Autechre Quaristice CD

Among detractors, electronic music is often criticized for wanting some undefined quality, most often related to some perception of a lack of "warmth" or "soul." The music of U.K. electronic pioneers Autechre makes no such easy concessions to what might be considered pedestrian concerns. Since the early 90s, Sean Booth and Rob Brown have been generating a parallel universe of sound--a sound that has pushed at the boundaries of musical abstraction by exploring the multiplicities and infinite variations offered by technology.
On their ninth album, QUARISTICE, Autechre's technology-driven imperative is as uncompromising as ever. But rather than construct a maze of refracted, endlessly variegated sound, they choose to break up the set into shorter sonic vignettes, each delving into a specific, focused area of exploration with more subtle gradients and variation. The spectral, pulsing drones of "Altibzz," the album's opener, represents a return to the pastoral ambient electronica of the duo's second album AMBER. But the becalming textures are short-lived as the methodical clanking of snares on "The Plc" reference the more brutal corners of minimal techno, even as the swirling, elliptical synths create a drunken counterpoint. Despite all the gloriously rumpled beat programming and intricate DSP-processing, QUARISTICE is, in many ways, Autechre's most earth-bound effort, as revealed in the brightly colored, nearly baroque melodies of "Simm," perhaps the closest the duo have arrived to a pure pop moment.
"Unified" and "cohesive" would not be two of the first couple hundred words used to describe Quaristice, the first Autechre album since 2005's Untilted. The only aspect that prevents Quaristice from seeming open-ended, as a bunch of tracks splayed arbitrarily across a disc, is that it begins and ends with ambient (as in entirely beat-less) pieces; an arc might gradually become apparent, but that would only be the result of increased familiarity with the sequence of tracks. It's disparate, to say the very least, but that is not at the listener's expense. Just by glancing at the length of the track list, it's apparent the album is not standard-operating Autechre; at 73 minutes in length, most of the 20 tracks are more like vignettes, yet the ideas arrive fully formed, never appearing to be dashed off or loosely sketched. The variety of ideas is nearly imposing, the best of which include the deadened chiming and clanging of "Simmm," the stealth jitter of "Tankakern," the Drexciya-worthy pitch-black neo-electro of "Rale," and the handful of stunning and duly swarthy ambient tracks -- especially the closing 12 minutes shared by the chilling "Notwo" and "Outh9x" tandem. A couple moments, unsurprisingly, border on the inscrutable, with "Fol3" sounding like a collage of car collisions and slammed doors smeared and backmasked for nearly four minutes, and "bnc Cstl" more like a hyper-speed gag of sound effects, its high hats and snares tucked deeply into the mix. While it can take some time to get a handle on its generous stream of components, Quaristice is far from just another Autechre album. Not since LP5 has being impressed been so obviously secondary to enjoyment. ~ Andy KellmanSpin (p.96) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "Simultaneously melancholy and lascivious, it's pure aural pleasure.
Uncut (p.83) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[The LP] boasts a well-honed ambient edge: take the lush 'Simmm', a mugful of nanobots cogitating noisily over warm synth drones. It's their best since 1998's LP5."
CMJ - "A small smattering of wild beats and spastic production add a certain surprising charm to QUARISTICE..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.104) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "[Y]ou get trademark synth lines rising once more from the still-life ambience of 'Outh9X', dazzling multiple planes of activity on 'Perlence', and some new combinations....It's a fantastic collection..."
The Word (magazine) (p.100) - "[T]heir technology sounds like a natural process too; the tracks unfold with an inhuman but inexorable logic that's as satisfying as it is inexplicable."
Record Collector (magazine) (p.86) - 3 stars out of 5 -- "[With] alternately transcendent and tense distorted samples, synth washes and beats..."