Autechre = Finished! Squarepusher - Started!

Draft 7.30, Untilted, and Quaristice are in the bag. Autechre is done.

And here's what I thought:
Both Draft 7.30 and Untilted got two plays in the course of the journey. I think these two are among the strongest AE albums. They are focussed, and don't succumb to the process-over-content that sometimes plagues AE productions.

Draft 7.30 still has some traces of the generative stuff, but it doesn't dominate the album. I still don't think I understand Draft 7.30, but I do enjoy it.

Untilted apparently marks the point when Autechre started using the Elektron gear (www.elektron.se - if you ever need a drum machine or synth which is a true instrument as well as a sound generator) in their productions, and aside from the fact that I can recognise some sounds, or at least think I can, there is a clarity in composition which hasn't been so pronounced since LP5. This is probably my favourite album after LP5, and I think there are quite strong similarities between the two.

Quaristice is interesting, but due to the format (a whole lot of short songs), it feels like a number of sketches which haven't been fully developed. The beatless tracks that bookend the album are quite striking, and like Corc on LP5, remind me that AE are in fact capable of melody, and beautiful melody at that. On the other hand, there are tracks which sound like 2 bars of randomly selected notes looped for a couple of minutes, and I don't know what I'm supposed to get out of them. If I was made of money, I'd get the limited edition version of Quaristice, which has a second disc containing something like 11 tracks, each of which is 10 minutes long using the same material as Quaristice. Brevity is not AE's strengths and I suspect that longer versions of the best moments of Quaristice would be more fulfilling.

And that's Autechre. I have mixed feelings on their work, which veers between inspired experiment and aimless wandering. They certainly do have their own sound, but in some ways they have stuck to their own template a little too firmly.

Next up, Warp's other giant: Squarepusher. I have even more SP than Autechre, but then, I think SP is generally a better listen.

Burning n' Tree - It's like finally breathing out to hear real instruments and melodies after a week of Autechre. It's also quite odd to hear this early SP work, which has the seams showing to a much greater extent than his recent stuff. The cutup Amen breaks, the sampled and transposed jazz chords, it's all there, and there is something refreshingly rough about it. It's a little frightening to think of how young Tom Jenkinson was when he put this stuff together - it makes the rest of us look a bit johnny-come-lately...