Listening to Autechre albums from start to finish with a little understanding of music technology and its evolution over the past 18 years, you kind of get a sense for these two lads.

While admitting they really don't know what they are doing in a classical music sense, they have always pushed their gear and the limitations of electronic music and to wonderful affect.

From hacking ensoniq samplers to learning software like max/msp, they have pushed the limits most other artists felt comfortable with and thus a lot of listener's comfort limits. At times they create the most beautiful and otherworldy soundscapes and at times create the most isolatingly cold calculated digital sound scapes, like music a schizophrenic AI might calculate.

Quaristice is the culmination of nearly 20 years of growth and push towards the outer limits of music technology and experimentation. They seem to have reached a comfort level (for the time being) with music technology and this album showcases this level of artistic comfort.

It "feels" as though they have really reached a point where they have explored and isolated enough sonic avenues, and now they share with us an assortment of paths, melodic, percussive and somewhat odd yet entirely musical pieces.

The majorty of tracks are short at pop song length or less, but you get the "ideas" with each track, and each track is, in essence, a different idea. This is where their mastery shines through. They show us what can be done with it all. From lovely melodic to calculated percussion and points in between. Old sounds mashed with new. In a quickly and easily digested "information age" format.

While listening to this album Im consequently reminded of all the elements I have come to love about their sound and all of the elements I have yet to really understand or feel, yet somehow they mix and match just enough, to make me feel like the bumpy road that has been Autechre's discography has led to something great.

IF you listen to Autechre, from their first album to their last and really try and understand that this is essentially a life sentence of dedication to exploration of electronic music and the technology available to make it over the past 20 years, you will really understand this album and have a better understanding of some of their "harder to listen to" works and maybe "get" their ideas now.

The growth in computing power from the early 90s up to now has been staggering, in both computers and electronic instruments. Autechre and few other artists have kept pace with this tech curve and that is an act of pure genius in itself. To make these frontier sounds musical and at times emotionally/creatively charged is just amazing. Autechre does this, and does it very well.

Autechre have been around since the early days of IDM, and from the sounds of "Altibzz," it may seem that _Quaristice_ has returned to those days. But the angular tones and skittering rhythms of "The Plc" set us back firmly in the future. If anything, I think Autechre has gotten more industrial in their music-making. Certainly, they have never been wedded to passing fads, so the deep space ambience of "Paralel Suns" should come as no surprise pressed up against the robotic romance of "Simmm" and the pure abstraction of "Steels." The metallic percussion of "Tankakern" and the angry machinery of "Fol3" show a real turn towards the original concept of industrial music. The tubular tones of "Wnsn" has a wistfulness to them, a small expression of emotion in an otherwise sterile album; "Chenc9," as well, shows off a little personality. The ambient "Notwo" and "Outh9x" carry off the album gracefully. Perhaps the future of Autechre is already here.

Autechre never went 100% digital, and never before has this been as evident as on Quaristice. What Ae has done more often than not is run an arsenal of basic old-school equipment with a Max/MSP brain. The melancholy analog synths of classic releases like Amber and Incunabula, and early Aphex Twin, make their return here, as do moments of broken late-80s electro and classic drum machine sounds. Nevertheless Booth & Brown have as always sharpened their digital ambient-glitch blades on this release, here so much that their awesomely daring collaborations with the Hafler Trio are somewhat less surprising. Yet they've allowed their old equipment to breathe in these tracks, introducing elements of daring familiarity. Ae's beats, since their software phase began, have had a spastic, irregular stimulus that many have found irritatingly arrythmic, and others have found positively exhilirating. The familiar elements of this release may convince the former listeners by offering clearer reference points in conventional techno sounds.

It's hard to believe that Sean Booth and Rob Brown have been experimenting with sound for over 16 years now, ever since their first release, Incunabula, on Warp Records. It is perhaps their unique programming approach to analog synths, custom Max/MSP patches, micro granular effects, and mathematical rhythms, that pushed the envelope of sound exploration to the common studio techniques of today. Can the UK duo continue and reinvent the sound? I'm on my fifth listen of Quaristice, Autechre's 9th album, and the definitive answer is: yes. The twenty tracks on a digital release which I snatched from bleep (including exclusive artwork for each track!), maintain the indisputably unique Autechre sound. The beats are still chopped, the sound waves decomposed, and the structure erratically twisted. But unlike Autechre's previous LP, Untilted, this 2008 release is warmer, less noisier, and at times even melodic (there are even strings buried deep in one of the tracks). The genre starts to glide closer to abstract and minimal ambient, with an occasional glitchy quality of other worldliness. If by some miracle this is your first Autechre experience, brace yourself for a unique and unforgettable experience, if you can hold on. For the rest of us, it's just a necessity for our complete anthology. Too bad that the special, limited to 1000 copies edition, with an additional CD and a photo-etched steel casing sold out within the first 12 hours of announcement.

