Autechre ‎– Chiastic Slide

The beginning of the change for Autechre...and it shows. All the tracks are great in their own right, but the only problem is that the longer tracks, like Recury, Hub, and Cichli just seem to go on and on and on with little variation. Track Rettic Ac is probably their nosiest track they've done to date. I rated this album as one of my least favorite but I still love it a lot as a turning point album for AE and I think Booth/Brown did an excellent job in that respect.

The beginning of the change for Autechre...and it shows. All the tracks are great in their own right, but the only problem is that the longer tracks, like Recury, Hub, and Cichli just seem to go on and on and on with little variation.
Track Rettic Ac is probably their nosiest track they've done to date. I love this album a lot as more of a turning point album for AE and I think Booth/Brown did an excellent job in that respect.

Definitely a watershed album. The melodic elements of Amber and Garbage increasingly taking second stage to a more gutsy industrial aesthetic. But, this isn't to say the album is a relentless pounder. Many of the tracks here set a beautiful, although sombre tone.

I prefer to think of Chiastic slide as an album of requiems... put through a mincer.

on this record, the noise becomes more melodic and the melodies become more noisy. there is no longer any reason why polyrhythms need to be composed of anything at all that sound anything at all like a drum, although sometimes it is decided that they should, and there is further no reason that synths need to sound like synths or deep melodic parts need to sound like analog bass synths. everything has been thrown out the window.

however, autechre's journey is an evolution of increasing complexity, and we see that present here as well. the complexity began to become interesting on the last record; on this record, it's actually become mesmerizing. they have taken richard d. james' challenge; these are not songs, they are compositions, fully written upwards and nitpicked as closely as any other composer would nitpick their own scores. yet, they are often compositions of noise, where the computer has become the orchestra; and the computer is of course able to turn any conceivable sound into a melody. perhaps the part that would have been played by a flute last century should be played by a noise generator during this century, perhaps the ambience of a stringed instrument is now represented by the ambience of a pad; yet, the process is the same as it has always been, and this is no less serious a piece of music as a whole than anything by any composer in the past.

the primary improvement over tri repetae on this disc is the incomparably higher level of horizontal composition. on tri repetae, there are generally only a few lines moving at any one time and the writing is, in general, based largely around repetitive loops. this record is much more written in an academic sense and much less loop-oriented, regardless of what the reviews incorrectly suggested at the time. you can hear a huge influence from the minimalist school - particularly steve reich - in the evolving, subtly changing repetitions. almost all of the tracks are built around counterpoint. if you're not listening closely, that may come off as repetitive, but the solution is to listen more closely. indeed, like most abstract and revolutionary pieces of music, this was initially panned by the critics, who labelled it as redundant; they appear to have misunderstood it. they will eventually understand it. i would request a more careful listening, which will inevitably be followed by a serious re-evaluation.

tewe and cichli are great examples of this. on first listen, they sound like simple loops repeated over and over again. however, if you listen a little bit more closely, you can hear a very subtle evolution within each repetition. reich called this process and made it to the central motif of his career.

the fifth track is, again, an anti-climax; it splits the record in half. nuane is probably my personal favourite autechre track of all time and an excellent closer to the disc, the band's first true moving, sweeping, changing epic.

Like every release of Autechre, starting from Tri Repetae, this is not only music for the years, but also music for the mind. Ae can transport us to completely different states of mind and Chiastic slide is no exception.
I returned to this record today and I just realized again how good it is. With Cipater I really started to move to the music, really dancing, but soon it turned to a claustrophobic underwater beauty with Rettic Ac. I travelled through different states of mind during the listening of the album and if sometimes I felt like in the middle of a sonic dream, it soon could change to a nightmare. This is music for the humans that we are... full of senses.
I already pre-ordered Oversteps and I think that a new big change will happen, until then I am re-exploring every bit that Ae produced. Until then...

This is where Booth and Brown said goodbye to easy listening. Imagine Tri Repetae with even less organic sounds and even more machine clanks... I'll give them credit for wanting to re-invent themselves with this album, but it just kept getting more and more crazy with each release. They used to release several CDs a year (album and EPs) and now look at them, as of this date (june 2006) they release 1 album every 2 years. Its clear they are running out of ideas and the boundaries of complex IDM they produce have been breached. I'd say its high time for them to begin making more accessible music again.

This album is worth listening to if you liked their first 3 albums, as hints of those works are still here.. withing the machinery.

Chiastic Slide was the first IDM album I ever purchased. The track 'Tewe' was what attracted me, after hearing it in a skateboard film called 'One Step Beyond'. I quickly researched the artist and bought this album the first chance I saw it on a shelf. As an IDM virgin at the time I wasn't sure what to expect. It took a few listens but in no time I found myself engaged in the wide variety of sounds that I never would have imagined hearing in my life. It's been three years since I first purchased this album, and to this day it still stands the test of time, and exceeds boundaries I once set for myself.

A semi-tough release to get into. This album marks where Autechre began to change their style so to speak. Not quite as ambient as previous releases, and may even sound weird the first listen. If you give it a chance and listen a couple more times, you'll begin to appreciate what they've created here.. which a clicky glitch ambience with a structure. One of my favorite Autechre releases.

For me, this is Autechre's most emotional and human release. I would go so far as to call it personal - I think Sean and Rob put a lot of their feelings at the time into this record.

Some people look at Chiastic Slide as a rehash of the Tri Repetae "format," but I think that's really missing the point. While Tri Repetae seems highly abstracted from anything human, I feel like Chiastic Slide is human and organic on some level. Yes, it's still mechanical: the first track, Cipater, refers to an engine with its title and ignition/piston sounds. But this record is also very much human to me with its melancholic melodies, distant vocal samples, organic textures, and wide emotional palette.

Another reason why Chiastic Slide is a world apart from Tri Repetae is because Ae broke away from their traditional song structure in a few of the tracks. Tewe is the prime example. It's an amazing track that represesents a major leap forward. While Ae's previous work was unique, anyone who knows about audio production can listen to those earlier tracks and analyze more or less how they were made. A bizarre sample here, an old Roland there, a Nord Lead here, some delay and reverb, such and such time signature, etc. Tewe is structured in such a unique way that I'd be surprised if anyone besides Sean and Rob could reproduce anything close. In this respect, Tewe is more like Ae's later work than their earlier work. For this reason, I look at Chiastic Slide as the approximate turning point for Autechre, the link between their "old styles" (e.g. Incunabula, Amber, Garbage, Anvil Vapre, Tri Repetae) and "new styles" (e.g. Cichlisuite, LP5, EP7, Confield, Gantz Graf, Draft).

This is definitely one of my favorite Autechre releases. I like it more than any of their work that came after LP5, and it holds my interest much better than Incunabula and Amber. Essential.

This LP, along with Envane EP is their finest work to date. It is a very conscious departure from the comparitively normal-sounding works of their first three LPs. Dangerously avant-garde and uncompromising (I read that Trent Reznor refused US distribution on his Nothing Records imprint when it was released due to it being so experimental,) yet extremely confident.

It is the sound of machines singing in the darkness, it sounds as if there is no human intervention here whatsoever, yet despite the gritty sounds and it's often menacing mood it has an undeniable funk, depth, warmth and awesome beauty that I don't think has been captured in the releases since. This LP has to be listened to as a whole, from beginning to end.