On Tri Repetae they found the magic formula to organize noise into pleasant tones that fill the entire spectrum of sound.
Groundbreaking in its simple embrace of glitch and noise
One of the greatest electronic albums ever made dropped way back in November of 1995 and to this day it sounds just as fresh as it did almost 28 years ago. Tri Repetae is a tonally spacious, minimal styled departure from Autechre’s first two full length releases that is filled with enhanced glitches and subtly micro-produced patterns which sparingly evolve just before they get repetitive. Many consider this a classic and their most accessible album that spawned hordes of copycats—some less inspired than others. The duo (Rob Brown and Sean Booth) seems to have noticed this and abruptly elected to go into darker more challenging directions with subsequent releases; perhaps they did it so they could differentiate themselves from the imitators.
Tri Repetae was groundbreaking in its simple embrace of glitch and noise. “Dael” starts off like an assembly line of loose low end bass until it snowballs into gradually thickening gravy. They used high pitch squeals which in any other case should not sound good yet somehow they discovered a way to make it perfectly compliment the high hats. “Eutow” sounds like it was meant to be a stoic, majestic, synth-laden journey until its hidden agenda of fat electro bass kicks in. From beginning to the very end surprisingly lush tones are married with distortion in a balanced harmony.
Sean Booth and Rob Brown do what so many other musical partners fail to accomplish, they mesh together in an uncanny symbiosis and it’s almost as if Aphex Twin were actual twins. On Tri Repetae they found the magic formula to organize noise into pleasant tones that fill the entire spectrum of sound.
Tri Repetae is available on Warp. [Bandcamp]
