More often than not I’d be left in total, wonderful bewilderment, remaining firmly ensconced in the mystery of Autechre’s unique and otherworldly sound. Which is why I like to think of Chiastic Slide and LP5 as the last albums Autechre made on planet Earth before gliding into another dimension.
Equal parts dizzying, confusing, enthralling and funky
chi·as·tic
/kīˈastik/
adjective
characterized by chiasmus; having or denoting a structure in which words are repeated in reverse order.
"A chiastic structure commonly found in Greek literature."
It is the year 1997. Madeline Albright is the first female Secretary of State of the United States. Turkey threatens Cyprus over the purchase of Russian S-300 missiles. Slobodan Milosevic loses power in Serbia. Hutu and Tutsi are at war in Rwanda. Yasser Arafat returns to Hebron after 30 years. And two lads from Rochdale, Sheffield, UK stun the minds of listeners with their fourth album Chiastic Slide, then absolutely break it with LP5 — both on Warp Records.
By this time Autechre (aka Rob Brown and Sean Booth) were already known as innovators. From their first album Incunabula (Warp, 1993) it was obvious there was something more to their music than just post-rave, downtempo, head-nodding chill out beats and electronics. Their debut Incunabula had squelchy 303s, booming 808 and 606’s and something ineffable lurking in the mix. Their sophomore album Amber (Warp, 1994) showcased a major step in their evolution. Amber is a very different take on ambient electronic music suffused with heartbreaking melodies and wild beats verging on the edge of chaos. Tri Repetae (Warp, 1995)) took elements of their previous two albums and warped them (pun intended, suck it up, buttercup!) even further by adding the random chaotic beauty of glitchy, broken electronics to their sound.
We assign a time and place to the important moments of our lives. I remember when and where I was when I bought Tri Repetae (Boston, Massachusetts, Newbury Comics on Newbury Street on a blustery cold day, pulling the cellophane wrapping off and jamming disc 1 into my Sony Discman to listen as I walked to work at Waterstone’s Booksellers in 1996). For some reason I can’t recall the exact where and when of my Chiastic Slide & LP5 purchases, almost as if the memory has been repressed or lost.
As a listener and musician I found their music (and still do) equal parts dizzying, confusing, enthralling and funky. Every release date was awaited with baited breath and wonder at what they’d do next. I’d parse out every element, trying to understand what instruments they used and how they used them. More often than not I’d be left in total, wonderful bewilderment, remaining firmly ensconced in the mystery of their unique, and otherworldly sound. Which is why I like to think of Chiastic Slide and LP5 as the last albums Autechre made on planet Earth before gliding into another dimension.
Chiastic Slide was a polarizing album ::
The first time I heard Chiastic Slide was at the legendary WZBC studios in Newton, Massachusetts. I was invited there by the late great Gene Sweeney, host of the No Commercial Potential show (WZBC’s night-time slot reserved for all things weird, wonderful, electronic and noisy and all points in between) “Interglobal Electronics.” Gene was a quiet, kind soul with a solid Charlestown accent and wry humor who played my music on his show alongside that of my heroes like Autechre. As he played cuts off it during his show he nearly kicked me out as I repeatedly asked “Who is this?” Chiastic Slide was a polarizing album at the time which would be the case for every Autechre release to this day. It wasn’t as critically lauded as Tri-Repetae (but what do music critics and journalists know anyway?) though it eventually came to be revered as innovative and highly influential.
If the Sex Pistols made everyone who saw them think they could buy instruments and start a band, Autechre’s Chiastic Slide made anyone who thought they’d never find an audience for their music go out and buy a PC or Mac with Logic, Digital Performer, Cubase or Reason and start making music (I still used StudioVision Pro until 2001 or so not that anyone cares).
Chiastic Slide’s artwork was created by the genius of Ian Anderson at The Designers Republic, delivering a cover of broken shapes and blocky type that might as well have come from an industrial sized crate of medical equipment left to rust in the sun and rot in the rain. It perfectly reflected the unbalanced mixture of sonic elements contained within. This too would go on to influence hundreds of thousands of designers for a generation or more.
