Autechre - Untilted (8 tracks) +Album Reviews

Who can number the grains of sound by the seashore?

P. Gunderson | San Diego, CA USA | 04/19/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

""Untilted" is another fine installment in the Autechre canon.

While their music has been called chaotic by detractors, any electronic musician who has attempted to emulate Autechre's unique sound will tell you that their programming is fiendishly complex and very, very precise. Randomly programming beats into a drum machine will no more get you Autechre's sound than dribbling paint on canvas will get you a Jackson Pollock painting.

This stuff obviously isn't easy listening, but it isn't really esoteric, either. Autechre are simply exploring the physical properties of sound, especially those liminal points--so dispraised in popular music--where a sound moves across the traditionally policed categorical distinctions between melody, rhythm, and texture. We hear texture becoming rhythm and rhythm becoming melody. Hearing such music can be discomfiting because there are no functional parts to recognize ("Hey, where's the bass line?") but only particles of sound arranged into new constellations (just as in a Pollock painting representational space has been left well behind). Such discomfort, however, is only a precursor to the excitement of experiencing the world anew--free from the dull constraints of habit and expectation. Autechre makes new music, but, more importantly, they give us new ears for all music. They make music itself new."

Still godly

Wheelchair Assassin | The Great Concavity | 05/14/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Decades ago, a famous sportswriter, apparently tired of criticisms of his favorite sport, wrote "baseball is dull only to those with dull minds". While that point is certainly debatable when it comes to the national pastime (this guy wrote before the days of three-hour games), it applies equally well to the work of Autechre. This English duo (Sean Booth and Rob Brown, if you want to get all specific) has spent the past decade or so composing some of the most original and experimental electronic music ever made (oh, screw it, this is some of the most original and experimental MUSIC ever made, period), winning a small army of enthusiastic converts while alienating others who apparently can't figure out how an hour of glitches and bleeps constitutes music. That said, there aren't a lot of artists out there who can consistently come out with something at least interesting, and whatever one thinks of them, Autechre do manage to challenge perceptions and screw up minds with each successive release. In spite of some accusations, whatever else Autechre may be, they're not dull.

Anyway, this all leads us to Untilted, the eighth album in the Autechre canon and one that should please all those looking for their customary blend of bizarrely arranged bleeps, sweeps, and creeps. Despite occasionally bringing in sounds somewhat similar to the dronings on an MRI machine, Untilted is a surpisingly musical release, occasionally managing to sound catchy even amidst a flurry of determinedly abstract time signatures and song structures. At the same time, Untitled is still an Autechre release, and as such the focus remains on feeding your brain first and foremost. As you'd expect from the group that brought us Tri Repetae ++ and Confield, intellectually severe, high-speed musical calculus is the order of the day.

I personally found this album to be somewhat more instantly gratifying than its predecessor Draft 7.30, but that doesn't mean there aren't voluminous reams of complexity for you to decipher. Tracks open with a frenzy of spastic beats and pummelling percussion before gradually evolving into slower, more atmospheric pieces without sacrificing Autechre's trademark mathematical precision. Dense, rapid-fire sensory overload steadily gives way to hypnotic drones that are only somewhat interrupted by the jagged sounds that skid over them. Booming backbeats, out-of-time glitches, and even some subtle melodic underpinnings are interspersed into bizarre, ever-shifting sonic landscapes. New and fascinating uses for the drum machine are repeatedly discovered, with slice-and-dice programming (especially on the brilliant Augmatic Disport) that almost redeems the machine's use on countless boy-band atrocities. And the epic, 15-minute closer Sublimit cycles through every trick in Autechre's book, easily ranking among the most convincing displays of their demented genius as it staggers and stutters through a dizzying array of beats and textures.

In the end, Untilted is a quintessential Autechre album: strange, abstract, unique, and sure to be divisive. However, as a fan of Sean and Rob's work, I for one wouldn't have it any other way. While the forthcoming Meshuggah full-length will probably ending up grabbing my coveted album of the year designation, for now Untilted holds the top spot."

Tilted in the right direction

Catfood03 | in front of my computer typing reviews | 02/07/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Autechre's Rob Brown and Sean Booth have done it again. Track for track UNTILTED is one of the duo's most confident and consistently rewarding accomplishments. If you think that a band of this longevity has lost its ability to surprise then you're missing out on some of Autechre's best work in years. There IS something new going on with this record. It's more of a new approach to composition than anything having to do with beats, melodies or sound effects. Each track runs through more ideas and musical turns than what the band has presented before, so much so that hardly a track on this album ends quite as it started. This may explain the only 8 tracks (the fewest number on an Autechre full-length) and hour+ running time.

