Autechre
Chiastic Slide

1997, Warp Records: Rob Brown and Sean Booth release their absolute masterpiece, a concentrate of creativity and experimentation like never heard before within the then-hot IDM phenomenon. The melodic echoes of their beginnings marry the industrial mechanicality of the Tri Repetae era in a dissonant and cerebral work that was nothing short of ahead of its time in that specific context. A context, 1997, that saw the global electronic scene in full swing amidst the drum'n'bass boom (which had now completely replaced the jungle and produced albums that have now reached masterpiece status) trip hop (which broke into the mainstream without significant loss of quality), the assertive return of electro (which with Drexciya, Aux 88 and company was living a possibly even more glorious period than the first), the commercial boom of the negligible big beat by Prodigy and Fatboy Slim (mentioned only for the record), the advent of the techno/house/electro hybrid by Daft Punk, the nascent post-Oval 'glitch-laptop-tronica' (12k and the now legendary Raster Noton had just opened their doors), Chain Reaction's dub techno, new forms of deep house, Detroit ever more maintaining its status as the epicenter of techno, but at the same time witnessing the rise of many new European talents, and so on, one would never finish listing the good that came out that year, one of the most important in recent times. It is in this scenario where first and foremost the work needs to be contextualized, indeed it is crazy to think how "Chiastic Slide" - which sounds very much like a standard of experimental electronic abstraction that would only appear later, around 2000 - was released that same year, immediately metabolizing and archiving the mechanical/melodic direction taken with the previous "Tri Repetae" which lasted just two years, a direction on which many producers were broadly feeding.

To understand what the English duo is creating in parallel, just listen to the first track, "Cipater", absolute avant-garde: noise reminiscent of the most radical industrial and an unusual hip hop edge accompany the melodic journey, defined mostly by digital machines, at a time when in IDM, but in much of electronics in general - allowing for glitch-artistic forms -, pure analogy was triumphing (the success of Boards of Canada, Juno Reactor, the great period of Carl Craig, Jeff Mills, Moodymann or the visionary electro in Detroit are fitting examples). Rhythmically, we have the first innovations of Autechre, complex and indecipherable as we know them today, a rhythmic component that is a triumph of innovation and winks at the future: a sonic mass composed of small digital particles, timbral elaborations manipulated into a perpetuous flow/magma, squared and then triplet, changeable and unexpected, following a collage-tradition more typical of musique concrète, and that let the nine minutes of the piece flow with astonishing naturalness, often escaping from what is the concept of 'loop'.

Pioneering programming that will also appear on the following "Rettic Ac", a quick episode seen as a continuation of "Cipater": that is, how just two minutes can be seminal for all rhythmic-experimental electronics of the next decade (the aforementioned technical abstraction), the intricate and ferrous noise puzzles that will bring fortune to current masters of the genre (Otto Von Schirach, Richard Devine, Detach'i and the Schematic productions to name the most indecipherable), who yes, will reach a level so high and complex as to be even requested for sound programming by major virtual instrument houses (such as Native Instruments or Fixed Noise) but that in a sense - though speaking of huge talents - mainly know of already heard.

The already heard originates from Chiastic Slide.

Indeed, Autechre, unlike third parties and much more celebrated users, or rather banal vulgarizers of the electronic medium, represent one of the most recent and clear examples of how electronic music should be produced, given the infinite possibilities of the electronic medium. It's perhaps worth mentioning figures like Pierre Schaeffer, Tod Dockstader, Nic Pascal, Ruth White, Stockhausen, Parmegiani, and Pierre Henry, people who, since the advent or formation of the latter, began experimenting and exploring this medium, or perhaps a note for masters of tapes and noise of the most underground and experimental industrial heritage of the eighties (Le Syndicat, Étant Donnés, Doxa Sinistra, Zoviet France, Whitehouse, Cranioclast..); with "Rettic Ac" and certain secondary intuitions detectable on the masterpiece "Tewe", the two essentially do nothing but what those in their time did, but in a modern musical-social vision, a vision not yet completely explored that clings to the 'digital' more than mechanics or analogue. Vision that, like the aforementioned pack of geniuses, frees itself from harmonic constraints, rejects quantization as well as the concept itself of song or notation; the excellent interaction, among every single sound (which in turn has its own evolving life - from synth to the last cymbal) explores new territories, squeezes the medium, looks forward. Brown and Booth are exploring, experimenting, they are creating stuff that even today, February 7, 2011, manages to sound futuristic, original, ahead. In short, if Autechre can thus be compared to the great masters of electronic, concrete, or industrial experimentation or whatever it may be, those still limited by the constraints of the pop song form, whether or not their proposal is valid, can be likened to a generic Jarre, undoubtedly talented if taken solely in the guise of a composer, but in fact a circus act, a money machine, a recycler, a vulgarizer with a capital V, more or less the equivalent of taking a guitar just to beat it on the soundbox, someone who besides the poverty of his proposal didn't invent anything, given that, for example, a less trumpeted and more charming Roger Roger had the same insights years earlier, as well as those who ventured, in the late sixties, into using the Moog phenomenon in popular contexts.

