Autechre

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Music

Autechre: PLUS Review

So, two weeks after the release of SIGN, Autechre have dropped another album.  It’s different in some ways and similar in others.

The first question that comes up is whether or not this is a distinct album or a very long EP of reworks and leftovers.  They’ve certainly done album-length EP’s before.  However, the catalog number begins with the WARP prefix denoting as a proper album (EP’s generally use WAP).  A very smart guy on Reddit also has an interesting take on the actual numbering that seems to confirm this.

The problem is, this feels more like a collection of tracks rather than a cohesive album.  The sequencing is odd, and I’m not sure how it fits.  Instead, it reminds me of the relationship between Oversteps and Move of Ten.  I’m hearing some of the same patches from SIGN, but this record feels friskier and less formal.

The second question is, does it have beats? 

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Music

Autechre: SIGN Review

So, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything on Autechre. I still adore their work, but damned if they haven’t made it hard to write about these last few years.

If you need catching up, here’s a guide I wrote to their earlier work. They’ve been around for three decades now, and the whole time, they’ve been at the bleeding edge of electronic music. While other experimental artists may trade in academic rigor, Autechre’s friskier tendencies have always been tempered by their roots in 1990s hip-hop. While they can certainly get difficult at times, there’s always a guidepost, even if it’s not evident on first listen.

The problem is, those guideposts have been spread pretty thin the last few years. Their last proper “album” was Exai in 2013. Then they released 8 hours of live sets. Then came the 4-record, 4-hour collection elseq. Then came another 19 hours of live sets.

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Music

Autechre: elseq

The last couple of years have been busy ones for Autechre.  Exai was an album of staggering scope, made even more audacious by the fact that it was uniformly good.  Not many musical acts in any genre can still turn out solid material with such consistency three decades into their career.

The group has always been known for its live shows, but they’ve never seemed keen on releasing recordings of them.  Then, without notice or fanfare, they released nine different live sets on the same day.

The marketing and distribution were interesting.  No physical copies are available.  The music can be downloaded off their website.  Grab whichever sets you want; they’ve said there’s no specific order in which they’re to be digested, and the sum of them is 8 hours of listening.

Needless to say, it was a huge surfeit of material.  Most artists would be content to sit back a couple of years while the audience digests that much.

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Music

Review: L-event by Autechre

It’s standard practice for Autechre to follow up an album with an EP. Sometimes, they’re standalone works. In other cases, they’re reinterpretations of the prior album’s material, such as Envane. Part of the challenge is finding the parallels.

L-event (“eleventh?”) appears to be a bit of both. “tac Lacora” sounds like a remix of “1 1 is,” if that track were to start out as warped electro before glitching into disarray then collapsing into wobbly-kneed dub. Structurally, it reminds me of the long versions of “Perlence.”

“M39 Diffain” might take some source material from “cloudline,” but it feels more like Confield’s magnificent “Parhelic Triangle.” The odd chatting melody at the 4-minute mark is a great touch.

“Osla for n” lopes along in 9/8 time for its first half. The brain spends a couple of minutes finding its pulse while very subtle tones work themselves forward from the background. In the second half, it switches to a rigid 4/4 beat that sounds a bit like something from a Frank Bretschneider record (that’s a compliment).

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Music

Review: Exai by Autechre

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Autechre has marked their 20th anniversary with their eleventh record. Exai=”XI,” get it? In terms of imaginative titles, that’s right up there with Van Halen II or Chicago LXIV. However, this record lacks appearances by Peter Cetera or Sammy Hagar. That may or may not be an important distinction, depending on your tastes.

It’s a long one, clocking in right at two hours. At that length, some inconsistency might be expected, but this is cohesive in a way none of their records has been since Confield. If I had to compare it with anything, I’d say it’s a less haunted and more assertive cousin to Oversteps.

It’s always tempting to seek a concept in their records. Confield was about abstraction in texture, Untilted pushed rhythmic boundaries, and Oversteps focused on melodic complexity. If there’s such a theme here, it’s in the sound design itself. The palette is less alien and more visceral, and it’s as if they’ve laid off many of the algorithmic tweaks.

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Music

Autechre: Move of Ten

Only three months, and we’ve got the EP to accompany Oversteps.  Thank goodness Bleep is doing American distribution.  With the dollar the way it is, this would have been about $623.95 if I’d ordered it from England.

