There are those to whom Autechre seem a daunting prospect. The austere sleeves, the impenetrable track titles, the tales of intense two-hour sets played with the audience plunged into pitch darkness. Some of their recorded output might not help: 2016’s elseq 1–5 has a running time of nearly five hours, and its successor, NTS Sessions,clocks in at a neat eight.
For those who have wavered, then, this reissue of 2008’s Quaristice should be a welcome opportunity. Quaristice shows the duo as miniaturists rather than maximalists. Each of its twenty (relatively) short tracks feels like a single tessera of a mosaic which, once completed, shows the full range of the Autechre soundworld. From the brief jewel of ‘SonDEremawe’ (one minute twenty-one seconds) to the comparatively epic ‘Outh9X’ (a whole seven minutes and fourteen seconds), this feels like Autechre’s collection of short stories, rather than one of their epic novels.
The first three tracks are enough to give the listener an idea of what Autechre do. Opener ‘Altibzz’ is pure pastoral, wisps and strands of deep, reassuring bass which – at the beginning of autumn, as I write – sound like heavy clouds or the slow river they’re passing over. At less than three minutes it’s a perfect overture before ‘The Plc’ kicks in with a relentless 4/4 snap and the sounds of metallic shards whirling around your ears. It could be a floor filler – except for the fact that three minutes in it stutters and collapses into a pile of its own constituent parts (mangled voices, drum machine, a fuzzy thud of bass). ‘IO’ follows with distorted voice transmissions and beats obtuse and chunky enough to please the most die-hard Ae skronk-wonk.
As with many of Autechre’s records, it can be helpful to ignore the easy tech/sci-fi parallels and instead listen out for the natural world. ‘Fol3′, for example, is the sound of the wind blowing right down your North Face jacket as you scrabble down a scree on a particularly bad day in the Pennines, and just as exhilarating. ‘Theswere’ (even the name sounds like a place somewhere in northern England) offers more plaintive pastoral drones, this time heavily clipped and winding around a simple three note melody, with radio buzz overhead and the growl of limestone caves or disused mineshafts beneath. ‘Notwo’ (its title perhaps hinting at the ‘wodwo,’ a mythical part-human, part-forest being popularised in Ted Hughes’ poem) is a haunting Nordic drift, alternatively elegiac and disturbing, as if Sibelius had collaborated with Mika Vainio during a stay in the Peak District. ‘Outh9X’ closes, resolving into the clouds of a long sunset over a wooded valley, its final diminishing bass note never quite completely fading away.
Far from anything ambient, however, ‘fwzE’ and ‘bnc Castl’ are taut pieces of robotic clanker-funk, the latter with its whirrs, bleeps and bells not so far removed from Two Lone Swordsmen’s mid-noughties output. ‘chenc9’ is a nod to the duo’s hip hop influences, sounding like they got to remix New Order’s ‘Confusion,’ while ‘rale’ is a moody low-bpm head-nodder, an almost Lynchian neo-noir soundtrack to a film set in the basement deep below the dancefloor.
The brief running time of these varied pieces offers the chance to realise how playful Autechre are. You can almost picture Rob Brown and Sean Booth, normally so serious-looking, grinning their faces off while editing the pieces down from hour-long jams into tiny diamonds. Most of these tracks are twittering machines briefly delighting in their own intricacy and impact in the short time it takes their mechanism (whether it be clockwork or electronic) to unwind. Like full-fat Ae, these pieces have the disorienting effect of ending just as you realise that you are now in a completely different place to where you began without ever having noticed the terrain changing.
Nothing here outstays its welcome, as even hardened fans might admit some Ae pieces can do, and while, say, ‘plyPhon’ or ‘WNSN’ feel like sketches – underdeveloped and unexplored, meandering for a while before simply giving up – you’ll hardly have time to lift the needle or hit the skip button before something like ‘Simmm’ comes along, revelling in its own construction even as it separates into its stems, revealing a gorgeous bell-toned melody, delicate percussive blips and an anchoring drone. This is music that is open-ended, alive to its possibilities and potential without ever exhausting them.
I was first smitten by Autechre when I heard Tri Repetae back in 1995, thinking it genuinely sounded like the future. Over the last thirty years, while I’ve never exactly fallen out with them, as with any long-term friendship, we’ve lost touch from time to time. Quaristice was preceded by Untilted, which felt like a dead end to me, or a book end at least. Listening to Quaristice some fifteen years ago brought me back to their music again, making me remember what was so great about it, setting me up for the fresh start of Oversteps two years later. Listening to Quaristice again now it still feels like the perfect place to re-acquaint yourself, or to get to know Autechre for the first time.
