Re: (idm) EP7: better late than never; or beating a very dead horse.

From Ed Hall
Sent Tue, Jul 27th 1999, 05:03

sun rob and his arkestra <xxxxxx.xxxxx@xxxx.xxx> wrote:
> well well well. 
> 
> for reference's sake: the first autechre i heard was tri repetae++; and my
> favorite AE thus far is LP5. followed closely by cichlisuite and amber.

You're probably in a minority by finding LP5 their best album.  (I
personally find it uneven, ranging from awesome to ho-hum.)  But ask
me next year--I had to listen to Chiastic Slide half a dozen times
before I liked it, and now it's my favorite.

> EP7 is quite amazing.  a few tracks wander off a little far into the
> digital noise and sonic grit territory that worked so well to bridge the
> tracks of LP5, but here they seem to be intended to stand alone.

They're a lot better than those transitional squonks (squeek+honk) were
in LP5.  Then again, I like abstract electronic noise.  And, ultimately,
I like EP7 better than LP5; it brings to flower some of the new areas
they were just starting to explore there.

> ...the opener 'rpeg' is the best thing AE has done recently, possibly ever.

> ...'ccec' is pretty nice, too, almost sounding like a
> gescom track (weird distorted hip hop) remixed by the more abstract
> version of AE (squeaky squiggles and minor keys shifting in the
> background.)

This was one of my favorites--the frenetic word-salad MC vocal was the
perfect contrast to the rather ponderous foreground bleeps and beats.
One of those amazing tracks that shouldn't work, but does.

The next track, "squeller," sounded like one of the LP5 tracks run through
a ring modulator, with some subdued organ(-like) chords thrown in.  Very
catchy, in a vertigo-inducing way.  I like the way they've become more
visceral on this and other tracks.  Check out "outpt," which has a bit
of a Basic-Channel-like feel to it, or the crushingly heavy rhythms of
"dropp."  A bit of sonic warfare, that last one (as is "netlon sentinal").

Overall, the complex rhythm patters of LP5 are straightened out just a
bit--not just a linear, never-repeating rapid-fire train of staccato
sounds, but there is more of a sense of phrasing, of building patterns
and transmuting them into other patterns.  (That's not to say that they
weren't doing this before, but at least my ears "latched on" to the
structures much better.)

Some tracks still seem a bit aimless to me, like "maphive 6.1," which
starts with a boffo rolling tympani sample, segues into some metallic
percussion samples, meanders around melodically with them for about five
minutes, then turns them backwards for a minute to close.  Not sure what
this one was about, though the backwards tones do transition into those
that begin "zeiss contarex," which is a more directed ride through
an abstract soundspace of heterodynes aided by a steady 4/4 beat as
it turns toward some ominous chords and a looped radio sample.

Unlike most of their albums, which have a fairly momentous send-off,
"pir," the final track, could almost as well have been the first.
It's a pretty straightforward melody-and-counterpoint with a very, um,
wet-sounding rhythm.
 
> ...
> btw- the post is referring to my review, not the EP!  it sounds fresh to
> my ears...aligned with LP5 but not the same, as some have claimed.  even
> if AE is using some of the same equipment or processors or
> whatever--people, james brown used bass, guitars, drums and voice for
> decades and nobody complained. sheesh.

Actually, there seemed to be a lot more post-processing of sounds compared
to LP5.  Overall, I find this EP a lot more sonically interesting than LP5,
which, IMHO, had the most limited sound-palette of any AE album/EP.  Not
did EP7 use new samples and digital effects, there was more subtlety in
their use of timbres.

The bonus track (I ordered the UK version straight from Warpmart) is
an entirely beatless exercise in digital feedback.  I like it--it's
not like anything else on the EP, but rather like some of the better
(IMHO) academic computer-music pieces I've heard.  Well-tempered it
ain't, though, so I suspect some folks here would bleed from the ears
if they listened to it.

                -Ed