26-03-2010, 00:03
released Mar 23rd, 2010
![[Image: 200px-Autechre_-_Oversteps.jpg]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/cc/Autechre_-_Oversteps.jpg/200px-Autechre_-_Oversteps.jpg)
from the album - see on see
YouTube - Autechre- see on see
from all music
Like Aphex Twin, Autechre were about as close to being techno superstars as the tenets of their genre and the limitations of their audience allowed. Through a series of full-length works and a smattering of EPs on Warp, Clear, and their own Skam label, Autechre consistently garnered the praise of press and public alike. Unlike many of their more club-bound colleagues, however, Autechre's Sean Booth and Rob Brown had roots planted firmly in American electro, and though the more mood-based, sharply digital texture of their update seemed to speak otherwise, it was through early 12"s like Egyptian Lover's "Egypt, Egypt," Grandmaster Flash's "Scorpio," and "Pretty" Tony Butler's "Get Some" that their combined aesthetic began to form.
Booth and Brown met through a mutual friend, trading junked-up pause-button mixtapes of their favorite singles back and forth. Happening onto some bargain-basement analog gear through questionable circumstances, the pair began experimenting with their own music before they were out of high school. After some disastrous experiences with a few small labels, the pair sent a tape off to Warp Records, whose early releases by Sweet Exorcist, Nightmares on Wax, and B12 were announcing a new age in U.K.-based techno (and one in which Autechre would become a key component). Releasing a handful of early singles through the label, Autechre's first stabs were collected on their debut full-length, Incunabula, as well as the 10" box set remix EP Basscadet.
Subsequent albums would reach a wider audience through stateside reissue, first on Wax Trax!/TVT, later on Nothing (the label managed by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor), and finally through a stateside branch of Warp. Although stylistically rooted, affectations for the ponderous extend beyond their name and track titles ("C/Pach," "Bronchusevenmx24"), with the basic premise of their approach being music without a whole lot of stylistic baggage but plenty of DSP'ed-to-death hyper-programming. Later albums like Untilted (2005), Quaristice (2008), and Oversteps (2010) were not as groundbreaking, yet Autechre easily retained one of the most distinctive sounds in the world of electronica.
In addition to Autechre, Booth and Brown released material as Gescom on their own Skam imprint and through the Clear label, most notably the Sounds of Machines Our Parents Used EP on the latter. The group also provided a number of memorable remixes (oftentimes more memorable than the original material) for artists including Palmskin Productions, Slowly, Mike Ink, DJ Food, Scorn, Skinny Puppy, Tortoise, Phoenecia, Various Artists, and the Black Dog.
album review from drowned in sound
To impose a narrative is an attempt to control chaos. Thatâs why William Burroughs â a man whose entire literary oeuvre assaulted the concept of control personified by the âThought Policeâ â deliberately eschewed standard notions of structure in novels like Naked Lunch and The Place Of Dead Roads. He replaced plot and character with kaleidoscopes of apparently random imagery which mirrored the chaos he regarded as mankindâs most natural state. Itâs an idea that â in some ways â seems to have informed Autechre over the past two decades, with Sean Booth and Rob Brown producing music that seems designed to confound anyone trying to categorise or even simply explain it as anything other than just pure sound.
That absence of linearity isnât just apparent in the tracks themselves and the way they continuously splinter off in a dozen different directions, but also in the fact that itâs impossible to talk about âcareer progressionâ with Autechre in the accepted sense. Where most bands or producers refine elements or move more towards one direction with every new release â meaning you can draw a vague line throughout their back catalogue even if its only one of âbest fitâ â when listening back to Autechreâs previous releases itâs difficult to know where they stand on a chronological timescale. Their output has always been defined by apparent volte faces and lateral leaps from album to album: if you were to attempt to draw a line between the proto-IDM of 1993âs Incunabula to the molecular breakdown of 2008âs Quaristice via the skeletal textures of 1997âs Chiastic Slide, it would look less like a graceful arc than the scribbling of a seismograph gone haywire.
