AUTECHRE: LP5 (1998)
1) Acroyear2; 2) 777; 3) Rae;
4) Melve; 5) Vose In; 6) Fold4, Wrap5; 7) Under BOAC; 8) Corc; 9) Caliper
Remote; 10) Arch Carrier; 11) Drane2.
If you do not greet the next Autechre album
with the question «So, what's new?», let me know your microchip family name so
that I can address you with the correct title — yes, people who listen to
Autechre because they enjoy their music emotionally
freak me out that much. (Fortunately, I have yet to meet one in person). But
if, like me, you have successfully rerouted your brain wires for the
«surprise-processing» center whenever you listen to Autechre, LP5 is probably going to be a blast
after the bleak mopiness of Chiastic
Slide.
At this point, it feels like these guys are almost ready to leave the very concept
of a «musical note» behind them, and concentrate on the amazing diversity of
thumping, clomping, stomping, exploding, hissing, boiling, and bubbling
patterns that illustrate the average day in the life of an electronic entity.
They are not quite there yet — total
percussion nirvana wouldn't arrive until Confield
— but they are getting extremely close. At the very least, it would take quite
a serious amount of substances to be able to dance one's head off to the merry
sounds of The Electronic Shaman emanating from ʽ777ʼ or the busy quarks playing
table tennis with each other throughout ʽUnder BOACʼ.
On the other hand, the faint little shades of
«melody» that still remain can be more evocative than the fuller sound of Chiastic Slide — ʽRaeʼ, for instance,
has a melancholic, dungeon-like attitude, as if the sad, drawn out synth notes
were luckless prisoners held inside the force field of the pulsating
percussion beats, hopelessly pleading to get out. And on ʽDrane2ʼ, the notes
twinkle, roll over, and fizzle out spasmodically as if some sort of
semi-intelligent robot were trying to imitate elements of an Indian droning
raga, without much success but with quite a bit of persistence.
That said, I cannot help but feel that all of this is not quite as breathtaking
as it is implied to be. The tracks have cautiously been trimmed down to
reasonable length, are dutifully provided with individual identities, and
officially represent a «step forward», no doubt. But the record still does not
quite live up to the first two tracks: ʽAcroyear2ʼ and ʽ777ʼ push this
percussion-heavy thing almost to its limits, almost as if the idea were to make
you feel stuck in the middle of the Hadron Collider, and then the intensity recedes
and everything else feels sort of anticlimactic. Say what you will, but at
least ʽVose Inʼ and ʽFold4ʼ can qualify as «filler», and probably other tracks
as well. Not every idea of the Booth
and Brown brothers is supposed to work, you know.
One interesting idea I have encountered several
times is that albums like LP5 may be
supposed to make the listener feel pity
for the machines — actually, this is quite close to the feeling I got myself
when listening to ʽRaeʼ. I am not sure if Booth and Brown themselves go that
far; I do not think they have any strong personal philosophy attached to their
fingers when they are pushing the buttons. But they certainly are inventors of a machine-centered
sonic language, which they may not quite well understand themselves, and if so,
the first two tracks and a few others on LP5
are like the perfect introductory units in that language's textbook for
beginners. As silly as that analogy might be, at least it earns the album a thumbs up,
and never mind the filler. Since each Autechre album, on average, runs for
about seventy minutes, you can easily subtract thirty minutes of whatever you
think fillerish from each — and that'll be just enough, since who can take in
seventy minutes of Autechre without interruption, anyway? Nobody here but us, slaves
of the mercyless record reviewing industry.
PS: The real question, of course, is this: did
the Malevich family have to sue the creative duo for copyright infringement? The
album cover comes in black or white,
for that matter, depending on the edition.
Check "LP5" (CD) on Amazon
Check "LP5" (MP3) on Amazon
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