Autechre - Untilted (Warp)

I like this albumtitle. They might have won albumtitle of the year already. Autechre and funny, man, who would've known. Those geeky kids twiddling with selfmade software, squeezing hardcore mathematics inbetween beats. They fuck up logic and rape rationality. It's pretty much unsellable music. Hey, you like to play flippergames, that's Autechre right there for you! People don't buy that. As for me, I don't want to know about essence, I don't care for electronic equipment, architecture built my house, I'm kind of stuck there. What I do care for are the abstract characteristics of emotion and feeling. Feelings you can't predict, the feeling that gives you the most fucked up depression often morph into huge revelations on a personal level resulting in the most beautiful moments in life; change is a likely result and a healthy one as well. Art, musically or otherwise, gives you moments in time to look back upon your emotional history. The way you perceive art is the way you experience life.

Untilted is the most fucked up of Escher drawings. You trick yourself into thinking you 'get' it but you know you don't. You climb those swirling stairs and climb and climb and climb. Where's the end? Where the hell is the start? On Untilted it starts with 'LCC', they give you that, a start but once it's started it's gone, it's no longer in the hands of human rationality. Until you hear a sound that captivates you, makes you think you 'get' it. And just when you start thinking about getting comfortable it's gone, an echo might be the only proof it ever existed.

Also: headphones. You need to listen to this album on headphones, when played in a room it loses much of it's density, ideas get lost in mid-air. On 'LCC' the round 'n' rolling beats intertwine with s&m like whipping effects. Starting off at high speed, slowing down in the middle to make room for an actual kind of melody that gently floats in the background like a young butterfly in spring. They've backed away from the scientific approach they've embraced so much starting with Tri Repetae++ to Draft 7.30. It's much more about fun, at times even sounding like a twee-d down (or up?) version of their harsher, earlier efforts.

This shows on 'Ipacial Section' which isn't so much of a departure from Draft 7.30 but it's vibe is much more playful. Like getting stuck in a nightmarish videogame with Lee Perry on the controls. As 'Ipacial Section' progresses more ideas get tossed in until it struggles to regain it's composure, only to use that renewed sense of vitality to come up with a different stucture that is based on a background of stuttering beats and clicks. Much more than on Confield and Draft, the spaces on Untilted serve a function. They heighten tension, stimulate fantasy. ie. the last two-something minutes of 'Pro Radii', most of 'Augmatic Disport'. They no longer want to examine the architecture of the playground but still, they are, rightfully, very hestitant about the idea of playfullness. Somehow though, it seeps through the pores of Untilted's most rewardig moments. The whole of 'Sublimit' gets it exactly right. Watching AE through a clear lens mess with a fucked up discovibe is truly exhilarating and makes for Autechre's finest moment to date.

Magik Markers - 'I Trust My Guitar, etc'

Maybe not the freshest thing out there today but certainly one of the most exciting bands to rise from the ashes of late 70's / early 80's NYC. Magik Markers are two girls that, er, sing and play guitar and one guy drumming. Young band, too. Normally I'm no fan of girlfronted rockbands but this is another category, this is 'blaow in your face, big daddy, take my foot up your ass and watch me steal the show'. I know, cos I saw them live last month and they rocked so hard it hurt, so good. The screamy female is totally mad on stage and the album kind of captures it, which is really suprising. Lots of bass, heavy distortion, fuck melody.

British Seapower - Open Season (Rough Trade)

In general I get more aroused by a fresh tuna sandwich than by the latest and greatest rocksensation. I'm a fan of the eighties gloom 'n' doompop and hardly a sentimental moaner but there's a difference in between the context bands (not acts) as Gang of Four, The Slits, Pere Ubu, the Pop Group et al played their musics as opposed to the acts (not bands) from today who use the foundation their forefathers layed down, as a gimmick. Bloc Party not included because some bands (Franz Ferdinand not included) just hit the right spot and with a song like 'Price of Gasoline' they actually make a mark about today's society. Strokes, Killers and The Rapture all, boldly spoken, steal their stance from their infamous ancesters. Ironically they take their sport even more serious than the people back then and the haircut that Bravery singer is so proud of wasn't even funny when Morrissy rocked it back in the eighties. Time will kill trends and al but a few will not live to see their names in a Simon Reynolds book.

No clue on how British Seapower will do in a book about retropostpunk but what these young chaps presented on their racuous debut album, The Decline Of..., was and still is very fascinating. Joy Divison comparisons still ring round their names but today that only seems an easy cliche. Open Season is far from a Decline Of Pt. II nor does it compare in any way to Curtis' gang. It's a drastic change from a rusty and quirky postpunksound to a cerebral and luscious popalbum. It's the album that I will time and again return to when I want some pretty music to sing along too. That's a valuable characteristic, in fact, every year needs an album like that. Last year The Dears seemed to have taken the job. And while Bloc Party recently delivered a more than decent debut it doesn't often encourage me to put it on and press play. Open Season on the other hand has been more in than out of my cdplayer. A fallback album I can trust. It has space, it has charisma, it has joy, it has fear, it has, well, it has it all to be honest.

The dramatic and joyeus single 'It Ended On An Oily Stage' sets it straight from the start; they've polished their shoes and their sound. An epic rockanthem like 'Be Gone' settles itself in your mind as soon as it starts off it's sweeping guitarmelody, all in all not too far distanced from the exotic guitarmelodies Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr used to come up with. Lyrically they still hit topics unknown to rockmusic since Morrissey sang about vicars in tutu's. 'Larsen B' even addresses the state of the Antarctic as it's slowly creeping up on us ("desalinate the barren sea").

Singer Yan's hushy and breathy voice might be a little awkward at first in a genre where articulation seems a big key to succes but after a while of course this becomes so tied with the music you can't imagine it any other way. Especially on the quiter parts of Open Season he sings like he's sitting next to you, talking softly about birds, rural scenes and "the coastal regions of his mind". Ballads like 'Like A Honeycomb', 'North Hanging Rock' and 'The Land Beyond' sound so overtly romantic and cosy I can't see any reason to not hit the repeat button again and again.