UNTILTED gets right down to business with the pummeling beats of "LCC". The pacing is fast, the percussion hits hard and, for at least a couple minutes, a predictable rhythmic pattern presents itself. Of course this being Autechre nothing stays on steady course for long. Soon the rhythm track trips over itself before succumbing to a grinding halt giving way to a more spacious, open sound where darkly angelic keyboard touches sing as if filling a cathedral.

"Ipacial Section" follows next where a strange mix of plucking string sounds and metallic crashes compete for space. The melodic highlight comes from looping a brief passage of what sounds like a human voice singing, or it could be machinery, either way it sounds utterly mechanical and yet heavenly at the same time.

The next two tracks, "Pro Radii" and "Augmatic Disport", contains UNTILTED's most disorienting and darkest moments. The former erupts with a thunderous pounding of drums (be careful for your speakers, or eardrums, on this one) while recordings of crowd noises and the clipped dialogue of a man's voice broadcasts amongst the chaos. The song runs through several brief passages before building to a thrilling climax of overlapping drums that threaten to overtake every corner of audible space.

There is no sanctuary from the chaos with the arrival of the frenzied "Disport" with its schizophrenic percussion that alternately collapses and reforms within a moment's interval. Whereas some Autechre songs tend to progress through decay and distortion, "Disport" slowly pieces itself together, not unlike watching a film of glass breaking in reverse (in very slow motion), until what remains is the steady pulse of subterranean bass.

Two shorter pieces follow. "Iera" launches the second half of UNTILTED with a swarm of garbled bass, backed by a fragile rhythm track that nearly forms a hip-hop beat. "Fermium" maintains a playful, arcade-like innocence, even while sharing its space with the clutter of clattering metal scraping the surface.

"The Trees" is one of the UNTILTED's standout offerings. A menacing keyboard melody underpins the track's percussion which snaps and crackles like brittle twigs. The percussion eventually breaks itself apart revealing a field of feedback noise which engulfs the music into a muffled distortion at the track's concluding moments.

UNTITLED concludes with "Sublimit". The first half jitters with a nervous tic of bass and snare continuously shifting their allegiances to one another (including a quite humorous interjection of some cheap synthesized horn blasts and retro drum machine). The second half takes a completely different direction in mood and texture. Here sounds become entirely submerged, with faraway clicks and beeps echoing as if transmitted from a submarine fathoms deep. A strange mechanized voice and a ghostly keyboard melody eerily rises to the surface to lead the listener to the slow fade-out of the album's conclusion.

Autechre has been, for many years, a band whose music has been very precious to me. They have a singular vision of their work and have stuck faithfully to it. This is a band clearly inspired by the groundwork laid by early pioneers in rap and techno. Booth and Brown doesn't succumb to these musical formulas, but rather invokes them abstractly through their own filter, of which UNTILTED is an excellent example.

Final Rating: 4 out of 5.

Favorite tracks: "Ipacial Section", "Augmatic Disport", "The Trees""

Autechre strikes once again!

Max | Quebec, Canada | 04/25/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Having now left behind 8 full albums and a great batch of EPs, Autechre shows us that they simply refuse to settle down and continue in their pathway to push back the meaning of the word "music". While Untilted (do not confuse this with "Untitled" like I did!) isn't a revolutionary album, this is undoubtly an album on which it's two members, UK's Sean Booth and Rob Brown, feel more focused than ever.

The highly experimental direction the group has took ever since EP7 and the pretty controversial Confield (which has confounded critics and fans alike since it's publishing and still continues to raise questions now) is still present, but this is most likely the most accessible album they've made out of this canon since then. Draft 7.30, while being an excellent album, still felt like a step backwards for the group, with them being unsure about the direction they would follow on next. After listening to Untilted a few times, I'd be willing to stay that this is the expected logical progression of Confield.

"LCC" gets things started up without wasting any time, opening with a fiery, yet actually catchy drum track that actually reminds us of some earlier Autechre tracks. I'd even dare to say that the drum track reminds me of some old-school electro music and some of the tracks on the album conveys that feeling as well (such as the actually straight-faced and pretty musical "The Trees", which is one of the few Autechre songs to have a real name, to boot). Half-way through it's running time, "LCC" suddently switches gear, then slows down the drum programming to lay down haunting, moody melodies that give chills.

