There was a time in the late 1990s when Autechre embodied one way of thinking about music's future. Producers exploring the infinite possibilities of increasingly complex software were creating new sounds on an almost weekly basis. Autechre were recognized as the leading edge of this clan. Their music, while not always alien in terms of texture-- they've often favored timbres that reference electro and early techno in one way or another-- was difficult to get a handle on; the beats were hard to follow; the spaces in which the music breathed impossible to define. Music this strange was only possibly through accelerating technology, and you got the idea that Autechre's music would continue to accelerate in parallel. They were pioneers.
One of the ironies of Autechre a decade on is that they still more or less occupy the same position, while trends in experimental music have drifted elsewhere. While some laptop producers began to think about songs again-- working with vocalists, putting their own spin on krautrock, or seeing how shoegaze might sound coming through a computer-- a younger generation came at abstraction in an analog frame of mind. They began with crude electronics, incorporated tribal metaphors, and forewent the beautiful pure math of the circuit board for the messy concerns of the body; instead of shaved heads, they sported wild hair and beards and maybe a bit of face paint.
I thought of these contrasts with regard to Quaristice, Autechre's first new album in three years, when listening to "The Plc", the album's second track, which follows the ghostly synth-drone opener "Altibzz". "The Plc"'s reference point is electro-- the stiff and mannered snare drum, seemingly fashioned from tin, marks every measure robotically. But swirling around the steady-state beat are a number of odd sounds that lend a decidedly psychedelic cast. In purely sonic terms, it's not all that far from something like Excepter in their more beat-oriented mode, but Autechre's way of getting there couldn't be more different, and process is in part what defines them.
Autechre's research-and-development-style approach to music making is one of the things they're known for, but Quaristice is said to be special in that regard. Instead of focusing on the micro, painstakingly stitching together each track second-by-second, this album grew out of jamming, with Sean Booth and Rob Brown reconfiguring and "versioning" elements of their by all accounts formidable live show into new tunes. It's hard to tell exactly how that plays out, but one thing about this record is very different from anything else Autechre has done this decade: The tracks are short (most around three or four minutes) and there are lots of them (20).
While it's tempting to think of this collection of sonic miniatures as a set of "singles," Quaristice winds up working in almost the opposite way. Since the bulk of these pieces each explores one focused idea without a lot of variation, they don't make a whole lot of sense when removed from the album. Autechre have always made music of changes, where part of the interest was in hearing the gears of the music slipping as rhythms fell in and our of sync with each other and wound up somewhere different from where they began; development within most of the tracks on Quaristice is smaller and less noticeable, and many are over before you know it. So it might be more useful to think of the short tracks as sort of miniature movements within the album's suite-like whole.
Which is another way of saying that I've most enjoyed this record when I've had the time and focus to allow me to listen to the entire thing straight through. It's then I can follow the arc of the record as it moves from the billowy opening of "Altibzz" past the menacing, high-speed future-shock fuckery of "IO", to the nervous ghost-in-the-machine drone of "SonDEremawe", on through the positively AFX-ian "Simmm"-- with its wired gamelan percussion hits and too-bright melody that makes you think of an artificial sun-- stopping along the way for the towering beat and acid riff of "Rale", the disorienting implosion of "Fol3", and the double-speed Detroit assembly line of "bnc Castl".
As they move from ambient washes to classic-sounding IDM to their usual variations on techno and electro, I'm hearing more overt referencing of sounds of the past on Quaristice, like Autechre are more readily glancing and poking at genre, perhaps in an attempt to escape the oppression of so much focus on detail. So Quaristice also feels a bit like a survey, an esoteric and abstracted summary of electronic music's past that also glances toward what might come. After the hyper techno of "chenc9", the album folds back in on itself in the final two tracks, allowing space for contemplation of where the music has been. "Notwo" is so moody it almost sounds like Angelo Badalamenti; with its a dubby underwater drone and clipped upper range, it wouldn't sound out of place on Amber. And then lengthy "Outh9X" finishes the album on a more neutral note, as a steady electronic pulse is stalked by bassy tones that eventually trail off into mist in an extended ambient coda.
It's been some time since we've heard Autechre sounding as purely beautiful as the opening and two closing tracks on Quaristice, but these moments aren't indicative of the record as a whole. Even while *Quaristice * is in some ways the most listenable album they've created in a decade, it's ultimately no easier to parse, and can be very rough going indeed if you're not in the mood for their peculiar world. Ultimately, this is still the same Autechre, remaining apart from trends as the rest of electronic music world goes on its way, their steadfast commitment to their vision being both their greatest strength and most confounding obstacle.
