For new fans:Please note that every Autechre album has got one or two accompanying EP releases which provide a similar sound. This may be helpful for your first purchases, and I think it makes sense, because Autechre's sound changed quite "a bit" over the years. Listed chronologically:

Incunabula ~ Basscadet

Amber ~ Anti, Garbage

Tri Repetae ~ Anvil Vapre, Peel Sessions

Chiastic Slide ~ Cichlisuite, Envane

Autechre LP 5 ~ EP 7

29 of 30 found the following review helpful:


Ae's Ambient Coda  Feb 20, 2005 By Ian Vance
"Techno" music - when broadly defined as music derived from modern technology - ages about as well as any other specimen of the computer industry. What sounded fresh and futuristic five years ago now strikes jaded ears as tone-dated and often quaint, obsolete by the rampant revolutions of the tech-industry. Only a few songs, and a few artists, transcend the narrowly-set parameters of "techno," in terms of musical construction and overall lasting appeal: indeed, if anything, the set structure by which electronica in crafted - the standard build-up/climax/build-down - practically ensure that, foundationally, what's for sale now is the same as all that for sale five, ten years before, with only the technology of production itself having improved. But, as I mentioned, a few artists do break the mold, composing music that is both challenging and genre-defying, 'ageless,' consistently adventurous to willing ears. Most of these artists, viewed in hindsight, are classified with the IDM subculture - "Intelligent Dance Music", designed for headphones rather than dance floors: basement-level cyberpunk geeks wholly contrasting their sun-bleached Ibiza counterparts; tricky time-signatures, dial-distortion and glitch-hop chaos shredding the rigid 'struggle for pleasure' structures of mainstream trance and progressive house. Ten thousand huge trance 'choons' have come and gone, relegated to wholesale bins, while albums by Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Boards of Canada are constantly discovered by neophytes, year after year.

Autechre reign, somewhat infamously, at the top of the IDM pantheon. In the past ten+ years this Sheffield duo have crafted a formidable oeuvre of sonic exploration, shifting from an early, complex ambient sound - one that reached its peak here, on *Amber* - to the fringes of avant-garde experimentation. The contrast between early and current Autechre recordings constitute a bewildering, caustic journey of extremities, but when the various albums and EPs are listened to in order, Ae's artistic trajectory makes sense, and gives credence to the notion that these guys are so far ahead of their time that, like Mozart and Bach, their music will resound far beyond this current era; I can see mathematicians and music-students two hundred years from now revering the fragment textures and shatter-glare of *Confield* and *LP5* as highly prescient.

Early Autechre is easier-listening, there is no question about it, and this album is considered by many to be their finest moment. Arriving not long after the gloomy, winter-swept *Incunabula*, Autechre's second album *Amber* instantly displayed an evolved sense of composition, a greater confidence in terms of range and ambition. Far more varied and immediate than its predecessor, I consider it the 'warm' to *Incunabula*'s 'cold', and a more satisfying overall listen.

*Amber* begins with the industrial pulse of 'Foil,' all rust-crusted tones and tweaked percussion, a theme-song of an oil refinery, the dynamics morphing from subtle tribal rhythms to harsh gear-squalls. A dark bass-roll introduces 'Montreal,' and tiny elements - chattering highhats, bongos, glitch efx - gradually weave into the main percussive riff; twinkling notes and low ambient tones slowly drown out the clatter. 'Silverside' follows this gentle decline with an undulating melancholic theme that is allowed to drift into fulfillment before a distorted vocal and snare-dominated riffs smash through the bottom end. At the end, the theme reaches a cautious resolution: out of it bounces the irresistible 'Slip,' an anomaly to the Autechre catalogue, being both major-key and sublimely ~happy~; it's probably the most overtly catchy song they've ever written.

'Glitch' is aptly named: a fractured synth-line plays over an assortment of chirping, squeaking rhythms, building into an echo-washed breakdown. The next song, 'Piezo,' enters obtrusively and reaches a tension-filled impasse with its flanged drum-pattern and random gurgles; the annoyance is then soothed - somewhat - by a standard ethereal ambient passage, *Incunabula*-style. I tend to dislike 'Piezo' for the first three minutes, then, inevitably, find myself caught up in its twisting, whiplash momentum, seduced by its emotive payoff. 'Nine,' a splintered sequence of tones, beautifully off, is gradually overcome by a sinister machine-cry, and flows directly into the opening notes of 'Further,' which also sounds out-of-time until a percussion-riff storms in abruptly, the muted drum/harsh snare revealing its meticulous structure. The drum patterns disintegrate at the end, echoing into the firmament amidst thunder-quake growls; phased synths keep the structure together, and hold on well past the final bass-boom. 'Yulquen' is classic ambient music, dreamy tones washed over a soft pulse, the melancholic haze of it making the subsequent subsonic reverberation and multi-tap crash of 'Nil' all the more dramatic - the theme, emerging in intervals as the rhythms decay to momentary silence, sounds like the weeping of a machine, eerie inhuman and yet incredibly effective. There is no respite, no moment to stop and seek human connection, at this point - the final song 'Teartear' pounds into being with palpable anger, and no resolution is made: the song fades, squalling, into the distance.

