Customer Reviews

autechre (LP5)

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is my favorite Ae album, and the crowning achievement of Sean Booth and Rob Brown's career so far, in my opinion. They depart into uncharted territory, and pull off a major coup. Few bands have so successfully reinvented themselves in mid-career; fewer still have forged a completely fresh sound.

This sound isn't as accessible as their previous work (which wasn't that easy-going to begin with!), but I sensed almost immediately a powerful musical vision lurking behind the difficult music. Many other reviewers have described this vision in language more vivid than I can conjure. Yes, it does sound like a computer running an endless unsuccessful defrag on itself. Yes, you can imagine it tells the story of a robotically-enhanced scientist at war with his augmentations. However you put it, this album says something about the man-machine relationship as profound and prophetic as Kraftwerk's "Computer World."

My take on this album's perverse brilliance is that it makes the listener feel pity for machines. The irony being, of course, that machines have no feelings (at least in this pre-AI era). Ae's music has always sounded like it was made by--and sometimes for--machines. But the machines that whirred, clicked, grinded, and thumped on previous albums seemed like invulnerable colossi, and I always found this a bit off-putting--scary, impressive, but off-putting. Incunabula, Amber, and Tri Repetae++ all brought to mind impressive, futuristic, but often sterile lanscapes filled with immortal machines.

Here, we're no longer looking at landscapes/listening to soundscapes. Instead, Ae bring us inside the mind of the machine. It is a claustrophobic, disorienting, but totally fascinating experience. The machines we inhabit are definitely mortal, perhaps mortally wounded. They spit out strange pattering rhythms, and quirky, touching melodies. They suffer from Tourettes and Obsessive-Compulsive disorder. They undergo life-cycles from birth to death before our eyes/ears.

When I listen to a great soul singer like Marvin Gaye or Sam Cooke, I feel a surge of emotion that comes from a sense that they are singing about my life and my experiences, more eloquently than I ever could. I feel like I share a special human bond with them. Ae have managed a more daunting task; they've brought me as close as is humanly possible to feeling a special bond with machines. Amazing.

After being blown away by this album for the upteenth time, I decided I might as well write a review. This is an album that I listened to occasionally for a few months, finding it interseting, enjoyable, but not stiking me as being one of their better works, before it snuck up on me and I had an an oh s#%t revelation. Thus leading me to the conclusion that it's the best album they've produced (followed closely by Confield) and one of the best electronic albums(or albums period) ever.
This music isn't drill n'bass, so comparisons to Aphex, or Squarepusher don't make any sense, honestly theres not much that came before or since that this resembles. The rhythms are fascinating, based on a primary groove, usually kept by an insistent pounding bass drum, it's pattern varying mathmatically but never straying completely from the initial rhythm. That bass is then more or less ensconced with various elements, that run off in rhythmic tangents, while brilliantly acting as texture and melody as well. What also blows me away is that using the same very intense, dense noisy sound structure for all of the songs, and similar textural concepts, Autechre are still able to create emotional mood swings from one piece to the next; from angry banging industrial/hiphop type numbers (acroyear2/777/underBOAC) to contemplative & melancholic (Rae/Vose In/Fold4Wrap5/Drane2). They don't go quiet and ambient for sad sections, or harsh & fast when they want to be hard, all emotions are contained in a single musical concept.
Speaking of emotion and concept, the euphoric/bittersweet tone of Drane2, along with it's strange and imaginative instrumentation and application, make it one of the most brilliant songs I've ever heard. Although I think that can be said for this album in general. Maybe you'll agree, maybe you won't. All that's above is the conclusion I've come to, open up your mind and your ears and decide for yourself.

This is, without a single caveat, the best thing autechre has put out. After taking a half dozen recordings to define and stretch the definition of 'intellegent' electronic music, it seems autechre found a new mode of filtering their ideas- Throughout this whole recording, there seems to be some abstract continuity in how every track was approached. It's like instead of just laying the ideas down, they took the concept, exploded it into hyperdetail, and turned it inside out. For whatever reason, the tracks on this record are capable of engaging my synapses and engulfing my senses in an unparalleled manner. And nothing they have done since has managed to cast such a galvanizing effect either.

But enough esoterica.

Compared to other autechre albums, the tracks are, on the whole, characterized by considerably more complex rythms(in terms of the application of a wider vocabulary of 'odd' time signatures and polyrythmic leanings), a less ambient feel, and maybe a more percussive choice of samples, though this aint exactly minimal d&b. It still makes for an absolutely blissed out listening experience for me, as well as a terrific long-distance driving experience. 'Rae' is just super sublime, what with the manic john mcentire sounding drum track and ringing synth washes over top- BTW, the realplayer version you hear on this page is all compressed and does it no justice. 'vase in' starts out like the soundtrack to some future renessiance ghetto with automata pimps dressed up in knickers and cod pieces. or something.

But that's the great thing about autechre, and especially this album- you're going to know it's great because its sure to ellicit some wacked out mental images as you try to imagine where this music belongs, or where it came from.

And to reiterate, they samples above are super-compressed and really belie how good this albums sounds on a halfway decent stereo- The realplayer version of 'acroyear2' sounds absolutely, pathetically anemic to rancorous thwap & skree that starts this whole album off with proper authority.

anyway, if you're still debating on whether to buy it not, go on cuz even if you hate it you can use the mostly blank cover to draw pink bunnies on or diagram your ten step process for dominating the world via unceasing midget exploitation.

