Autechre :: Live @ Cabaret Aléatoire, Marseille (Oct 13, 2026)

A disorienting, sometimes brutal experience that demanded we surrender to the music, accepting the limits of our own bodies and senses, resulting in a concert that fully lived up to Autechre’s glorious reputation. Article by: Christopher Mathieu and Georges White

90 uninterrupted minutes of improvisation, overlapping sequences, and rhythmic defiance

After the opening sets by Aho Ssan (a continually rising force on the French experimental scene) and MDX (aka Andy Maddocks, head of the Skam label, to whom we owe, among other things, the discovery of Bola and Boards of Canada), the legendary duo Autechre appeared in a red haze, accompanied by a five-minute ambient soundscape. A few flashes of camera lights, despite being forbidden, nevertheless revealed their silhouettes and caps as they stood stoically behind their laptops, facing the compact, ecstatic crowd filling the room. No visuals, no lights would come on that night; only the darkness, barely illuminated by the emergency exit signs, would accompany what was to come.

And so began 90 uninterrupted minutes of improvisation, overlapping sequences, and rhythmic defiance, mysteriously coalescing into inexplicably coherent and strangely danceable grooves, even though no percussion landed where it logically should have and everything changed with every bar. It is not systematic that you can dance to Autechre at one of their shows with their surgically precise kicks lost amid an avalanche of razor-sharp glitches. Yet that is precisely what happened. At times, the tempo accelerated ever further, hurtling beyond 180 BPM into a metallic maelstrom of intricate, jagged detail, as if we had been thrown into the spinning drum of a washing machine on its fastest cycle.

The sound was taut to the point of imminent explosion, every surface crackling with detail, every rhythmic landmark dissolving almost as soon as it appeared. And yet, within this relentless instability, the music found an extraordinary physical dimension, creating moments of cognitive magic in which the audience erupted into almost irrational, spontaneous screams. A temporal vortex from which there was barely any escape. A disorienting, sometimes brutal experience that demanded we surrender to the music, accepting the limits of our own bodies and senses, resulting in a concert that fully lived up to Autechre’s glorious reputation.

Granted, there are now many artists deftly juggling these generative arrhythmias, but the level of control over chaos that Autechre have achieved after more than 35 years of experimentation has no true equivalent today. Even when propelled into a whirlwind, their music retains an inexplicable coherence, its grooves emerging from what initially seems like complete rhythmic disintegration. Their disciples may have made considerable progress over the years, but the duo will forever remain a 7/25th of a beat ahead of their century. A fact made abundantly clear once again that night.

Article by: Christopher Mathieu and Georges White

Quaristice (Versions) and AE_2022－ are both available on Warp.