Autechre ‎– Draft 7.30

the inevitable "back to the classic sound" record tends to follow an extended period of creativity and experimentalism. it also tends to signal the death of an act in the sense that it means the act has given up on the creative process and has collapsed back to what they know sells, what they know is a marketable product.

that's not to say that this is a bad record, nor is it to say that autechre did not apply any of the techniques that they had previously pioneered in the post-repetae phase. this is unquestionably a post-repetae record, but it comes off as a record that could have been released immediately after tri repetae. all of the hallmarks of that era are here - the intricate yet club friendly beats, the thick harmonic layerings, the haunting ambience, the brilliant sequencing and the creative use of samples and random noises - but they have been spliced with the creativity and abstract nature of their several previous heavily experimental and partially generated records.

likely, this was created as a compromise to bridge the growing gap between two increasingly disparate groups of people that were buying autechre records and had it been released in 1997 right after repetae and not in 2003 after 6 years of brilliant creativity and abstraction i would probably declare it a masterpiece. yet, as it is, it seems oddly regressive. yes, autechre have managed to take a piece of music that is decades away from entering the consciousness of mainstream culture and have managed to make it sound outdated but that reflects more on their past work than it does on this record.

everybody who has ever liked anything that autechre have ever released should like at least parts of this record. anybody who enjoys most of what they've produced over the years should like the whole thing all the way through. yet, it's hard to pick out a demographic of longtime listeners that would find themselves really entranced by this. those who only like the early stuff will complain that it's better, but it's still too noisy; the late 90s listeners will complain that it's too structured and "poppy", although it must be understood that some relative concept of pop needs to be employed when talking about how it is that anybody could consider this record anything remotely close to pop music. it comes off almost as though it's two very different eps that are mixed and matched together; the constant jumps from abstraction to structure are punctuation, not evolution and as a result do not let the record flow, breathe or ebb in the way that the preceding records did. that's not bad, it's just different and, maybe, from my viewpoint, less enjoyable.

the people most likely to find this record mesmerizing are people that would have been likely to like chiastic slide in 1997 but were between the ages of 10 and 15 and so are unlikely to have been exposed to it. these people would be in their early 20s right now.....they are people that likely first experienced popular music through chemical brothers videos on mtv and so have grown up with a conception of semi-obscure electronic music that is likely fairly similar to the conception of semi-obscure industrial and punk music that i had at that age, they have grown up with mp3s and cell phones and all kinds of other contraptions that incessantly buzz and whir, they measure time in years BI(nternet) and years AI and couldn't even conceive of what to eat in the absence of a microwave......if you're in this demographic, look for this disc and then move backwards through the back catalog.

if you're a little older, i will admit that i can't see any reason to recommend not listening to this disc because it is absolutely an enjoyable (if perhaps slightly disengaged) piece of music from beginning to end. however, given the band's back catalog, i can't see any reason to recommend it to you either.

Although I agree that this is their finest work to date, I don't agree with the "cold, sterile" description the previous reviewer gave. This is actually quite a perfect blend of all of their phases over the years. You can hear the melodic work of LP5 in tracks like "Reniform Puls". There is an almost Tri Repetae rhythm section during the first half of "Surripere". The Confield-like rigidity of "6ie.Cr". Chiastic Slide, EP7, Gantz Graf, and even Amber are all represented prominently here. I find this to be their most rich and rewarding work. It is comfortable and familiar, yet exciting and fresh. Without a doubt, my hands-down all-time absolute favorite from Ae.

I disagree with anyone who says this album is hard to get into. OK, there may be the odd couple of seconds between some bars filled with glitch and groans before the beat comes back, but other than that, this album is completely beat-driven. The first two tracks serve as an eerie intro and on first listen, it sounds like a very dark album like Confield. However when 61e.CR drops the hip-hop/old-skool electro bloodline that Autechre carry comes though so prominently; it's almost impossible not to bop your head throughout the rest of the LP.

