In honor of Autechre’s show at Berbati’s tomorrow night, here’s a couple totally amazing mp3s. Autechre were/are torchbearers of the electronic / IDM genre, right up there with Aphex Twin, mu-Ziq, Black Dog, etc. They started out by simultaneously slowing down and slicing up techno, making room for desert-landscape melodies and sci-fi noir ambientude. That phase peaked with the amazing Tri Repetae++ album. Then they got really really into their DSP plugins, released the equally amazing LP5, and gradually disappeared up their own cyborg asses (taking pretty much the entire IDM scene with them). That’s not really fair though; I listened to their new one Untilted (NOT “Untitled” – tricky!) the other day and it’s actually pretty good. OK, here’s some music:
Gescom - Viral Rival (rmxd by ae)
Gescom is Autechre plus a rotating cast of friends, so this track is essentially Autechre remixing themselves (confusing, right?). It sure sounds like Autechre, and my favorite kind – perfectly anti-funk machine beats and lonely cellphone melodies peeling out over the void. It’s taken off the This 12″ they released on Skam in 1998. I just discovered it in the back of my hard drive, dusty and digital, waiting to blow my mind. So good.
I don’t know where to start with this song. Taken from the Anvil Vapre EP (also on the second disc of Tri Repetae++ in the USA), this is definitely my favorite Autechre track, and yeah probably one of my favorite pieces of recorded music ever. The five notes that come in towards the end are sublime. Locking into stumbling cricket-snap percussion and mournful synth pizzicatos, they pin the tail on the mechanical donkey and peer out over galaxies with a tear in their eye. OK, so notes don’t have eyes but I can only blabber and efuse and say beautiful over and over again, so you’re probably better off just listening to the song. (The Wire described it perfectly in their “In Praise of the Riff” issue, which I unfortunately can’t find online.)