Chiastic Slide bridged a gap between the smooth, ethereal sound of 90s IDM and the noise more experimental sounds coming from even deeper underground than the waning UK rave scene. “Cipater” opens the album with scratchy, noises bursts which made us all wonder if our stereos were broken; when it switched from 4/4 to 3/4 midway through it absolutely broke our minds as no one had done anything like that before in the realm of “techno” or IDM or whatever it’s called now.
If Chiastic Slide was the sonic document of Autechre building a spacecraft then LP5 is the sonic document of their journey into space. By the time of its release, it was almost a year and a half since their last album, and barely a year since Cichli Suite dropped in all its glitchy hip-hop, electro inspired glory.
LP5 indicated another shift was occurring ::
Whereas their previous albums were rooted in a firm bed of melodic synthesizers over complex beats, LP5 indicated another shift was occurring in Autechre’s methods and thus their output. It’s less a synthesizer album and more of an academic excursion in and out of experimental and electroacoustic music. At the time they were name checking Parmegiani, Xenakis, Dockstader and others while extolling the virtues of the newer Nord synthesizers. Never ones to sit back and rest on their already influential back catalogue the lads from Rochdale set about to take their music in another direction.
“Acroyear 2” with its quiet oscillating squeals and thumping, frenetic beats, opens the album with the clear intention of demonstrating a change taking place. The progression is classic Autechre while at the same time there is an elements of micro-movements, beats crafted and shifted in real time with tiny adjustments of note, sound and placement. “777” thunders in with a booming kick drum and shuddering percussion while long, low tones drift in and out as arpeggiated chords chug, glimmer and flit across the stereo spectrum. “Rae” is both a nod to the past and indicator of things to come; the beat is pure Chiastic Slide while the legato chord progression over it will become a common theme for Autechre for several albums to come.
“Vose In” continues this, letting the disjointed rhythm and beat drive the song whereas in the past it might’ve been more in the background. “Fold 4, Wrap 5” is masterfully crafted to sound as if it’s constantly speeding up then slowing down, looping as if on an old turntable needing a crank or two; several sequences fly and flutter along as it fades into oblivion. “Under BOAC” is an aggressive, percussive workout of samples vs. sampler, synths vs. synthesist, men vs. machines; the distorted voices buried in the mix act like humans drowning in the experience of a wholly new alien dimension. “Corc” is a classic Autechre slo-jam, heartbreaking synth bass plunking over a heavy, scratchy beat while metallic twisting leads skitter around a subterranean world, like the massive caverns untouched by humanity that evolve their own unique ecosystem. “Caliper Remote” evokes the percussive stutter of Confield’s opener “VI Scose Poise,” a synth-celeste chiming over the rhythm and a slow, swelling drone note. “Arch Carrier” is another classic Autechre track, arpeggiation and beats working in tandem in a systematic growth and infestation of machines, orchestral strings marking the battle timing and rhythm of the assault. “Drane 2” (written as an answer to Aphex Twin’s “Bucephalus Bouncing Ball”) closes the album as Autechre had all their previous efforts with an cataclysmic, repetitive growth of percussion, samples and synthetics until it fades out into nine more minutes of silence followed by strange electronic warblings at the albums end.
Going into wholly unknown territory ::
Not exactly the closing of Sgt. Pepper’s but LP5 ushered in a whole new age for Autechre. Even in their earlier albums one could hear the influence of Kraftwerk, Meat Beat Manifesto and others. EP7 and Confield would show the duo going into wholly unknown territory, never before heard and for many unrecognizable as their beloved IDM duo from Sheffield. If ever they’ve made one thing clear it’s that Autechre care little for nostalgia and even less for meeting expectations of their audience, making for an often challenging and occasionally frustrating experience for fans as they moved into the 21st century, though many would say they were there long before anyone else.
Chiastic Slide & LP5 reissues are available on Warp.
[Bleep | Warp | Chiastic Slide Bandcamp | LP5 Bandcamp]
