Quaristice

Autechre

Warp Records

2008-03-03

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Impenetrable to most, Autechre’s electronic music is a harsh experience if you don’t venture off the well-beaten tracks of genre-defined composition. Reports that the duo of Sean Booth and Rob Brown are offered early version of computer equipment to put through their paces, to record on, to test and to abuse give some idea of their abilities to forge machine-based sounds and push them to the limit. For this, their ninth album, they give us 20 tracks ranging from just over a minute to not much longer than five rather than their usual eight minute epics for more accessible yet equally ponderous audio attacks.

When you are making tracks that might be accused of being annoying, horrible or just not music, it must take a strong resolve not to change direction and stick with what you think is right. Booth and Brown have always said they make their music because they like it, with a complexity not always obvious at the first, second or even tenth listen. Here, “IO” with its looped, rising bleeps and “fwzW” with seemingly muffled and scatty electronic sounds might be skipped after the first play indefinitely, but do reveal themselves slowly. All of the tracks here at named with arbitrary numbers and letters, preventing the titles from helping develop an understanding of what they have been attributed to.

The level of calmness it resonates creates the perfect frame of mind to return to the start and hear the layers missed the previous time around.

Quaristice does have the odd moment of easier listening with “Simmm” dishing up a playful nursery ryhme before becoming developing into a haunting style that continues into “Paralel Suns” and gets more brooding with each of the latter tracks. By the album’s close with the seven-minute “Outh9X”, Autechre provide an echo of nothingness as an antidote to the glitchy, messed up nature to what has preceded it. Indeed, the level of calmness it resonates creates the perfect frame of mind to return to the start of the album and hear the layers missed the previous time around.

At their recent London gig in a warehouse at the back of a car park, Autechre enveloped a crowd in darkness as their immersive 60-minute creation vibrated through the crowd. Their records may not come with the soundsystem or ambiance capable of replicating the experience at home, but they do contain the essence of an electronic act unaware of boundaries imitators would struggle to get past. Quaristice provides tasty, bitesize morsels of their ever-impressive sound that are nevertheless epic in their own way.