Like Burroughs however, Autechreâs music is also easy to dismiss as either wilfully difficult or the product of drug-frazzled minds. Yet while even his most ardent fans would admit that Burroughsâ style ossified somewhat as he recycled the same motifs of drug addiction and homosexuality, Autechre continue to challenge preconceptions with every new release, as is apparent on Oversteps. If you wanted to give someone a book which best encapsulated Burroughs youâd head for his earlier works like Naked Lunch rather than the meanderings of his later writings, but if you wanted to name an Autechre album as the perfect introduction to someone who doesnât otherwise âgetâ them then, after nine albums in 17 years, Oversteps would be the one.
Although âaccessibleâ is almost certainly the wrong word for an album that initially still seems as imposing as an abandoned warehouse surrounded by nine feet of razor wire, Autechreâs tenth album does have entry points for the casual listener. The most obvious example of this is the fact that the beats â which have often been brutally foregrounded before â are now not only buried further down but actually slide into the sounds around them like a glove rather than tearing through their skin. âTrealeâ, for example, has a fairly straightforward hip-hop rhythm that never deviates from its funereal march, whilst âD-Sho Qubâ is almost danceable (in the strange sense of vintage Detroit techno dissolving back into its own entrails). Plus, with the repetition of certain elements such as the warped chiming sounds that first crop up in âKnown (1)â and then reappear in âO=0â, Oversteps feels more like a cohesive soundtrack to something than Autechre have ever produced before. Indeed, the shimmering âSee On Seeâ sounds tailor-made to accompany sky-gazing footage from Wonders Of The Solar System.
If anyone needs to draw connections between Oversteps and other albums in Autechreâs earlier canon then the most obvious parallel is with 1994âs semi ambient Amber. But the records Oversteps actually has more in common with are Future Sound Of Londonâs mid-âNineties masterpieces Lifeforms, ISDN and Dead Cities. As with those albums, the tracks here all seem to blossom out of each other to immerse the listener in a synaesthetic environment. Of those three, itâs ISDN that Oversteps most evokes in its restlessness and dark timbre, but also because â whilst the internet technology Future Sound Of London used to record and broadcast that album in 1994 was revolutionary then - itâs now so commonplace as to seem almost antique today. Likewise Oversteps suggests not a super-sleek world of instant information access and social networking, but one built from decaying old modems clogged with corrupted data and sinister secrets, an effect probably heightened by Brown and Boothâs known penchant for rewiring old analogue equipment and programming their own arcane algorithms over simply downloading the latest Pro Tools plug-in. Itâs common currency to call any electronic music âfuturisticâ, but Oversteps really is nothing of the sort, since the vistas it conjures up are almost bizarrely similar to the Lancastrian landscape of Dovesâ Kingdom Of Rust. The opening âRessâ is almost like an auditory version of the nocturnal panorama from the moors above Brown and Boothâs Rochdale base; beats and clicks winding through like the blood-red tail-lights of the M62 in the distance, the melodies staining the track with a chemical tint the same as the skies above a power station at night.
Of course, a large part of Autechreâs power has always been their ability to provoke such individual and emotional perceptions from abstract sounds. Tracks like âRedfallâ and âKrYlonâ are as allusive and shapeshifting as ever, the space between the sounds evoking not just the moors but also the best minimal techno. Yet where producers like Akufen or Robert Hood craft their tracks using the most exiguous of sounds, Booth and Brown seem to smelt and crush liquid textures more akin to molten steel into huge sculptural shapes. However, what marks Oversteps out is that the overall form of the album now seems easier to discern as an actual single entity, without it losing any of the scale of their previous work. Diehard fans neednât worry that Autechre have diluted themselves in that respect, for Oversteps is still a challenging listen, and one which reveals endless layers of new detail with each spin. But itâs also their most instantly rewarding â and arguably best â album to date. A fact which is almost a story in itself
Track Listing
1."r ess" - 5:13
2."ilanders" - 5:32
3."known(1)" - 4:43
4."pt2ph8" - 4:10
5."qplay" - 4:39
6."see on see" - 4:37
7."Treale" - 6:05
8."os veix3" - 4:38
9."O=0" - 4:53
10."d-sho qub" - 6:26
11."st epreo" - 4:08
12."redfall" - 3:49
13."krYlon" - 6:09
14."Yuop" - 6:22
from the album - see on see
YouTube - Autechre- see on see
from all music
Like Aphex Twin, Autechre were about as close to being techno superstars as the tenets of their genre and the limitations of their audience allowed. Through a series of full-length works and a smattering of EPs on Warp, Clear, and their own Skam label, Autechre consistently garnered the praise of press and public alike. Unlike many of their more club-bound colleagues, however, Autechre's Sean Booth and Rob Brown had roots planted firmly in American electro, and though the more mood-based, sharply digital texture of their update seemed to speak otherwise, it was through early 12"s like Egyptian Lover's "Egypt, Egypt," Grandmaster Flash's "Scorpio," and "Pretty" Tony Butler's "Get Some" that their combined aesthetic began to form.
