Autechre

Autechre eludes any attempt of description. But if the style of the British act remains indefinable, it is still immediately identifiable. Autechre are unique, and their music can refer only to itself. There is a difference between what the band produces and what influences them. It is this extreme singularity that has traumatized the electronic scene from the very beginning, and continues to do so today, with the same strength. How many other acts after twenty-five years of activity, have managed to remain innovative pioneers?

All of their work is mutant in nature. It constantly evolves, and upsets the rules as well as expectations. “We never ask ourselves whether it sounds good but whether it sounds bad enough.” Each new album requires further auditive attention from the listener. The hardware used has changed in twenty-five years too, from analog synthesizers to digital audio workstations. Today, Autechre no longer compose in the traditional sense of the term, and now create software that produces the music. In the last few years, the band have pushed the limits of the album as an object by extending its duration. Is the nine hour long recorded NTS Sessions 1-4 still an “album”? Autechre themselves are still having doubts about it...They've come back into the limelight in 2020 with SIGN - followed by the surprised released PLUS a couple of weeks after -, perhaps one of their most beautiful albums to date. It is a succinct work, full of nostalgia and unexpected darkness.

Some consider their process to be arid intellectualism or stubborn avant-gardism. However Autechre don’t even desire to be modern! Innovative and bizarre, certainly, but never at the expense of emotions that lie deep inside. If people label them intellectuals, they do so insensitively to the incandescence that runs through their music.

Listening to Autechre is the ideal experience for those who accept the disruption. Some compositions require time and attention to be understood, like a mystery waiting to be solved. It is on this level that they continue to have the lasting power to radically transform our listening and notions of music. A new pleasure, an emotion never felt before – almost a sensuality – to then invade the seasoned listener. And the same way that their style is a unique one, the effect that their music produces on the listener is unparalleled. Nothing sounds quite like Autechre.

This playlist puts forward, in 3 hours and 10 minutes, 27 years of music following a chronological order, so that one can understand the peculiar logic of this act’s evolution. A coherent evolution, highly mastered, and almost scientific. This trip initiates any novice, yet also appeals to the connoisseur, if they seek to expand their knowledge.

Another use could also possible. Since 1977, a disc sent by humankind has been drifting in space waiting for the possibility of aliens intercepting it and discovering Stravinsky’s melodies, Aboriginal music or Chuck Berry’s guitar riffs. What about sending Autechre’s discography out there too? We would no longer be trying to help the aliens to understand us, but instead give them proof that we perfectly understand them.