From Kent Williams Sent Tue, Jul 28th 1998, 17:40
From Kent Williams Sent Tue, Jul 28th 1998, 17:40
Autechre (untitled/eponymous) WarpCD66lc2070 When I'm out shopping for records at the Goodwill, I have a test as to whether a particular album is going to be dope -- if it's some kind of a jazz record, if they bother to put liner notes on the back, written in a style other than "grey flannel 1950's publicist on crack", it's bound to have at least a few tasty cuts. Autechre's newest obviously fails that test. It does succeed on it's own hermetic terms -- if you're looking for music that seems constructed by a random patch generator for a sampler, yet retains a certain emotional power, it's all here. Densely layered pastiches of scroinks, boinks and virtual fingernails on a quantum blackboard swirl around, with quiet repeating pad figures. It's the sound of being alone in an industrial park, haunted by post-modern virtual welt-schmertz. Which is a pretentious way of saying that it's another autechre record, they've spent some more time advancing their sound design, and I like it better than Chiastic Slide, which had a couple of tracks that I thought were really bad -- the slow, ambientish ones. Jega (Spectrum) Planet Mu >ziq-002CD I've not been a serious jega-follower, more because I've been busy with other things, like the best way to sample a Nat King Cole record, so this is a pleasure to have on CD for easy listening. The Muziq influence here is way up front -- check the vibrato flute lead on 'Musical Chairs.' And 'Phalanx' takes a page from the early Aphex Twin Breakbeat book. The fact that they're derivative (down to the crappy HR16 ride cymbal that's all over early mu-Ziq) doesn't for me detract from their own charm. Things take an unexpected turn on 'Red Mullet' which is an amazing job of sampling -- swingy jazz drumming, upright bass, and Woody Herman horn stabs. The ambience is pretty cheesy but the quality of the writing and playing can't be denied. If you know anything about constructing tracks on a sampler, you can really hear the work that went into this one. >From there on out things just get better and better. Melodic, carefully and inventively programmed, and delivered with a certain puckish humor. So if you like muziq, you'll love this one.