I originally wrote this album review of the new Autechre record - Quaristice - for my “day job” at MOG.com. This is a slightly different version here because you are a different audience!
Longtime fans of Autechre will probably be ecstatic about Quaristice. It hearkens to early Autechre music - more experimental, more chaotic, and less dance friendly than the last 4 albums or so. I’ve been a fan for ages and bought nearly every album they ever released. But I started to pine for their earlier sounds, when they were trailblazing the experimental electronic scene that later became known as IDM. This is the Autechre album I was longing for! If this sounds like you, you need to listen to Quaristice!
Autechre will gain many new fans with this album at the same time they renew most of their existing fan base.
Overall, the album sounds less clinical than many of Autechre’s more recent releases. The sounds evolve more organically and the sequences have more random elements to them. I LOVE it! The synths on Quaristice sound like an Evolver (Dave Smith Instruments) with its quirky sounds and step sequencers. If it isn’t an Evolver, I would still hazard a guess that this music was inspired by some new piece of hardware. It’s just a guess, but this album sounds so much like a return to hardware for the band. Either that or some serious cut-ups and processing like the Matmos albums based on surgery instruments.
Autechre explore new ground with the use of human vocal elements on “IO” (something they rarely incorporate). The human vocal is nicely balanced by one of the most recognizable machine voices ever: a Speak-n-Spell (or Speak-n-Math). The main vocal in “IO” isn’t very comprehensible since it’s filtered through what sounds a bit like a megaphone and a distortion petal. It’s graininess is perfectly complemented by the digital voice of the T.I. toy.
([ Click To Add "IO" To Player ])
A few songs into the album, it begins to remind me of certain songs by Coil: experimental synth stuff like Elph vs. Glitch or Music To Play In The Dark or similar… My impression keeps changing with each song, because they all sound so different. The tempo varies widely from one song to the next, from ambient washes to triplets at 120 bpm. However, the closest thing to a dance track in the collection is the schizophrenic hip hop beats of “90101″ that sound like a Timbaland production on 45 rpm.
It wasn’t until Track 17 “WNSN” that I started to hear the Autechre that we have come to know in more recent years. A few tracks later, “Notwo” (track 19) gets so minimal it’s downright zen. “Notwo” and “Outh9X” (the last two tracks of the album) are pure atmospheric bliss, very similar to the planetary music of murcof, and a beautiful way to fade out the album. This is an unexpected pleasure of Quaristice - the music varies so much. No two songs are alike and they convey a range of influences and skills.
Autechre will gain many new fans with this album at the same time they renew most of their existing fan base.