I have no intention of using these lines to badmouth Jarre's work (which nevertheless never does any harm being one of the most overrated, and concrete proof of the power of shrewd marketing, as history recalls), but it's a less out-of-place discourse than one might think: it is here where the versatility of the English project resides before it completely abandoned - and with incredible results - any semblance of song form. Autechre indeed manage to own even this slice of electronics that shamelessly marries the predictability, catchiness, and naivety of pop song form, without compromising accessibility, commerciality, and artistic-formal limitation that are characteristic of the Frenchman as well as of the many other things we have unfortunately witnessed too many times over the years. In the incredible "Cichli" in fact, one encounters a disturbing 5/4 beat, but where for once the two let themselves go into a rare playful and happy melody, full of Mouse on Mars style quirkiness if you will, but which then, with the advent of the synthesized strings, the second and then third riff - confirming the unpredictability aforementioned -, becomes nostalgic and deep (practically Boards of Canada) almost clashing with the beat (which meanwhile has become more and more sick, pounding, and shocking) and the wavy cymbal geometries (traveling on a separate track, driven by the inexhaustible engine that is experimentation); the contrast, as well as the counter-contrast, is remarkable and perfectly highlights the various facets of Autechre. A similar concept is seen in "Hub" (indecipherable and massive rhythmically, still offbeat times, monumental glitchy closure) where there is a unique way of programming the rhythm, with cymbals used as kicks, kicks used as cymbals, and a physical overturning of the perceptual perspective, proceeding with a hypnotic and austere manner, until a sense of total bewilderment (helped by the unique synth/feedback in a cowbell style) that partly displays the concepts that will be disorienting in "Confield", a massive work that sees the light in 2001 and is perfectly illustrated in these very pages.

With the drones of "Pule", a sort of digital-ambient is coined that opens the doors to what is the piece, in terms of ideas, the most interesting of the work: the long "Nuane", a thirteen-minute suite divided into two parts. The first nervous and with offbeat times, percussive cadences so distorted and rotten as to now approach the original industrial (the one from the seventies) and especially interesting syncopated synthesizers that intervene here and there, used as if they were a sax (the same goes for the rhythm that seems like a frenetic solo by Tony Williams standing before a sequencer for the first time) letting everything develop into a weird pseudo-demented operetta again very close to what Mouse on Mars were doing at the same time; the second part, much more experimental and fundamentally unclassifiable, is directed towards uniquely digital experimentation, granular noises, and micro-glitch painting absolutely unusual rhythmic patterns; the synth that appeared in the first part, initially central, is now reduced to mere accompaniment, with its usage, more than a sax now seems like the sporadic intervention of the piano among the leading solo (which in this case, strange but true, is represented by the rhythm of the cymbal, continuous and never yielding for all thirteen minutes), while here and there organic catacombal pads and chaotic freeform glitch layers emerge, harking back to Bitches Brew's long electric orgies. The epic closure (because yes, there is even that as if it were a progressive suite), as it has happened several times on the album, is entrusted to noise alone, residues of undefined digital sounds placed on a continuous sinusoidal signal: it's the sound of experimentation, it's the best closure one could ask for.

If "Incunabula" was the pinnacle in terms of melody, "Amber" for atmosphere, and "Tri Repetae" for rhythmic maturation, "Chiastic Slide" will be for ideas, absolutely overflowing from each piece, and so many as to be explored further in the next two releases ("EP7", "LP8") that essentially continue the discourse (the first focusing on melody, the second on rhythmic experimentation) taking it to even more abstract places that will culminate years later in what is the summation of Autechre's creation, that "Untilted" which to date remains the last truly noteworthy episode of a project that appears to have lost some of its innovative luster that set it apart, but which will likely bring further innovations in the future, possibly suggested by the new electro-techno-ambient route first taken on the disappointing "Oversteps", then on the slightly more deserving "Move of Ten". We can also remember how this route repeatedly points to an unexpected rediscovery of the Miami bass/bass music of the early nineties, bringing it to a more cerebral and less trivial level, a long-forgotten genre now experiencing a kind of second youth (just think of the new editorial line of Planet Mu or the recent dubstep releases influenced by it).

Could it be yet another of Ae's anticipated insights?