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.