Booth and Brown met through a mutual friend, trading junked-up pause-button mixtapes of their favorite singles back and forth. Happening onto some bargain-basement analog gear through questionable circumstances, the pair began experimenting with their own music before they were out of high school. After some disastrous experiences with a few small labels, the pair sent a tape off to Warp Records, whose early releases by Sweet Exorcist, Nightmares on Wax, and B12 were announcing a new age in U.K.-based techno (and one in which Autechre would become a key component). Releasing a handful of early singles through the label, Autechre's first stabs were collected on their debut full-length, Incunabula, as well as the 10" box set remix EP Basscadet.
Subsequent albums would reach a wider audience through stateside reissue, first on Wax Trax!/TVT, later on Nothing (the label managed by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor), and finally through a stateside branch of Warp. Although stylistically rooted, affectations for the ponderous extend beyond their name and track titles ("C/Pach," "Bronchusevenmx24"), with the basic premise of their approach being music without a whole lot of stylistic baggage but plenty of DSP'ed-to-death hyper-programming. Later albums like Untilted (2005), Quaristice (2008), and Oversteps (2010) were not as groundbreaking, yet Autechre easily retained one of the most distinctive sounds in the world of electronica.
In addition to Autechre, Booth and Brown released material as Gescom on their own Skam imprint and through the Clear label, most notably the Sounds of Machines Our Parents Used EP on the latter. The group also provided a number of memorable remixes (oftentimes more memorable than the original material) for artists including Palmskin Productions, Slowly, Mike Ink, DJ Food, Scorn, Skinny Puppy, Tortoise, Phoenecia, Various Artists, and the Black Dog.
album review from drowned in sound
To impose a narrative is an attempt to control chaos. Thatâs why William Burroughs â a man whose entire literary oeuvre assaulted the concept of control personified by the âThought Policeâ â deliberately eschewed standard notions of structure in novels like Naked Lunch and The Place Of Dead Roads. He replaced plot and character with kaleidoscopes of apparently random imagery which mirrored the chaos he regarded as mankindâs most natural state. Itâs an idea that â in some ways â seems to have informed Autechre over the past two decades, with Sean Booth and Rob Brown producing music that seems designed to confound anyone trying to categorise or even simply explain it as anything other than just pure sound.
That absence of linearity isnât just apparent in the tracks themselves and the way they continuously splinter off in a dozen different directions, but also in the fact that itâs impossible to talk about âcareer progressionâ with Autechre in the accepted sense. Where most bands or producers refine elements or move more towards one direction with every new release â meaning you can draw a vague line throughout their back catalogue even if its only one of âbest fitâ â when listening back to Autechreâs previous releases itâs difficult to know where they stand on a chronological timescale. Their output has always been defined by apparent volte faces and lateral leaps from album to album: if you were to attempt to draw a line between the proto-IDM of 1993âs Incunabula to the molecular breakdown of 2008âs Quaristice via the skeletal textures of 1997âs Chiastic Slide, it would look less like a graceful arc than the scribbling of a seismograph gone haywire.