It's difficult for me to accept that someone would put this *beneath* Autechre's older work. I guess if you just like to "chill" with your music (that is to say, you like easily grasped loops and grooves that don't challenge you as a listener), then this wouldn't be your cup of tea. Not to say that there's anything wrong with music like that, and I do think highly of albums like Incunabula and Amber in their own way. But to me LP 5 is Autechre advancing into new territory that is far more exciting, complex, and intoxicating than anything that's come before. The music is busy and densely-layered, the loops complicated and constantly shifting, the melodies buried into the abrasive techno around them with an original and oddly lovely result. If you want something to smoke weed to, or to fall asleep to, go with Amber or Incunabula, but if you want something really busy, surreal, and sonically amazing, go for LP 5.

No review I've read prepared me for this album or gave an adequate description of the music. There has been too much focus on the cold, machine-like qualities and not enough on how the band take these devices and turn them into instuments of passion and organic feeling. That's where the beauty of Autechre lies: In the duo's ability to transform the sounds of electronics into emotional music; they go beyond original electronic music by converting acutal noise into melody and feeling. Buy this album if you have a heart. Ignore all the upty "experimental" tags people give this band; you may find something wonderful on this record.

Like Kraftwerk soundfiles buried and exhumed, Autechre's music has the regularity of organic forms decayed. It seems to want to recover its structure as if it were running an endless unsuccessful defrag on itself, and the sadness of this struggle gives the music tremendous weight and melancholy. Going beyond the massive but stuttering creativity of Chiastic Slide, LP5 re-renders techno as a timeless natural form.

I started my journey into electronica with the Future Sound of London. After I bought all their albums, I moved on to Photek, then Aphex twin and u-ziq, and Squarepusher. As I progressed, the pressence of that intangible element I can only describe as "IT" became more pronounced in the music. After listening to this album, I'm convinced that Autechre has somehow learned to harness "IT" and form it into whatever shape they wish, more so than any other artist I've heard. I will not waste my time trying to describe their sound since I'd sooner be able to draw a four dimentional object. But I will tell you this, if you want to experience "IT" and be absolutely amazed by the power of human imagination... Autechre helps give the answer to why we listen to music.

This album really blew me away. Of course, it wasn't like that from the beginning, and it did take about 3 or 4 listens before I decided that I could swallow it. Just like Tri Repeatae showed a definate evolution from Autechre's earlier material, thier self titled "Autechre" shows an evolution from Tri Repeatae. These guys just keep getting more and more creative, and more self destructive. This is far and away one of the most disturbing alums I've heard all this year, and its definately not something one should fall asleep to. The rhythms are a little more complex this time around, with the exception of a couple songs that'll still fry your brain. The opening track lets the listener know that they aren't holding anything back, and it presents one of the sweetest uses of electronic percussion I've ever heard. I guess if one were to try to categorize it, they'd call it "electronic jazz"...on crack. At several points in the album I found myself asking the question "how the hell'd they come up with that?" and I think that every other autechre fan out there knows what I'm talking about. My favorite track would have to be Arch Carrier, as its definately the catchiest of them all, and it evolves from what sounds like a darker version of the nightrider theme into something incredibly destructive. They spared no creativity on this one. Buy it, immerse yourself, and play it loud. Someone's bound to go insane, at which point Autechre has succeeded in doing what they do. Lovely noise.

I have been listening the self-titled Autechre CD, and I think I've figured out what its about. "Autechre" (LP5) is the story of a scientist who was near-fatally wounded in an accident at a secret government lab. Because his intellect was so important to the project, they rebuilt him as a robocop-style cyborg, enhancing his brain with alien computer technology. At first, he thinks this is pretty cool, as he is now capable of doing millions of calculations per second in his head, perfoming amazing feats of logic and deduction. He revels in this newfound power, as is evident in the funky sound of the first couple tracks (1: "acroyear2" and others). However, he soon finds that he is losing his humanity. The computerized parts of his brain are overriding any irrational or emotional decision. The Machine is slowly taking over, and the harder he fights it the harder it fights back. This results in a near-complete split of his mind into Man and Machine. In a moment of clearity (8: "corc") he realizes that he must defeat the Machine or be lost forever. He turns himself inward (9: "caliper remote"), and attempts to subvert the Machine, hacking his own brain to regaining control of his mind. The Machine fights back with its driving, relentless logic (10: "arch carrier"), leading to the final, epic battle. War is waged within his psyche (11: "drane2") as Man fights Machine to the bitter end. The mechanical bouncing machine noises combat the desperate yet vivacious background rhythms (is that a banjo playing Detroit house?) as a lonely trumpet sounds. His fragile brain is devastated by the battle, but in the end he emerges triumphant - a Pyrrhic victory. But does he truly win? The final, reversed note makes us wonder. Are the electroblips of the "secret" track 10 minutes later the sound of his mechanical mind being reactivated, sans humanity, by government scientists?

I must say, to begin with, that Autechre are great. I own seven of their albums, and I never tire of any of them. (Mine is a demanding and generally bored ear. My brain doesn't retain songs that sound like everything else, but i can call to mind so many of their tracks, given their unique use of melody and texture). But LP5 is really a standout in how it combines inspired accessibility and uniqueness. And aching beauty in the midst of a sonic palette other artists could only make sound experimental. (My favorite tracks are "fold4, wrap5", with the ever-emerging snail-shell rhythm cycle, and the severe and unexpectedly subtle "777", but choosing favorites is really almost arbitrary. This is superb. Please check it out!