Autechre – Confield

I always thought Parhelic Triangle bassline was made using elastic bands stretched over a box, and it was, as told by SB on twitch
and further, a balinese rekong

funk

i've never really been able to vibe with this album, even though i actually quite like a good chunk of autechre's modern stuff. i just kinda feel like they shat the bed with this one. i mean, don't get me wrong, there are a few good tracks here, like "Uviol" & "VI Scose Poise", its just that most of them are kinda "meh", if you get what i mean.

This album will always be my favourite by them. Absolutely fantastic!!

Pen Expers, oh my god, what a track!!!

10/10

Astounding music, and a precursor to exai, elseq, and NTS seasons in my opinion. Just mind bending trippy stuff, sounds that are so deep and complex that I feel like I can analyze a single crunching sound for what seems like forever and not fully wrap my mind around it, let alone grasping an entire album's worth. I seriously doubt I'll ever grow tired of this album, and own CD, LP, and digital. It's just amazing.

Easily one of the funkiest albums in my collection. Pure, unadulterated, robotically syncopated machine funk.
In case I haven't been clear, this is all about the FUNK.
Funky, funky electronic music.

"Confield" represents the point at which Autechre fully embrace being boring. Everything is rendered in shades of gray. It's like watching a spinning chipped plate slowly find the floor. The next track is just a differently shaped plate.

Just read a review from a guy who got a vinyl copy of Confield that was pressed off center. "You can't even tell because the music is so disjointed," he said. This was to him a good thing. But that fact is extremely telling. I suspect that if you scrambled up Confield like an egg, it would still sound mostly the same and the Ae fanboys would be gushing over it.

Confield is Autechre's Metal Machine Music, except Metal Machine Music was actually good.

True, Confield does have its meager merits, even if I think it documented the point where Sean and Rob disappeared up their own asses.

Love it or hate it, it's a slog and rewards less and less with repeated listens. I would rather hear "Chiastic Slide" by a wide margin. I haven't sold Confield, but I can't remember the last time I listened to it. If I listen again, it will be to remind myself of why I don't listen to it.

Edit: I finally sold Confield to someone who will presumably enjoy it more than I did.

Edit: It's 2024, and this album is still shit. It's not forward thinking. It's embarrassing in its lack of riches. Want to hear something miles better? LP5.

I have to say, listening now to the copy I bought in 2001, it sounds very very good to my 2020 ears. Future-proof electro!

Can anyone confirm they have a 'White tray jewel case' as described in the notes above? My copy has a clear, transparent jewel case tray, not white, allowing the artwork underneath to be visible. I suspect they're all like that and the notes are just poorly written.

Un excelente álbum y uno de los mas interesantes que he escuchado en mi vida. Lamentablemente este álbum algunos de sus fanáticos fueron alejados o mas bien, no fueron contentos con este álbum, solo porque no hay melodías ambientales y cálidas. Pero las cosas no siempre tienen que ser las mismas, hay que cambiar y evolucionar el estilo.

Sus canciones en este álbum me parecen muy buenas e creativas. Su toque oscuro, loco y complejo, es lo que lo hace especial este álbum. Mis canciones favoritas son: "Eidetic Casein", "VI Scose Poise" , "Pen Express" y "Lentic Catachresis"

5/5

The mid-1990s saw Autechre embark on a pilgrimage away from the ambient techno of their debut. By the turn of the century, they'd covered some pretty strange territory, like the whirring, complex LP5 and arid ep7. But none of that could've prepared listeners for 2001's Confield. Fans hoping for a return to more familiar sounds must've figured that the duo had finally gone off the deep end.

And at first glance, it's hard to blame them. Confield is alien: every detail seems off-kilter and unfamiliar. Bass and percussion co-mingle. Melodic accents drift in, stuttering, then vanish. Tempo is kept by insectoid munching noises. The instrumental timbres are unearthly. It better resembles a snooty musique concrète experiment than the rest of the Warp catalog.

And yet the result is… actually good. The gentle opener "VI Scose Poise" conjures up images of a spinning top in some antiseptic surgical suite. "Cfern" breaks into an unexpected swing, and might've been called jazz if the rhythm and marimba parts weren't played by a computer running Max/MSP patches or whatever. "Sim Geshel" takes a darker turn, propelled along by relentless martial clicks.

The album peaks with "Parhelic Triangle", a great example of everything gone wrong and right at the same time. "Parhelic" is like a bizarro world dance track. It has all the normal components, but they're just… off. There's a part that's almost a breakbeat, but it's mangled and out of step, looping irregularly against a triad of hollow bells lurking in the background. There are chord progressions but they're dreary and cold. It even has the frail, halting ghost of a snare rush. The overall effect is beyond disconcerting. It falls into uncanny-valley territory, like listening to club music written by a sentient ant colony.

"Bine", the album's only real flop, shows just how fine a line the producers have walked between regularity and chaos. It's less structured than the other tracks and suffers for it, never resolving into an interesting whole.

Fortunately it's followed by more good stuff. "Eidetic Casein" locks into a downtempo groove built around detuned gamelan-like sounds. "Uivol" begins as a tranquil ambient piece, but ominous disturbances appear on the horizon. Finally "Lentic Catachresis" shakes apart Confield's already fractured structure until nothing is left.

One thing I enjoy about this album is how little compromise you'll find. There's an inner logic that reveals itself with careful listening, but Confield doesn't extend any special effort to draw you in. It's an artistic statement that you can take or leave as it stands.

As you might expect from something so odd, it has aged very little. While the mastering does seem a bit thin for contemporary ears, the music still sounds almost as foreign as it did way back in April 2001. In fact, even Autechre themselves retreated from this direction somewhat: they have never returned to Confield's austere formalism, and their subsequent records don't have quite the same tone or feel.

So, Confield is unique. It's worth approaching on its own terms. I recommended it to daring listeners, and especially anyone who finds electronic music boring or predictable. If this album doesn't surprise you, nothing will.