*Amber* can be viewed as an ambient coda for Autechre, for from this point on their music steadily becomes more percussive-dominated and abstract. And even this, Ae's most accessible album, cannot be viewed as happy, life-affirming music - sorrow and rumination dominate the album, and even the cheerful 'Slip' is underlined by a melancholic impression - but it is masterfully composed: intricate, beautiful, challenging and timeless like few other entries of the genre. Highly Recommended.

9 of 9 found the following review helpful:


New definition each time  Dec 31, 2001 By Rifat Acikgoz
Autechre is the only artist that gave me the courage to write an online review. Particularly "Glitch", the songs in the album make you listen to them several times to understand what is hidden behind the notes you hear. With deep concentration, Ae takes you to other dimensions where you've never been to before (but deep inside you feel like you know them). Ae does not try to prove you anything, therefore you'll hear unpredicted u-turns within most songs. Each song in this album defines different moods, yet they manage to collaborate and make an album that is consistent within. Listen closely to "Glitch", and you'll understand what Autechre is all about: Simple, yet powerful composition of sounds, a chaos that has its own beautiful rhytm that is so hard to find anywhere else. You may think the beats are exactly the same when you hear them for the first time, but turn up the volume and you'll notice that each note is selected carefully to compliment each other. In a world composed of patterns, Ae will help you discover something that's hidden behind your daily perception.

14 of 17 found the following review helpful:


One of the best albums I've heard  Sep 24, 2000 By MTJones
With so many reviews for this album already, I don't think there's a point in reiterating Autechre's history and backcatalogue. Suffice to say, this is one of the band's "pure" ambient releases, and a milestone for not only Autechre, but for the whole genre, as well.

I don't think anyone will deny that ambient can be just as mass-produced as any other genre out there. Just pay attention to the music in your average TV or movie drama and you'll hear how cheap ambient can be. Hell, it's even spread to pop music!

So Autechre has a bit of a burden with this release. Five years after Amber came out, ambient has infiltrated so much of today's culture that each classic ambient album is threatened with extinction/trivialization (similar to what happened to Citizen Kane in the eye of today's generation).

Leave it to Booth and Brown to come up with a way. This album features the 'standard' ambient constructions, but with just enough oddball moments that it doesn't fit. Some tones are slightly off, some rhythms deviate just a bit from what our mental metronomes would prefer... In a nutshell, the album breaks the standards by intentionally sounding strange and 'wrong' in places.

See, that oddball characteristic gets our attention. Amber is largely melodious and thus soporific, but when that strange screech or tone hits, it wakes us right up. That alone makes this album a powerful one, that it rises above ambient's image of "background/sleep aid" to "engaging, powerful listen."

Amber is very much a holistic piece. I don't know the names of the tracks. I don't know where they begin and end. I don't care. I simply play the album all the way through, and love every second of it.

This album revolutionizes the ambient genre in a way I hadn't thought possible. For that reason alone, I give it my highest recommendation. But I warn you, this album takes an open mind to truly love it.

5 of 5 found the following review helpful:


Evocative soundscapes  Dec 27, 2002 By Pieter "Toypom"
This beautiful album has an utterly unique sound, even within Autechre's ouevre. It may be electronic music but the sound is anything but mechanical, with its strangely compelling textures and beats. The mood varies from eerie and distant to weirdly inspirational and delicately moving. The track Silverside even has some muted vocal samples, while tracks like Further evoke the pitter-patter of raindrops and other nature sounds. The tempo also varies: Glitch and Piezo have a fast beat, while Nine and Yulquen are slow and soft. The closest I can come to a comparison, would be to Peter Baumann's Trans Harmonic Nights, and then only to a certain extent, as Amber is charmingly diverse. I suppose one could describe this as classical electronic music, and this album certainly is a classic in more than one sense of the term.

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