Autechre
Cavity Job

"Cavity Job" is a highly sought-after EP even today; in fact, it is the debut of Autechre from the distant 1991, limited to 1000 copies, released on an obscure British label that lasted just a year and three releases, out of print for twenty years, and still among the most peculiar releases of the English duo. This is not so much for the quality, which is anything but remarkable, but due to the fact that—an almost unique case—there are no traces of experimentation, genius, ideas, technical-technological wankery, and everything else that will make the Manchester project a reference point for the history and more recent developments of electronic music.

Warp has recently re-released most of their EPs in a prestigious box set, also including "Cavity Job" for those who missed it, although the versions included were inexplicably cut, a not-so-brilliant idea opted only for the tracks of this EP, practically the only one for which a good 70% of the purchases would have been planned/justified. This highlights once again, if there were any need for it, the inexorable and shameful decline of Warp. It doesn't equate to owning the sought-after vinyl, but it is useful for those wanting to understand where the Autechre story begins, a story that, for better or worse, continues even today, among highs (1993-1996), very highs (1997-2005), and lows (2006-present), lows that, it should be said, are nothing more than highs for many producers who are alleged Autechre successors (Funckarma, Jega, Clark etc.), a title we can recognize at most to people with balls of steel—and who know what it means to experiment—like Hecq, Otto Von Schirach, Devine, and a few others.

And in which category do we place "Cavity Job"? It's difficult to say, precisely because it is a release that seems everything but produced by Autechre. We are talking about a primordial ultra-oldschool mix of equally oldschool currents such as early Belgian techno in the style of R&S, classics of the so-called 'Bass & Bleep' scene, and the UK-breakbeat-hardcore rave format of the early Moving Shadow / Suburban Base or Jack Dangers (later brought to success by early Prodigy with tracks like "Charly"), producing an EP that sounds very close to the early albums of Orbital, while also flaunting synthetic reminiscences not too distant from Dutch acid-techno, which was in great shape at the time. An EP by no means original, then, and let's admit it, it has aged terribly, a cult object for dust fetishists, obsessive-compulsive Autechre completists, and nothing more. 

"Cavity Job" starts with an improbable vocal sample (caught from Hawkwind) composed of gasps and bizarre gargles, then gives way to a dirty and acidic bassline on which the super-tacky break sits firmly, which, between infinitely repeated samples, scratches, randomly programmed rhythms, and crooked melodies, doesn't seem to go anywhere; the ending is no better, with laser sounds like early arcade video games and a mash-up of all the sounds blasted together without any logical thread at the end. It's not a bad piece considering the year, but it is for Autechre, and it is considering that shortly after—or they had just been released—all the greatest classics of breakbeat and similar currents would come out, classics of much greater importance, still unforgettable today, sell-outs with sales figures from another era, from "Papua New Guinea" (Future Sound of London) to Radio Babylon (Meat Beat Manifesto), from "Bombscare" (2 Bad Mice) to "Keep The Fire Burning" (The House Crew), not to forget "Atheama" (Nebula II), "The Sound Of Eden" (Shades Of Rhythm), "Can You Feel It" (Elevation), "Trip II The Moon" (Acen).

Breakbeat-hardcore, it's not news, has been a launching pad for many artists, easy money for others, a recycling opportunity in the jungle/drum'n'bass/big beat stepchildren for even less eclectic ones; Acen, for example, will disappear for years into nowhere while probably still enjoying the huge amount of money earned with his legendary hits, the Prodigy will essentially do the same piece forever but changing its name (big beat) and updating/boosting the sounds, Jack Dangers will continue with the most classic breaks, coining a new form influenced by funk well before the cunning commercial Fatboy Slim, to then experiment in ambient and dubstep territories; Future Sound of London will experiment with every possible genre, even venturing into psychedelic rock, while with Autechre—who approached the genre almost in jest, being primarily fans of hip hop, dub, and Miami bass sounds at the time—we already know how it will end, we have talked about it extensively. It will end with a whole series of innovations and experiments with few equals in the electronic panorama, a future that in part we can already glimpse with a microscope on "Accelera 1 & 2', with those organic and cavernous pads that strongly echo 'Incunabula', for a track that in the end does not stray much from side A, but where the latter still showed technoid reminiscences here we are completely in breaks territory. 

An EP to give more biographical relevance than anything else, and that would have been easily forgotten if instead of Autechre it had been any other English kid fiddling with vintage drum machines and samplers, but that I find it right to rediscover and try to give it the proper space, since if we look at the often pretentious mono/bio/in-depth-graphics of this duo around the web, we will notice how the EPs are by default overlooked, a colossal mistake for a format that has always been the heart of electronics. A word that now more than ever rhymes with Autechre.