Autechre
Anvil Vapre

Mainly known as the twin of "Tri Repetae" (a bit like "Anti" with Incunabula), the EP "Anvil Vapre" (Warp, 1995) remains one of the most successful episodes in the early production of Autechre. 

Just like "Tri Repetae," this EP essentially acts as a middle ground between the two main facets of the legendary English project: the ambient-techno of Incunabula—warm and melodic—(later leading to the dark experimentations of "Amber," which, although following its trail, begins to lay the foundations for the seminal '95), and the cerebral-fragmented post "Chiastic Slide" (fully realized with the abstraction of "EP7" and gradually, excluding recent drops in tone, developed definitively(?) in the following decade). Nothing new: the career of Autechre, unlike some more stylistically closed colleagues, is quite interesting precisely because of the interaction between one album and the next, and the gradual evolution of a style that over time has become increasingly experimental, increasingly "indecipherable," increasingly grandiose. In a word: Forward.

The four pieces in this release, unlike most of the duo's works (which, while often following a specific "periodic" concept, regularly present a variety of compositional techniques), are all united by two omnipresent details: reverbs and rhythms. The latter are extremely thicker and more violent (sometimes breakbeat), almost like the rougher harsh-EBM Teutonic style, compared to the filtered, cerebral, and syncopated ones more typical of the English tradition, which in the early '90s had one of its most representative names in Ae; the impassable walls of reverbs, broad and never tame, are certainly not new in their sound, but the unusual nods to dub techno (which inevitably require a different approach to reverb itself) are a substantial novelty in their production, and since they rarely repeat the dub style, they're a point of significant interest within the release itself.

The rhythms thus stay in line with "Tri Repetae", but are even more pronounced as is immediately evident in "Second Bad Vilbel", a track that starts with a powerful distorted noise leading into an equally destructive beat where various dissonant elements settle, creating a remarkable train built—except for the simple yet effective melodic riff—primarily on noise, never before so sharp and powerful (essentially a preview of the complex architectures of "Chiastic Slide", but with a linearity/four-square structure still present compared to the asymmetric assaults of the latter). "Second Scepe" follows the same directions, but with an additional glitch-metallic component, again recreating that fascinating contrast typical of their beginnings, with warm analog textures (in this specific case, the now-classic and overused nostalgic arpeggio), doing something many, perhaps too many, in the scene would later emulate (even catching some flak from none other than Vsnares, who dedicated an aptly titled track to the theme (British IDM Preset Fanfare)!.

Regarding "Second Scout", rhythmically we are close to the previous two tracks, but the riff here is 100% an example of dub techno; practically no different from what Basic Channel is doing, particularly with the Maurizio project, 4/4 tape delays included, but unlike those rarefied and seminal alien productions... well, here they pound rhythmically, and quite a bit since the beat is once again devastating. It's curious how here, as well as in the syncopated "Second Peng" (rhythmically acidic and with a martial cadence, atmospherically echoing the more extrasensory FSOL) there are also spasmodic and bouncing acidic synths that differ in no way from those used in more recent dubstep (the so-called warble bass).

As if to say that Booth & Brown, willingly or not, are still pioneers, as they were in 1993 when they distanced themselves from ambient techno and laid more than just simple foundations for what in the following years would become known, and often instrumentalized, as "IDM". 

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