No record is worth that much unless it has Tiny Tim.  We’ve got a recession going here, and we have to hitch a ride with the Russians just to get into orbit these days.  I mean, really.  One has to have priorities.

But, is it worth ten bucks?  Definitely.

Music

Autechre: Oversteps

1 comment

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. 

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Music

Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae

Quadrangle

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.

Music

Quaristice: a Second Perspective

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.

Music

One step sideways: review of Quaristice

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.

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The Rough Guide

I first heard Autechre sometime in 1993 while working at an old (and sadly, deceased) record store called Turtle’s. Wax Trax had sent out some interesting promos from the seminal “Artificial Intelligence” series, which was just getting underway. The series had one heck of a roster in retrospect: the Aphex Twin, Black Dog (now Plaid), Speedy J, the Higher Intelligence Agency, Seefeel and others.

One of the records was conspicuous because there was absolutely nothing conspicuous about it. No promotional slicks with gushing quotes from Melody Maker, no celebrity endorsements, nada. I wasn’t sure if Autechre was the name of the group or the album. I popped it in, and was very impressed. If nothing else, I was impressed by the sheer lack of anything distinctive about it. It was just another “archair techno” record, as they called it back then. A really good armchair record. I was struck by the fact that none of the techno cliches of the time were anywhere to be found.

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Confield

1 comment

The general sonic palette is definitely softer than LP5 and alot closer to the feel of Chiastic Slide, which is definitely a good thing. The rhythms are much quicker and more hectic, even if the actual tempo of most of the tracks is very slow. That spinning-bottle noise they used on “Krib” from Cichlisuite seems to be a regular part of their vocabulary now.

“Vi Scose Poise” opens with what sounds like Sonata #1 for glass bottle and spinning cap, which gradually coalesces into a rythm of paradiddles that skip all over the place between speakers. I have to wonder how many tracks it took just to record the backing track. The melody enters, sounding like something off Incunabula, even though I’m reminded more of “Pir” from Ep7.“Cfern” chugs along in 6/8 and even swings a bit, throwing in some wooden mallet instruments and Hammond organ. “Pen Expers” took me off guard, opening with what sounds like a malfunctioning Roland Dr.

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Draft 7.30

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 scene toward what it is today. The influence is etched into the very landscape, so subtle and pervasive that it’s often not even noticed, but taken for granted as the way things just sound. The whole “glitch” genre practically sprouted from the debris of Lp5 and Ep7, and you can hear their methods echoed in just about any act I can think of, from Boards of Canada to Dntel or L’usine.

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Latent Quarter

This is the central hub for my writings on Autechre.

An album guide, covering up to Confield.

A review of Confield.

A review of Draft 7:30.

Entries written since.

Below is a revision on the original Autechre Faq, which grew obsolete and was subsequently moved to Autechre.nu, which subsequently grew obsolete. It hasn’t been updated since 2001, and I haven’t had much time for it lately. Any input is welcome and appreciated.

Acronyms

Here are some acronyms that are used regularly on alt.music.autechre:

AE – AutechrE
AFX – ApheX twin
BOC – Boards Of Canada

Catalog

The following is a basic listing of all Autechre & Gescom releases. This listing does not include remixes, collaborations or exclusive tracks. For a more complete listing, visit the Autechre visual discography (maintained by Autechre themselves) at: www.warprecords.com/autechre

Albums

1993 – Incunabula
1994 – Amber
1995 – Tri Repetae
1997 – Chiastic Slide
1998 – LP5 (or just Autechre)
2001 – Confield
2003 – Draft 7.30
2005 – Untilted

Eps

1991 – Cavity Job
1994 – Basscadet EP
1994 – Anti EP
1995 – Anvil Vapre
1995 – Garbage
1996 – We r are why are y are we 12 (Warp Mailorder only)
1997 – Cichlisuite
~1997 – Radio Mix
1997 – Envane
1998 – Peel Sessions
1999 – EP7
1999 – Splitrmx12 (12 inch limited to 3000 copies)
2002 – Gantz Graf

Gescom Albums

1998 – Gescom minidisc

Gescom Eps

1994 – Gescom EP
1995 – Gescom 2 EP
1995 – The sounds of machines our parents used
1995 – Keynell
1996 – Motor
1996 – Keynell (Autechre mixes)
1998 – That
1998 – This
2003 – IS:SSA

Who is Autechre?

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