The vast majority of the tracks are 4/4 (which Autechre prove isn't always a bad thing,) hold bouncy melodies and basslines, making them "accessible" for even anti-breakbeat purists. Despite this, the innovation is not lost, with leads, rumbles and pads made from industrial groans, electronic percussion and sounds oscillated so fast that they sound like a single synth drone.

This album is almost a marriage between the looped breaks of their early 1990s releases and the new direction the group took circa 2000. Because of this, I would recommend anyone wishing to find out what Autechre are all about should listen to this LP before anything else.

Almost seems like a step back from the previous release, the Gantz Graf EP. Gantz, while way out there, had a certain approachable sound to it, the beats were pretty distinct and could easily be followed along. Draft 7.30, while not as jumbled as 2001's "Confield", still manages to demand a patient listener to fully appreciate. From here they took a 2 year break before releasing "Untitled" in 2005. Oddly enough, Untitled seems to borrow more from the Gantz Graf era and not a progress of Draft.

In my opinion, Draft 7.30 was something they just wanted to get out of their system before moving on to their next phase, which was started with the Gantz EP. Nevertheless... This album is pure Autechre, and fans will want to check it out!

A true classic!

we've all been asked that question... what album would you take with you on a desert island? for me, its draft 7.30. the cold, mechanical, sterile atmosphere it exudes is unsurpassed. sometimes it doesn't even sound like a human made it. the thing i admire most about autechre is that they go places that more popular warp musicians (aphex twin, squarepusher) would never dream of setting foot. they truly experiment. this isn't an album for people expecting the beautiful, ambient melodies and robotic, catchy beats of their earlier releases. this is an album for people interested in the math, science, and technology of electronic music.

One of Autechre's hardest albums to get into. These tracks don't really have any form of structure. They pretty much just go and change whenever they like. At first this can seem weird and hard to enjoy. But with enough listens you do begin to adapt to it. This album is far from Autechre's best work in my opinion, but its definitley something to check out if you're a fan of their more expiremental side.

Many times i have telling people that this album is the most logical procession that AE could've made after Confield and
all their back catalogue since Incunabula was released [although Confield is more randomly created patterns than Draft 7.30]. So, either you listen to it, or drop their last two albums and enjoy the old ones. There's no possible way
their music could undertake when you listen how their releases are developing since their first one. It's a kind of Cul de Sac for Booth/Brown but i think they are doing what is the most natural way of creating electronic music, or maybe they should abandon their style and start creating music that has no connectivity to their past. But that is not a way that this two brilliant composers will/would choose. Support the music and the band which is one of the best things that the electronic music scene ever had...

DRAFT 7.30 is definitely stepping back (forward, perhaps?) from the abstracted ambience that marked CONFIELD. "Xylin Room" plunges headfirst into some rocky percussion, with the spectres of songs drifting in only towards the end of the track. It's followed (and contrasted nicely) by the haunting, sustained tones and glitchy insectoid beats of "IV VV IV VV VII" or the trepanning of "6IE.CR." "Surrpere" is a true return to form: the rhythm is more regular, the melody laid out to desiccate in the sun... at least at first. It then disintegrates, not into chaos, but into more difficult patterns. "P.:NTIL" has some high, harpsichord-like tones that stand out, since they seem vastly different from what's come before. "V-Proc" almost sounds like a real song -- well, one that's been compressed and processed past recognition. Finally, "Reniform Puls" combines elements that have gone before (irregular rhythms, icy melodies) into something that you can sink your teeth into. Intellectually stimulating, yes, but a fair number of the tracks doesn't quite have that emotional stimulation that would lift the album as a whole into the pantheon of electronic music.

a work of concentration and thoughtfulness. challenging but rewarding if you are willing to put in the time and appreciation towards what they've done with this album. Draft is a work of the future for IDM. another classic release that shall be exalted for ages.