Autechre’s journey from their early, beautiful electronica to their later, mind-bending, experimental sound is a marathon of brilliance and confusion, where diamonds still emerge from the chaos but only after sifting through some of the most bewildering, abstract music ever created.
Autechre’s brilliance buried in chaos
Every so often, I like to do what’s called a “deep dive.” This is where I listen to a band’s studio discography from start to finish, without listening to anyone else in between. This doesn’t mean I do a marathon listening, but it does mean that, if I’m listening to music, this is what I’m listening to. Recently, I decided to tackle a big one: Autechre. The boys Booth and Brown. Over 34 hours of music, not including live recordings. I obviously know a good chunk of Autechre‘s discography well. However, I’ve never managed to listen to it all previously, as I stalled with both elseq 1–5 and NTS Sessions. Besides, listening in the context of a deep dive is very different from dipping in and out. Anyway, here we go.
Incunabula. Well, it’s fucking brilliant, isn’t it? What a debut album. I could probably listen to “444” on repeat for the rest of my days. It’s interesting that, while this is their least technical album, they were still miles ahead of everyone else around them, and in fact, ahead of a lot of musicians even now. And then they go and release Amber, an album which is also incredible and pushes their musicality into the stratosphere, and they start writing in ways that nobody else is doing. I’d put these two albums and the surrounding EPs down as Phase 1 of Autechre. That phase where they’re almost, but not quite, a normal electronica act.
Then we start Phase 2, where they go a bit crazier and noisier, but still melodically beautiful. I had genuinely forgotten how gorgeous “VLetrmx” was, for example. Tri Repetae is an album I’ve heard so many times that I almost wanted to turn it off because I know every note, squeak, and chirrup as if they were etched into my soul. No prizes for guessing I really like it. Chiastic Slide is a favorite of mine. “Cichli” is obviously amazing, but I always love that digital crunch on “Rettic AC,” which, to me, always makes me think of the crunch of stepping into deep snow. And you also get stuff like “Pule,” which feels like a throwback to Amber.
Autechre’s early brilliance vs. evolution ::
LP5 and EP7 are really in their own bracket. It’s abstract as all hell, but there’s still the odd bit of traditional sounding stuff in there. There’s some great experimentation here. For example, “Fold4,Wrap5” does the “shepherd tones” thing with tempo, where it always feels like it’s slowing down. The problem is, there’s also a lot of “what is the point of this?” stuff, like “Outpt,” which is just the same beat, chords, and blibble noises for 7 minutes. EP7 has some really horribly produced ball-bearing noises in some of the tracks. There’s a reason a lot of people jumped off around the LP5/EP7 time. Even then, there are moments of brilliance, like the noise dive on “Zeiss Contarex,” the skittering of “Netlon Sentinel,” or the ambient beauty of “Pir.”
But now is where the REAL crazy starts ::
I remember when Confield came out, and I thought it was the wildest thing I’d ever heard. Of course, compared to what would come later, it was positively sedate. Listening back to Confield now, it’s so much better than I remember. I love the lazy, jazzy, insanely dynamic feel of “Cfern,” and the crazy beat of “Pen Expers.” But there’s a lot of stuff you shouldn’t listen to while feeling nauseous, that’s for sure. Which is unfortunate, as I did have an afternoon where I wasn’t feeling well, and it coincided with listening to this. I also like Draft 7.30 quite a bit because it has a very buzzy, organic feeling to it and some really enjoyable moments.
Untilted has a much more minimal vibe to it, and they start playing with structure a lot more. It has its moments, like “LCC” and the back half of “The Trees,” but I don’t find this album that interesting. Plus, not every track needs to be nine minutes long.
Quaristice has moments that are more of a return to the more beautiful, emotional Autechre of old. It’s still very odd for a lot of it, but the shorter tracks make it more palatable than Untilted. However, for every track with lovely stuff like “Alibzz” and “Simmmm,” there are four tracks of lawn mower noises, which isn’t ideal.
