Tri Repetae++

Autechre

Product Details

• Audio CD (March 19, 1996)
• Original Release Date: March 19, 1996
• Number of Discs: 2
• Label: Tvt
• ASIN: B000003RHB
• Also Available in: Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #68,067 in Music (See Bestsellers in Music)

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  Music > Indie Music > Dance & DJ > Ambient

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
Despite his dedication to free speech, Frank Zappa once dismissed music criticism by likening it to dancing about architecture. No surprise, then, that the British duo Autechre draws critical approbation by making music, seemingly, about architecture. With its pulsing, pneumatic beats, its favor for geometric rhythms, and its utterly mechanical sound sources, Autechre revels in the brittle, the desolate, and the mundane. Tri Repetae++ ranges from the Doppler effects of "C/pach;" to the elastic irritants of "Rsdio." Characteristic of its mission, the CD's scant liner notes admonish listeners: "Incomplete without surface noise." Not quite true, since the album provides much of its own noise, even in the relatively pure realm of digital playback. The U.S. edition includes two earlier EPs, "Anvil Vapre" and "Garbage." --Marc Weidenbaum

Product Description
Limited repressing vinyl on the Warp label. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

96 of 114 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Learn Something About Yourself..., September 9, 2000

By	Daniel Staton (Berkeley, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is the only review I plan to write about Autechre, so I'm placing it here where the curious will be most likely to come across it. Tri Repetae is placed midway between Autechre's early ambient sound, and the dissonant, impenetrable "music" on the recent LP5 and EP7. While some might say that Autechre's sound is so diverse from album to album that it defies categorization, I think there is a distinctive Autechre sound. The sound is mechanical and repetitive; many reviewers say it sounds like it was made directly by machines with no human intervetion at all. There are melodies, but the sounds embody a relentless austerity. The question then becomes, is music which sounds like it is made by computers, only suitable for computers?

The answer of course is no. There are a ton of Autechre fans out there who find their music not only intellectually stimulating, but emotionally moving as well (I can only bow to these hardy souls). To me, their music is so cold that it is perpetually off-putting, no matter how many times I pick up a disk to "give it another chance" (and I have done this countless times. In fact, I kept buying their CD's to see if I would suddenly "get it"). I think Autechre is a good litmus test of how far from the mainstream one is willing (or able) to travel. Certainly, the journey is not for the emotionally unstable, especially the latest albums (or perhaps it is only the emotionally unstable who appreciate their work. I can't decide if a love of highly mechanical music is a sign of emotional damage, or emotional fortitude). In any case, if you think you might enjoy a journey into an utterly alien aural landscape, with none of the usual "human" touchstones to guide you, you should pick up Tri Repetae, or Incunabula or Amber. At the very least, you will have been introduced to what is considered a seminal work of electronica; at best, you will have entered a sort of sonic bliss which I respect but can't fathom.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lethal Anatomical Efficiency!, June 19, 2000

By	funktion (The Synaptic Gap) - See all my reviews

TRI REPETAE was originally released as a single disc in the U.K. in November 1995. Disc 2 contains two previously released EPs: ANVIL VAPRE and GARBAGE. Autechre: Sean Booth, Rob Brown. With TRI REPETAE, Sean Booth and Rob Brown's music undergoes a quantum evolutionary leap from the relatively muted modular mathematics of INCUNABULA and AMBER into a tortuous, insectoid cybernetic funk. Menacing robotic mandibles and steel-plated wings now render the electro tics and hiphop scratches, as though Booth and Brown have decided to work exclusively in the medium of rusty Erector-kit mechanics. For many Ae-heads, this third album and the EPs that preceded it (GARBAGE and ANVIL VAPRE) represent Autechre's pinnacle achievements. TRI REPETAE++ combines all three desirable items in one generous double-disc package. Such album tracks as "Clipper," "Rotar," "Leterel," and "Gnit" are like oversized cricket automatons--hulking scrap-heap assemblages of melody and shearing wrought-iron armature too ungainly to do more than flex a leg joint or twitch an antenna. In comparison, ANVIL VAPRE's "Second Bad Vilbel" and "Second Scout" are models of lethal anatomical efficiency. These are hydraulic super-ants, built for speed, purpose, and determination using the scant workshop remains of nosebleed-techno tracks and dismantled monster trucks. The melodically exquisite GARBAGE dovetails neatly with the album's less flattening moments ("Dael," "Eutow," "C/pach," "Overand," "Rsdio"), the circuit-board tweakings mimicking dub ("Piobmx19") or disclosing the human ghosts in Autechre's machine.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reap What You Sow, February 17, 2000

By	adam j. kuhn ([e-mail]) (West Chester, PA, USA) - See all my reviews

What can be gained from an album such as Tri Repetae++ is directly proportional to what you put into it. Simply assuming that this is going to make good background music is a mistake you won't make twice, and if you concentrate too hard you may miss some of the nuance that makes the music alive. You need to approach this (as with all later Ae compositions) in an almost zen-like state, accepting and observant. The music reveals its beauty slowly, like the bud of the lotus flower. Patterns in nature are reflected, analyzed, asynthesized and resynthesized digitally onto the surface of the CD. As the label says, "Incomplete without surface noise." Notable tracks include C/Pach, Dael, Clipper, Second Bad Vilbel, Second Peng and Garbagemx36.