Autechre - Confield

Under no circumstances start your adventure with Autechre with "Confield"! Being a huge fan o "Amber" and "Incunabula", I listened to "Confield" with a feeling of incredulity, which quickly became a feeling of overwhelming disappointment. This album is nothing more than random, nerve racking sounds. Taken together, they are hard to be described as "music" as we normally understand the term. Cold, inhuman and highly irritating album.

This release is one of AE's strongest I think, of course it is abstract and not easy to listening to. When it came out in 2001 I was rather confused about this new style. The first time I listened to it I was rather disappointed probably because I expected something else. But the more often you play it you will find out its beauty and brilliance. A milestone! It creates an atmosphere which neither can be reached by Draft7.30 nor Untilted.

Autechre has fallen into full noisey, hard to listen music at this point in time. Confield marks their first album that almost seemed as if the beats and patterns were created radomally. The tracks really make no progress and you're listening to the same 30 seconds of music over and over it seems. Course there is minimal changes throughout.. maybe a sound here or a clank there.. but still.. very hard listening. Not one of my favorites from them

Honestly I don't see what the big fuss is about Confield. People either complain about it or love it. I find it somewhere in between. Not my favorite Autechre release, but definitley not terrible. The beats are a little different then their usual work, but almost every track has a ambient vibe going on in the background that you can follow to the song and listen to the sounds around it. Pretty good stuff.

Most convoluted, abstract, unapproachable, dissonant and adventurous album by Booth/Brown to date - in other words; its likely they will never make another work of this kind of pure realized artistic vision and aspiration as sonic sculpture again. Following efforts "Draft 7.30" and in particular "Untilted" have come close - but "Confield" still remains their masterpiece.

Even for me this is the hardest release to get into, but once you're in you know the real meaning of deep electronic music. Put your headphones on and expand your mind with the best AE work. 5/5 no doubt

"Confield" was my first Autechre album, and while my original thoughts were that I had wasted my money, over time I have begun to appreciate what Autechre have created here. "VI Scose Poise" begins with annoying metallic clanking noises, but the haunting keys add substance to this opening track. "Cfern" is up next, with it's elastic beats and almost jazzy sounding melody. One of the highlights, "Pen Expers" follows, the combination of abstract breakbeats and gradually emerging melody, is strangely compelling. "Sim Gishel" has clicks forming the rhythmic sounds while machine groans join in to create a bizarre track. "Parhelic Triangle" continues the abstraction, with ominous bell tones joining the twisted rhythms, gradually being ripped apart towards the end of the track. "Bine" would have to be the darkest track here, a frightening combination of menacing ambience and industrial machinery out of control. "Eidetic Casein" is much more coherent, another obscure melody is manipulated for the whole 6 minutes of it's duration. "Uviol" is my favorite track, the fluttering melody and ticking hi-hats creating a dreamland of sound. "Lentic Catachresis" starts with robotic screams of DSP manipulation, while the squashed beats build up in speed before going ballistic just before the 3-minute mark. The track continues in this vain for the remaining 5 minutes, a fitting end to "Confield". Arguably Autechre's most difficult album to listen to, "Confield" is not nearly as bad as some people would have you believe, but newcomers to Autechre's music would be better of starting with "Incunabula", "Amber" or "Tri Repetae".

For me this was the hardest release to get into (Even more so than Gantz Graf - and Draft 7.30 is the most straightforward material they have done in quite a few years in my opinion,) and truth be told I've still not got my head round a lot of it yet. As a big fan of Autechre I know that I have to persevere with it and I will be rewarded. Pen Expers has a stunningly beautiful melody, and note that the beats sound straight forward until the barely-audible chords come in.. as you start to concentrate on the melody the beats go more and more haywire... and as the synth melody is brought to an abrupt end you realise the chaotic drum patterns remaining... genius.

Confield was the first Autechre full length that I ever purchased. Not to say it’s a bad effort on Booth and Brown’s part but it’s a bit of a turn off for someone that has barely listening to Electronic music such as I. At that point I had only a few choice Warp records, mostly Aphex Twin releases, and I decided to go out on a whim and buy a release by Autechre. From all the listener reviews I had read their music was nothing short of a stroke of genius. When I picked up Confield and simply took a look at the artwork I was amazed. I hadn’t seen anything like it before, and when I popped the CD in I was once again amazed. The first listen didn’t really take. I listened to it some more and I really haven’t found a place for it yet but I know eventually that I will come to appreciate it more fully with time. What you should glean from this experience is that you can’t judge an artist by the first release that you listen to by them. For example If I would have picked up Aphex Twin’s Drukqs before anything else I would be missing out on a music genius equal to that of Autechre.

Confield heralds a period of apotheosis in Autechre's body of work that I hope to see advanced still further in years to come. Before Confield I admired Autechre and followed the releases dutifully. Since Confield -- particularly since the subsequent tour brought them to my area -- I have regarded Booth and Brown as geniuses, and awaited every new offering with breathless anticipation. The concert was musically more in line with the later Gantz Graf in its dizzying amalgamation of abstract, arrhythmic patterns and rich, broad-spectrum noise. The result was an aural experience that I can only hope to come across again. My expectations for Autechre are now, of course, very high, but I am confident that future releases will match and exceed the exaltation of Gantz Graf and Confield.