, and the quality of their output, which has never been matched.

Like just about everyone else, I've heard their early output all my life.  It's hardwired into our cultural DNA.  I wasn't as familiar with their middle-period input until a friend gave me a copy of Revolver.  It was the old Capitol mono mix, and I'd end up literally wearing it out as I pored over every minute detail month after month.  To this day, I know every note and nuance of the record.

With this record, the Beatles had gone from catchy pop band to true artists and innovators.  We take many of the studio techniques they used for granted today, but on Revolver, they were revolutionary.  More to the point, they were judiciously used to complement a suite of nearly perfect songs.

Then 1987 came, and I got to hear the record in stereo when their catalog was issued on Compact Disc.  To say the least, I was disappointed.  I imagine that the CD masters were what George Martin thought people expected, but I found them to be harsh, brittle and completely sterile.

We'd be stuck with those for another twenty years.

I've been involved with music most of my life.  I don't recall when it began, but I can clearly remember first hearing Giant Steps and the Bartok quartets.  Once in a great while, a piece of music will give me an epiphany as strong as the first pangs of love, something majestic and transcendent.

From adolescence on, I set about trying to create something that could generate that sort of reaction.  I think I came close a few times.  In one medium or another, I think we all get that chance a few times in our lives.

Neko Case certainly has.  Several times, she's nailed it perfectly.

I was absolutely smitten with Chris Clark's 2006 album, Body Riddle.  It didn't grab me immediately, but with time, it grew to be one of my favorite records released that year.

Last year's Turning Dragon left me a bit cold.  The reclusive genius of previous records had become quite the extrovert for a change.  Much of the abstraction and complexity of his previous worked had been toned down in favor of more danceable, and dare I say, sunny material.

So, with Totems Flare, I had no clue which way he'd go.  Turns out he went both ways at once, and with striking results.

I'm not a fan of the man's music, but there's no denying he had talent. He released the highest-selling record in history. I doubt there is a person alive who doesn't know who he was.

Nor will I speak for his mistakes and possible misdeeds. For a time, he deliberately fostered a surreal public image, and though he stopped doing so in the 1990's, his eccentric persona would continue to haunt him through the rest of his life. There's no doubting he made some poor choices.

But that's not the point. We all watched this terrified, lonely, shell-shocked man disintegrate over the last two decades, and we were entertained. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.

I went to high school in the late 1980s.  I was a musician.  You can sum the whole situation up in two simple words:  hair metal.

So yeah, I knew who Joe Satriani was.  Even though I was a bass player at the time (and, given that I could read and write music, an overemployed one), I lived in the land of lead guitar players.

You see, there were "rhythm guitarists" and "lead guitarists."  Though lead guitarists were known at times to be seen playing rhythm, it was made quite clear that their purpose in life was to step up and cut loose after the second chorus with the obligatory guitar solo.

The guitar solo is a unique vehicle for proving the musician's alpha-male status among other musicians, as well as ensuring that he would get laid like a madman (1).

Of course, there wasn't much to it.  All he really had to do was play a harmonic minor scale really fast for sixteen bars, ensuring that he ended it with a frenzied run up the neck, finishing off by hitting a high artificial harmonic and dive-bombing it down with the tremolo bar.

Seriously, that crap worked like Viagra for 16-25 year old boys with bad perms all across the United States for a few years.

The aptly-named Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae is now up in its entirety on Bleep.  It's another 13 versions of tracks from Quaristice, comprising 149 minutes of material.

If you're keeping count, that's 4:50:26 of material they've released this year.

I received my hardcopy of this today. I splurged and ordered the limited-edition, which has a second disc entitled, Quaristice (Versions).

I expected the second disc to be a set of one-off remixes, but it turned out to be quite different. To put it bluntly, this is the record Quaristice should have been.

My primary complaint with the album was that the individual pieces were too short, and that it lacked a sense of overaching structure. That's not the case here.

Eleven tracks from the album proper are represented, reworked and expanded. In almost every case, they benefit tremendously. While Quaristice felt like it had quite a bit of filler, this disc seems both more disciplined and better developed.

There's really nothing special about this record, except for the fact that it's stunningly good. In itself, that's quite daring these days.

If you're making electronic music, it seems you need a manifesto of sorts. The whole scene is fractured into more subgenres than anyone could track, each with its own set of rules and practices.

Take the early glitch-hop work of Prefuse 73, the micromanaged chaos of Autechre, or the gliding layers of guitar loops in Fennesz. An artist is known for their techniques as much as they are their sound. The whole thing is an unremitting, steely-eyed march forward, sometimes at the expense of making music that's simply enjoyable on a basic level.

You can't get away with just making good music; you've got to be doing something revolutionary. And sometimes that gets just a bit tiring.

The new Autechre record has been released a month ahead of time for download. This is a strange tactic for Warp. After all, Autechre doesn't need the buzz. They've got a built-in fanbase who will likely buy the record no matter what.

Precedent shows that Booth and Brown are somewhat averse to having their material leaked beforehand, and this may be a way of cutting that off before it starts. Before Draft 7.30 was released, someone was distributing "bootleg" advance copies which were, in fact, completely fake.

If it's not early promotion, and it's not a means to circumvent leaks, why release the record early? It could be that Warp (or the artists) lack confidence in it.

It's a harsh judgment, but Autechre have not only released some truly great music, they've rewritten a great many of the rules along the way. It's rare for an artist to become an influence within their own career, and rarer still for them to avoid treading the same ground twice. They've done both, so it's only natural to look forward to each new release with certain expectations.

The new album is due out 03/03. The release date was announced a couple of weeks back, but I’ve not heard much else. As of today, Bleep has the album available for download in FLAC and MP3 formats.

Motley Fool is advising investors away from putting their money into record companies. Why?

Because, in the words of David Boies, "an industry at war with its consumers is an industry in trouble." In the case of Jeffrey Howell, they're prosecuting someone not solely for file-sharing, but also for copies of legally purchased CD's on his computer.