Autechre & The Hafler Trio
æ³o & h³æ

THE REVIEW

Autechre, in a state of grace these months, are doing what years of unmatched and unparalleled visionary art hadn't accomplished. To (un)do. Both in quality and quantity. Material to fill three CDs at these levels (including the recent "Untilted" for Warp) is, for me, something at the edge of what human abilities can achieve. Thus, Hafler Trio also partake in the derailment of familiar emotions, and they are certainly not lacking in inventiveness and "courage"...

These two discs are like many rooms in an enormous palace, with long corridors of silence and sudden sonic doors that, with long relentless arms, throw us into the four walls of each room, each different from the others. On first listen, everything seems "uncoordinated", but once we reach the level of attention that an opus of such caliber and complexity requires, emotional satisfactions will escape our grasp. We're thinking them lost and discovering them boomerangs.

Recommended: to admirers of Autechre's genius in all its forms.

Not recommended: to those who believe that silence is just a bit of empty tape.