Review Summary: Autechre returns with yet another enigmatic opus.
It is hard to explain Autechre's appeal, even for someone who likes them. While they do make music - not just random noise pretending to pass as it -, their music is at the opposite extreme of what can be regarded as “enjoyable” in the usual sense. Autechre create bizarre pieces of music of a strange, rare beauty. They rarely make things easy for the listener, and people generally turn their back on them, no without justification.
The
Quadrange EP (1)*, was possibly their most excruciating output, which tested fans' patience (and loyalty) to the extreme. The music was repetitive, minimalistic, slower and more spaced, but at least it signaled a new possible direction. The band took those elements, worked and expanded upon them, to create what could be called an enticing, dark ambient album.
Confield’s ideas seem filtrated through
Amber’s, and somehow this decade Autechre’s output is erased to give way to an alternate timeline where the starting point is
Chiastic Slide.
Those who disliked their music for being lifeless should be warned that this is no different, and is probably worse.
Untilted and
Draft 7.30, for instance, had some life on them: something was happening, if tough to describe.
But what happens on
Oversteps? Apparently, nothing. Everything floats slowly, hardly undisturbed on a silent voyage in space. In this slumberous atmosphere, through pullulating noises and a deceiving calm, there are echoes and flashes of something familiar but unrecognizable. There are not jarring experimentations shocking your senses, but you will be likely turned off by the slow evolutions and lack of vitality. There is no instant rejecting: “r ess” quietly opens the doors and you are welcome to stay and walk through the sonic chambers at will; nothing is hostile, but you will do the promenade alone.
The album feels cold, obscure, always in dying state, pallid, extremely isolated, but paradoxically, in a strange way you got this feeling that a childish artificial intelligence lurks in there. For brief moments it sounds warm, and the very next moment is empty, very sad. At others, like “see on see”, it is evocative, with a slight touch of sweet melancholy; and then comes “os veix3” feeling like pure anguish and uncertainty. Is that something at the beginning of “d-sho qub” trying to be playful? Suddenly it ignores you, and follows its way, uncaring. It is all mechanical, you never know if it is real, or a mere manifestation of a malfunctioning. You got this strange feeling through
Oversteps’s fourteen suites, but this ambiguity is open for different interpretations, and the music never feels one-dimensional in its manifestations.
As usual, the music is highly textured, heavily and beautifully layered, and abstract to a high degree; but the ambiance is almost sedative, relaxing, although in an unusual way. The beats are dim, subtle, irregular, serving only as a basic structure; the rhythms are lethargic, weak, like spasms of a moribund body. As a result the album has skin and flesh, but little bones. The wrapping atmosphere is more preeminent than unorthodox times signatures, which accentuates the “ambient” feeling of the music.
Oversteps is mostly an aesthetical, contemplative journey. The listening pleasure comes from an almost architectonic, structural perspective. You stand serene at the superb sonic constructions that surround you and act like isolating walls, at the same time making you dubious to continue listening, because everything seems to become meandering and disconcerting. At times, Autechre just plays with tonalities and little variations that seem very simple and but have a magnetic quality; at others they use more complex, varying structures that succeed at keeping an unified purpose, instead of disintegrating into ever-changing sections that make you wonder if you are listening to the same song. The album sounds fresh and inventive, even if some resemblances to previous works can be traced.
Oversteps walks constantly on hazardous territory, though on the surface it may seem a somewhat conservative. It demands the listener’s entire complicity. If your attention is lost the magic vanishes and the music becomes stagnant – the easiest of things to happen. That is the reason that prevents the album to have a sensation of fulfillment. It is the same drawback of all Autechre’s works: the (re)playability value is kept at the minimum possible. You have to listen to it in certain conditions and with a particular mood, the soundscapes can be so demanding.
However, the album is still less harsh and less inclement than recent material, for this reason alone being more inviting that any of the band’s works in more than ten years; but in exchange it requires more of your patience. Of course there is no doubt what you hear is unique and extremely interesting, and you are trapped into trying to dissect the rich aural experience.
Those who already disliked Autechre will not change their minds now; but if you enjoyed their 90’s catalogue, there is a chance you could like this, even tough neither this is a proper return to “roots” - the album being more of a twisted progression of that era – nor the music sounds so impressive upon first listens; its design aims further. Working inside a framework of its own,
Oversteps sees the band on a distinct, exciting facet, which in itself should be enough reason to try it.
4.3/5
(1)*
The "Quadrange" EP was a dowload-only release containing re-workings of some of the "Quaristice" album tracks
