Autechre – Incunabula

The underdeveloped ideas and cheesy sounds can maybe be put down to the nature of this as a compilation of demo material thrown together by warp, and can be overlooked, but ultimately this record is just so boring to listen to. Skip it and start with Anti and Amber.

Still the best Autechre album hands down(and not alone in my opinion!). Bubbly, dubby, bassy, electro funky goodness yet unpretentious forward thinking(albeit the electro influence!). I wish they had pursued more of this "groove" focused music for a few more releases as I found their later catalog sterile, cold and too be frank intellectually pretentious. Wish the label would release a deluxe package with remixes and earlier Autechre music on CD! This would

Pro tip: not all cds from a bad batch will rot. It requires one of the "rot bubbles" (spots where 2 layers aren't attached to each other) to be at the edge of the disc. Then oxygen gets in and starts tarnishing the metal layer (and spreading the de-attached area). If none of the bubbles are at the edge then nothing happens because oxygen doesn't get in.

Love this LP, I have the original CD from 1993, no rot problems to date. It's recently come to life on my re-jigged hi-fi and sounds amazing!

Do not buy this pressing! It is susceptible to disc rot, as are the many other flawed pressings done by PDO in this time period. My copy already exhibits signs of disc rot.

I can remember buying this album from Cob Records and listening to it whilst on the way back to Sheffield. What I thought then I still feel today: it is a classic album. With this release Warp Records set the new standard for electronic music of that era - and god bless them for that (because rave music was just bloody awful).

Arg another dodgy PDO release, blatant signs of disc rot showing on my old copy...

An interesting tidbit...an incunable(latin incunabulum) is a very early printed work(anything printed before 1501)from Europe. Fitting, as this is Ae's first album...

Still a classic of electronic music in every way; and still one of Ae's best works to date. Starts with the brilliant "Bike"; 8 minutes of gorgeous ambient head-bobbing. "Basscadet" is a stormer; "Doctrine" is another mover. "Windwind" takes the crown for best work in Ae's catalog...lilting acid, walls of ambience...just listen.

For anyone schooled in Ae's more recent work, this won't even sound like the same group...

To me this album represents days where bold musicians had a lot of room and space for creativity, sadly this is the cancer today's dance music suffers from. genre fixation of the music, what is this - techno? house? dub step? grime ?

non of it, it is just pure electronic music, when Incunabula was released it was actually being played by DJ's all around the world, a few cuts were seriously a dance floor material. but now, no more - it is too "undefined" for the modern crowd who wants to know what genre is the music he dances too. we have become our own enemies to the self conciseness.

Who ever said electronic is not emotional suffers from blunted affect and should listen to this and it's spirit, even 20 years after this album was released very few artists come close to the high bar of quality Autechre has managed to set up with this classic work.

I`ve got this info from a trusted seller:

"All of the Autechre albums were (officially) repressed around this time (2001-ish). They can be difficult to tell apart from the original pressings (except Chiastic Slide, where the repress dosen't have the artwork on the inside of the sleeve) unless you're familiar with the runout etchings and centre labels of the originals.

On "Tri Repetae", the plant Warp used for the repress (Damont) has a distinctive slightly sunken centre to their labels, which this original pressing dosent have. These originals also have MPO runout etchings, the repress has Damont etchings.

The main visible identifier is the labels themselves - one ring on the original press, 2 rings on the later press.

But yes, the later pressings are also identified by the presence of Damont run-out etchings

All this is first-hand information, but there are also quite a few references (very few that are hugely useful unfortunately) to various Warp repressings from the early 2000's around the web."