Label: Warp Format: 2×12″,CD
The first challenge to Autechre‘s latest release is which side to play. I received a blank CD, no markings, nothing to even hint that it had passed through the hands of Messrs Booth & Brown. I’ve not seen the version that’s going out for release, but I hold out the hope that it too will be just as uninformative. (It’s black – Ed.). EP7 isn’t really an EP, as it lasts for 70 minutes, which is somewhat longer that an EP in my book, but this is definitely Autechre. Once again, some really rather nice ambient tracks get the Ae corruption treatment. I can’t quite pin down what it is that they do to music, but there’s something subtly not quite right about it. It’s warped, as if the music and not the record was left too close to a radiator.
The track titles are just as mangled. What about “RPEG”? Is it a tune or a new multimedia format? At a guess I’d say both. Then theres “Ccec,” “Liccflii” and “Netlon Sentinel”. What do any of these mean? I don`t know, but the latter should be given the best title of the year award.
Consider “Dropp”; this became an instant favourite of mine. It starts of with a piano like sounds that rambles around as aimlessly as a John Cage piece. All very nice in a meaningless way, then deformed HipHop/white noise/bag of rusty bolts rhythm drops out of nowhere and starts churning around. After heading nowhere for an unspecified time, the whole piece falls apart when it can no longer sustain itself. So, having got this far it looks like Autechre haven’t embarked out into new dimensions. That’s true enough, they are refining and working with what they already have – and that’s something pretty unique. No other group manage to sound so thrown together at the last minute. Only they manage to get the perfect MIDI to sound like it can’t keep up a straight rhythm – quite an achievement. This is one of the deceptive things about Autechre, the arbitrariness of their music hides their inventiveness and technical skill. After all, purely arbitrary throw it all together music inevitably winds up sounding like a pile of unlistenable shit.
EP7 is eleven highly crafted arbitrary and meandering tracks, very Autechreish, very good – make mine a pint of Schönberg.
-pfe-