"Ipacial Section" is next, showing off clearly the intent of this album. While Confield was more ambient-based and used it's percussion to liven up the environnements they were trying to create, the beats clearly are the center stage of the album and the way they are layered around the album make sure that you will be kept well alert and interested through the pieces. It even shows up at times a pretty playful edge, which is something that hasn't been much present in Autechre's catalog. "Ipacial Section"'s opening beats recalls us a broken toy machine which seems desperate to try placing it's pieces back together. Like many of the songs in that album, it completely switches moods about through the middle and end up sounding nothing like the intro would have suggested. This is actually one of the first Autechre albums I recall which tries to focus on several moods and sections through a single tune, making the material incredibly varied and interesting. Even though most of the songs here have long running times, none of the songs here can get boring anywhere, with the huge amount of ideas being shown at every part.

With all of the following comments, it almost seems like that this entire album was created for the sake of exploring only basic pop music elements, but don't worry. Autechre still shows their regard for musical experimentation through all of the tracks shown there. "Pro Radii" features cavernous drums pulsing deeply through the speakers with the images of a MC and crowd shouting out loud through the barrage of percussion heard. The track even showcases industrial drumming through it, which would recall a fan of their Chiastic Slide record. "Augmatic Disport" is a totally stunning piece in which Autechre displays their incredible talent at programming drums. The percussion here is awe-inspiring and heart-stopping. Fans of the single Gantz Graf will listen to this piece over and over again, as it's greatly inspired from that piece.

"Sublimit" closes the album with being the longest tune that Autechre has produced so far. Clocking in at a whopping 16 minutes, this song is anything but. This song does not only serves at a pretty faithful reminder of all of the ideas explored through all of Untilted's songs, but it's a terrific closer as well. Like all of the material here, it's chock-full of ideas, it's actually pretty listenable and there are so many reasons to come back to it with all of the details to pick up. I wouldn't be surprised if the idea behind this song was to show off Autechre's vision as to what a pop song should be.

If you've been following the group since quite a while already, there is simply no way that you can ignore this album. Repeated listens will most likely make it your new favorite album of your Autechre discography. If there were still doubters over of Autechre's beat-driven approach, this should be the album to settle it all. If you're unfamiliar with Autechre, this might not the album to start off listening to the duo (it requires a trained ear to listen to such music with a straight face), you should head off toward Tri Repetae++ or LP5 firstly in order to get an easier taste of the group. Also, make sure you have high quality listening equipement. This is what possibly makes or brakes this album. Headphones are truly the best way to appreciate this album, and we're talking about expensive headphones there. Forget hearing Untilted (or any Autechre album for the record) on a pair of cheap Discman headphones, they won't give proper tribute to their music.

The low point is: if you feel like going on an adventurous musical voyage, you just can't go wrong with this album. That or any Autechre album for the record. I wonder what those guys will conjure up on their next album, now... who knows?"

Music that doesn't exist in this universe

Brett Milner | COOKEVILLE, TN United States | 04/20/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"With this release, Autechre has successfully merged the abstraction of ep7 and Gantz Graf with the minimalist beauty of Amber, or even Confield. It's not overly dense, as some of their more experimental work (experimental being a VERY relative term here) tends to be. "Ipacial Section" and "Augmatic Disport" are particulary stunning, in terms of how those two tracks evolve and shift. What would be called a "change up" in a conventional song structure is more of an inversion or transformation, and it's done in such a way that would be damned hard, if not impossible, to reproduce with acoustic instruments.

And that is the key to grasping what Autechre is doing- it's not "cheating" as many traditional musicians say about electronica, by programming everything and not actually playing an instrument. Booth and Brown seem to be using their tools appropriately, exploring what can be done when traditional structure can be discarded, when the drummer doesn't have to keep a particular time, and the guitarist doesn't have to know what key the song is in. These aren't songs. They're constructs made of sound, and I was able to "get" Autechre much better once I began to think of it in those terms. The mental image I get most frequently is of music that exists in a space independent of any other reality, in a direction that you can't point to.

It's definitely not for everyone, and that's not a criticism- I know many people with great, eclectic musical tastes who don't care for this at all. But if you spend the time and find that you do get it, the payoff is so worth it. This one in particular is one of their bests, and a culmination of the stylistic changes they've been trying out over the last few releases. Some will say to try earlier, more accessible releases first if you are new to Autechre. "Untilted" is well executed enough that anyone who will approach it openly should dive right in.

One last thing- be sure to use good equipment, preferably a pair of Sennheiser or Grado headphones. Most portable CD players have such mediocre sound ouput that you are much better off encoding to a high-variable bitrate and listening with an iPod, or a headphone amp connected to a component CD player. There are subtleties that you WILL miss listening to it over computer speakers, cheap (under $50) headphones or cheap department store boom boxes. This is true of all Autechre releases, and this one in particular."

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