Like Burroughs however, Autechreâs music is also easy to dismiss as either wilfully difficult or the product of drug-frazzled minds. Yet while even his most ardent fans would admit that Burroughsâ style ossified somewhat as he recycled the same motifs of drug addiction and homosexuality, Autechre continue to challenge preconceptions with every new release, as is apparent on Oversteps. If you wanted to give someone a book which best encapsulated Burroughs youâd head for his earlier works like Naked Lunch rather than the meanderings of his later writings, but if you wanted to name an Autechre album as the perfect introduction to someone who doesnât otherwise âgetâ them then, after nine albums in 17 years, Oversteps would be the one.
Although âaccessibleâ is almost certainly the wrong word for an album that initially still seems as imposing as an abandoned warehouse surrounded by nine feet of razor wire, Autechreâs tenth album does have entry points for the casual listener. The most obvious example of this is the fact that the beats â which have often been brutally foregrounded before â are now not only buried further down but actually slide into the sounds around them like a glove rather than tearing through their skin. âTrealeâ, for example, has a fairly straightforward hip-hop rhythm that never deviates from its funereal march, whilst âD-Sho Qubâ is almost danceable (in the strange sense of vintage Detroit techno dissolving back into its own entrails). Plus, with the repetition of certain elements such as the warped chiming sounds that first crop up in âKnown (1)â and then reappear in âO=0â, Oversteps feels more like a cohesive soundtrack to something than Autechre have ever produced before. Indeed, the shimmering âSee On Seeâ sounds tailor-made to accompany sky-gazing footage from Wonders Of The Solar System.
If anyone needs to draw connections between Oversteps and other albums in Autechreâs earlier canon then the most obvious parallel is with 1994âs semi ambient Amber. But the records Oversteps actually has more in common with are Future Sound Of Londonâs mid-âNineties masterpieces Lifeforms, ISDN and Dead Cities. As with those albums, the tracks here all seem to blossom out of each other to immerse the listener in a synaesthetic environment. Of those three, itâs ISDN that Oversteps most evokes in its restlessness and dark timbre, but also because â whilst the internet technology Future Sound Of London used to record and broadcast that album in 1994 was revolutionary then - itâs now so commonplace as to seem almost antique today. Likewise Oversteps suggests not a super-sleek world of instant information access and social networking, but one built from decaying old modems clogged with corrupted data and sinister secrets, an effect probably heightened by Brown and Boothâs known penchant for rewiring old analogue equipment and programming their own arcane algorithms over simply downloading the latest Pro Tools plug-in. Itâs common currency to call any electronic music âfuturisticâ, but Oversteps really is nothing of the sort, since the vistas it conjures up are almost bizarrely similar to the Lancastrian landscape of Dovesâ Kingdom Of Rust. The opening âRessâ is almost like an auditory version of the nocturnal panorama from the moors above Brown and Boothâs Rochdale base; beats and clicks winding through like the blood-red tail-lights of the M62 in the distance, the melodies staining the track with a chemical tint the same as the skies above a power station at night.
Of course, a large part of Autechreâs power has always been their ability to provoke such individual and emotional perceptions from abstract sounds. Tracks like âRedfallâ and âKrYlonâ are as allusive and shapeshifting as ever, the space between the sounds evoking not just the moors but also the best minimal techno. Yet where producers like Akufen or Robert Hood craft their tracks using the most exiguous of sounds, Booth and Brown seem to smelt and crush liquid textures more akin to molten steel into huge sculptural shapes. However, what marks Oversteps out is that the overall form of the album now seems easier to discern as an actual single entity, without it losing any of the scale of their previous work. Diehard fans neednât worry that Autechre have diluted themselves in that respect, for Oversteps is still a challenging listen, and one which reveals endless layers of new detail with each spin. But itâs also their most instantly rewarding â and arguably best â album to date. A fact which is almost a story in itself
Track Listing
1."r ess" - 5:13
2."ilanders" - 5:32
3."known(1)" - 4:43
4."pt2ph8" - 4:10
5."qplay" - 4:39
6."see on see" - 4:37
7."Treale" - 6:05
8."os veix3" - 4:38
9."O=0" - 4:53
10."d-sho qub" - 6:26
11."st epreo" - 4:08
12."redfall" - 3:49
13."krYlon" - 6:09
14."Yuop" - 6:22