8. AutechreLP5
The 90s explosion in new electronic music (I refuse to say electronica, or IDM, or EDM or any of that horse shit) was such an exciting time. Buying records by Aphex Twin, snd, Squarepusher, Autechre, et al, as they were being released, was like living at the very modernist cutting edge of NOW. My younger brother bought me this for my 25th birthday (I think…). I’d been crazy about Autechre’s previous work – Amber, Incunabula, Chiastic Slide, etc – but I HATED this album when I first heard it. Cold, hard, impenetrable – it was almost painful to listen to. Slowly but surely, through repeated listens, it revealed itself to be a work of almost infinite depth – an entire sound-world that sounded – and felt – like an entirely different experience every single time you visited it. The grooves and melodies seem like something only an alien technology could come up with. Like liquid metal morphing, like the most difficult pinball machine in the cosmos – implanted directly into your brain. ‘Dance music’ you’d need eight limbs to do justice to.
I became convinced that this was the music we’d be listening to in The Future. In a pre-internet age, you took a gamble on music – you stuck with it (whether you liked it, or not). You listened to a long-player album as just that: a long-form piece. No shuffle, no playlists, no tracks.
Duncan Brown