Thankfully, just as I got sick of the constant crazy drum noise, Oversteps pops in. Oversteps is a much more melody-focused record. I mean, sure, some of the melodies are alien and dissonant as all hell, but it’s nice to not have screwdrivers in my ears anymore, and frankly, some of the stuff on Oversteps is really great. Move of Ten carries this on but is a little more rhythmic. Again, the quality varies; “y7” is full of noises that make my brain fizz, but “ylm0” is absolute toilet water.
Bold transformation ::
Exai has a few great tracks on it, like “bladelores” or the back half of “1 1” is. But it’s weird that this album is backloaded. There’s some really bad stuff early on, enough for a lot of people to miss out on some great tracks.
I feel like I’ve said this before, but here’s where things go properly mental. But in this case, it’s when it comes to the definition of what an album even is. elseq 1–5 is a collection of 5 EPs, each of which is the length of a short album. There are gems to be found here, like “pendulu hv moda,” “curvcaten,” etc., but if this were shortened to a normal album length, it would have been brilliant. As it is, there’s a lot of coal to sift through to find those gems.
There’s a very short 2-track EP you shouldn’t sleep on called JNSN CODE GL16 / spl47 (Touched Music). Both tracks are brilliant. Or at least I thought so, but my brain may have been altered at this point by listening to so much Autechre.
In fact, I think it’s worth mentioning that something HAS happened. I’m finding it a lot easier to appreciate their really abstract stuff, and a lot of it feels like it’s designed with mathematical perfection in mind. And while you don’t know that consciously, your brain picks up on it. It’s just not possible to listen to late Autechre in a normal musical way. For example, the rattly noises in “t1a1” off NTS Session 1 just fuzz my brain in the right way. Which is lovely, but it doesn’t mean that track has to be 18 minutes long. But that’s the thing. There are a lot of long-ass tracks on NTS. Another example is I love “Gonk Steady One,” but I don’t 22-minute love it. Whereas “four of seven” is long, but it changes so much that it’s OK, and it has a lovely ending. I have no idea why I like “tt1pd,” but I really do, and while I wasn’t looking forward to the nearly 60-minute track “All End,” the truth is it’s a giant ambient smeary masterpiece that hides a lot of detail under a cloud of harmonic feedback.
Autechre’s late work: gems and noise ::
SIGN is a real mixed bag. Some of it is like a blend of Autechre old and new, which is great, and some of it is underwhelming. For example, “F7” sounds like a worse version of “known(1)” off Oversteps, but “Metaz form8” and “r cazt” are both lovely. PLUS is also a mixed bag; it’s got some great stuff, like the swirliness of “7FM ic” and the alien acid of “TM1 open,” but then you’ve got nonsense like “marhide.” I think if they’d cut a lot of the fat and merged these two, we would have had a really good album.
This was really fucking hard work toward the back, because while there are gems in the late Autechre catalog, they’re surrounded by tracks that feel like being forced to listen to the worst wind chimes in the world while everyone in the street is lawn mowing and their toddlers are hitting the water pipes at random moments. It feels like the further you get, the less quality control there is, and it’s a real shame because if you trimmed, say, elseq 1–5 or the NTS Sessions down to album size, you’d have had a couple of great albums there. Just because you can make ultra-long albums doesn’t mean you should.
Autechre changed over time from being a band that made beautiful music in a manner nobody else did to a band that occasionally made great music but mostly just weird stuff in a way nobody else ever will. There are gems to be found in the late-period Autechre, but unlike the early albums, where they’re mostly all great, you have to dig for diamonds. And when you find them, you won’t even really understand why you like them. Nobody, not a single person on the planet makes music like Autechre and when they stop, music this far out in this direction stops with them.
AE_2022－ (an ongoing series of live album releases, featuring soundboard recordings from their 2022-2024 tours) is available on Warp. [Bandcamp]
