AUTECHRE: CONFIELD (2001)
1) VI Scose Poise; 2) Cfern;
3) Pen Expers; 4) Sim Gishel; 5) Parhelic Triangle; 6) Bine; 7) Eidetic Casein;
8) Uviol; 9) Lentic Catachresis.
«An album, to respect, not to enjoy», quoth the
All-Music Guide. Well, according to my personal philosophy, Autechre is
altogether an artistic unit to respect rather than enjoy — remembering this all
the time helps me warm up to their output like nothing else. And Confield is nothing but an expectable,
if not to say predictable, apex of this «respectability»: after spending years
on making music that seemed to be generated by artificial intelligence, Booth
and Brown finally put out an album that actually was generated by artificial intelligence.
Well, sort of, that is. In preparing Confield, the robotic duo relied
heavily on Max software, with the basis for most tracks electronically
generated from input clues. This does not mean that the input clues were
completely random, or that the results did not undergo heavy selection and were
not seriously doctored, pampered, and trussed up before release. But overall,
this is, indeed, as close as Autechre
ever got to letting the machines take over; and this time, even the heroes had
to admit that, perhaps, this music was not quite
suitable for a club environment.
Do the results bode well for a new age of
machine-generated music? Well... supposedly we still need time to understand
that, even now that a whole decade has elapsed since Confield made the headlines. The machines certainly prefer
percussive sound waves to playing with tones and the pitches, that is for
certain; and oh the variety! ʽVI Scose Poiseʼ sounds like a spinning top launched
in the bottom of a metal tub, travelling all over the perimeter at varying
angles and speeds. ʽCfernʼ is a spike-heeled mosquito tap-dancing atop a
malfunctioning jackhammer. ʽPen Expersʼ is Commander Data rehearsing a Jackie
Chan routine, receiving his instructions from a sped-up movie projection. ʽSim
Gishelʼ is a Geiger counter on overload, and so on (there's only so many
metaphoric descriptions one can generate for an Autechre review without
overheating).
The tonal stuff is much less interesting, to be
frank. There are actual notes on all the tracks, but on some of them they are
barely noticeable (ʽPen Expersʼ), and most of the time, they represent rather
unassuming minimalistic patterns that mainly act as ear tampons, or otherwise
the percussion dynamo could eventually cause irreversible damage. «Music» gets
a bit louder on ʽEidetic Caseinʼ, where discordant, chaotic, ominous cascades
of violin-organ-esque notes competes for attention with the crackling rhythms
on an almost equal basis. Everywhere else it simply provides a static
background to the active pulsating life of the rhythms.
As a self-certified human being (I hope!), one
of those billions of ultra-complex sets of machinery evolved over the past
several billion years, I find it even harder to attune my senses to these waves
than with any preceding Autechre record. I can survive, temporarily, on a bit
of percussion if it's an actual, well-improvised drum solo, but for hour-long
stretches of time I need more than that, no matter how weird or witty all the
clicks, cracks, and clangs may be sounding. But as a particularly bold
intellectual experiment, the meaning of Confield,
I suppose, is just to set you a-thinking. For instance, how close — even if
only by accident — could they have come to tapping into the emotional instincts
of... err... insects? Or tapeworms? Or single-cellular organisms?
Maybe, without knowing it, they have recreated some of the favorite dance
tunes of Micronuclearia podoventralis,
to name just one potentially grateful listener in my tummy. It might take us
years, or ages, to find out, of course, but we'll get there eventually.
From this or any similar point of view, Confield is a delight. From most
others, it is a nightmare, and even many of the critics halted in befuddlement
before spitting out a rating and a judgement. My original instinct was to give
in to hate and ramble about how people who do this should be dragged out into
the square and publicly, and humiliatingly de-artistified. But, honestly,
justifying this hatred requires a lengthy, elaborate philosophy of art and a
lengthy, elaborate pamphlet on why we could only live happily ever after once
we have all subscribed to that philosophy. To hell with it. I don't really like Confield, I don't hate Confield, I don't want to listen to any
more Confield, but I do feel as if the
actual experience extended some of the mind borders. Plus, I have serious
doubts about the album ever making it onto the «golden masterpieces» shelf, but
it could, in theory, point the way to
something entirely different... coming up in about five hundred years or so. With
an emotionally-driven thumbs down and an intellectually-fueled thumbs up cancelling
out each other, welcome to the big question mark that is Autechre's most openly
audacious, soul-challenging release ever.
Check "Confield" (MP3) on Amazon
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