From dis2 Sent Tue, May 18th 1999, 18:17
From dis2 Sent Tue, May 18th 1999, 18:17
Got my hands on a promo of this last Thursday. As with most new Autechre releases, on first listen a lot of it sounded like bizarre alien noise, but I suppose when an Ae release comes out without the initial what-the-fuck-factor it probably means they're finally losing it. That being said, it's probably one of the most abstract releases they've ever put out. RPEG starts it off - it sounds almost lo-fi, with the sound levels all over the place. Honking distorted bleeps pick out what could loosely be called a tune while wet sounding hip-hopish beats keep the rhythm. It sounds pretty odd, but much stranger stuff is to come. During CCEC, it sounds like what I always thought of as 'the keynell man', ie the cut up voice on most keynell tracks, has just taken a gram of crystal meth. I was listening to this on my walkman while buying a sandwich in Marks and Spencer, and it gave me the fear. Very evil sounding and disorientating track. SQUELLER reminds me most of Under BOAC on LP5. Lots of clanking beats and scary drones. Pretty good actually. LEFT BLANK consists of some electronic doodling noises with what sounds like planes flying overhead for the first few minutes, then the electronics just..well..doodle some more. This track doesn't really do much for me. OUTPT starts off really well, with some amazing claustrophobic noises over a simple beat, but then it just does the same thing for the whole track. Any changes that occur over the period are pretty much imperceptible, at least to me. Still sounds kind of cool though, if a little repetitive. The second record is better than the first, with the rather sad sounding DROPP picking out a melancholy melody over malfunctioning beats. After that there's LICCFLII, which sounds similar to Squeller - ie free-floating bleeps/noise/beats with drones over the top. It all comes grinding to a messy halt, followed by... MAPHIVE 6.1, which is one of the best tracks for me. It sounds like it's in distinct parts, starting with rolling beats and what sounds almost like a fanfare played on synthesisers. After a the beats slow down and some lovely sounding chimes come in with a slinky bassline. The chimes grow until they eventually fill the whole track, before some winding-up clockwork beats come in. ZEISS CONTAREX is just as good, with a slow, simple hip hop beat surrounded by decomposing noise that eventually coalesces into a great corroded tune, but only for about a minute or so before getting lost in static again. NETLON SENTINEL sounds like some sort of aural sculpture. Scary, structureless noise/beats with an equally scary melody coming in half way. Sounds like something of the Gescom minidisc, but more complete. PIR ends the EP (which is really to all intents and purposes an album, at least if I'm listening to it on the right speed) A clear and rather lovely tune plays against splashing, stuttering beats. Very nice. Overall, it's pretty odd, and some of it's more deconstructed than most other Ae releases. Although the Autechre melodies that I love at first seemed to be less in evidence, they are there, often buried deep within the songs. It took more than the usual amount of listens to 'get into it', but 5 days after buying it I think it's great, and even though I got yet more good music on Monday, it's EP7 that's still on my walkman. Still, I get the feeling this record might leave some people scratching their heads (and maybe could have done to be a couple of tracks shorter). I love it now, but then I'm quite a rabid autechre fan, so my objective opinion probably doesn't count for much. I'll be interested to see what other people make of it. Dan Shoebridge.