There are few bands I follow as obsessively as I do Autechre. They had me captivated from the beginning. Hell, even "Cavity Job" has this unique electro-industrial sound. Nevermind, that, though, their recognized beginnings in soft and smooth, richly programmed but minimal ambient IDM/electro still are fresh and new to me to this day. Then I remember when "Anvil Vapre" and then "Tri Repetae" came out and I was shocked at how much they had changed, adding elements of noise and combating percussion that didn't exists. Fast forward to "Confield" and you see this experimentalism at its height, being almost anti-musical. It took me a long while to get used to that album. Then, slowly, they started to warm back up a bit.

Still for a lot of people, though, this experimentalism was too much for people to handle. They wanted some good old fashioned electronic lounge music. Understandable, as I did really appreciate that period a LOT. A lot more than "Confield," which I did end up liking after I forgave them for deviating so greatly from "Incunabula." To be frank, it has to be one of the most interesting and truly experimental records I have ever heard. Nevermind Merzbow, Captain Beefheart, Nurse With Wound, whoever-- this is very unique in a genre that is often saturated with more experiments to repeat results of previous experiments than it is with truly groundbreaking work. This being said, their experimental work is totally defendable. Frankly, it has always been at the core of their work, too. Anyone who has seen them play live can attest to this. They don't play their songs. No, instead, there's a flurry of disks being shoved into keyboards and quickly thrown out, a neverending barrage of constant change.

That still doesn't mean that everyone who likes the experimental work is going to like the IDM work and vice versa. It's almost like these are the two sub-bands that make up Autechre. Well, enter "Quaristice:" a compromise, a little something for everyone. First off, note that there are 20 tracks, the longest one being a bit over 7. This gives them plenty of freedom to experiment with all sorts of ideas. And indeed they do. There's a little bit of glitch to every one, at least in one sense or another, but they actually do let melodies and rhythms take precedence. Admittedly, though this album is warm and organic in a way that a lot of the recent ones have not been, you'll find it is a bit on the dark side.

Some highlights:
1. "Altibzz" is "Kalpol Introl" if it were from "Tri Repetae."
2. "IO" is a nice mix of crunchy, lo-fi and really clean sounds, giving it this 3D quality. It's got this great, totally indiscernable vocal sample that sounds like a dying HAL over top a buzzy beat and a quirky key melody.
3. There's something to "Perlence," how it can't make up its mind about whether or not it wants to be hip hop or a battle of wits between two rhythms.
4. "paralel Suns" is a dense, waterfall of bubbly synth over a vacuous, yet melodic drone. AWESOME.
5. "Tankakern:" electro beat with this thundering bass that makes it sound like it's been recorded in a cave. Equally cavernous sounds to go with.
6. "rale." Whoa. Dark, like black hole dark, evil, menacing electro with some glitchy flourishes. I want more of this.
7. "Fol3" finds Autechre taking the sounds (in this case, they seem as if they are samples of some mechanical action but cropped so that they're not recognizable) and making rhythms out of it.
8. "90101-5l-l" is very heady experimental acid.
9. "Theswere" could have appeared on "Amber" with its bright synth line and string section.
10. "chenc9" is classic Autechre with a frentic rhythm section and a bright, slow, vibrato synth line over it.
and they finish with two tracks, each a slightly different take on ambient.

I cannot wait to see this live!!!!

It's hard to believe that Sean Booth and Rob Brown have been experimenting with sound for over 16 years now, ever since their first release, Incunabula, on Warp Records. It is perhaps their unique programming approach to analog synths, custom Max/MSP patches, micro granular effects, and mathematical rhythms, that pushed the envelope of sound exploration to the common studio techniques of today. Can the UK duo continue and reinvent the sound? I'm on my fifth listen of Quaristice, Autechre's 9th album, and the definitive answer is: yes. The twenty tracks on a digital release which I snatched from bleep (including exclusive artwork for each track!), maintain the indisputably unique Autechre sound. The beats are still chopped, the sound waves decomposed, and the structure erratically twisted. But unlike Autechre's previous LP, Untilted, this 2008 release is warmer, less noisier, and at times even melodic (there are even strings buried deep in one of the tracks). The genre starts to glide closer to abstract and minimal ambient, with an occasional glitchy quality of other worldliness. If by some miracle this is your first Autechre experience, brace yourself for a unique and unforgettable experience, if you can hold on. For the rest of us, it's just a necessity for our complete anthology. Too bad that the special, limited to 1000 copies edition, with an additional CD and a photo-etched steel casing sold out within the first 12 hours of announcement.