Autechre - Quaristice

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.