[rayword45]

Day 16: Oversteps by Autechre (Album Choice: Contrapasso)

Day 2 of the pledge: I went through almost the whole day not even giving a second thought to the pledge. Later, I found out that uncensored Black Dynamite episodes had leaked from the Blu-ray. My opinion is not important, nor is yours, especially if you're one of those uptight pansies who thinks everything Williams Street makes is random, idiotic humor. It is, but that's what makes it so enjoyable. But yeah, I decided to watch the second episode, and as kitschy and deliberately outdated the references are in that episode (and that whole show)... Yeah some of it ended up hitting a little too close to home. I didn't relapse so obviously it wasn't that close to home. I am strong, I will make it through this pledge. Now onto the music.

Do I need to give Autechre any introduction? I mean, they're not The Beatles or anything, but they're pretty well known to anybody who would care I think. This is their tenth studio album, or maybe not. Depends on what you consider their EPs because the majority of them are definitely long enough to be considered albums. EP7 is longer than a good deal of their albums! And that one EP that I'm not going to list the title of is long enough to fill up TWO CDS! OR 4 TWELVE-INCHES! OR 2 TWELVE-INCHES FROM PLAIN RECORDINGS! OR HOWEVER MANY CASSETTES/8-TRACKS IT WOULD TAKE TO HOLD 150 MINUTES OF MUSIC!

That reminds me, I should review that new Swans album some time soon. The Needle Drop gave it a 10/10 and I wanna judge if that's deserved or hipster hyping over Michael Gira's foot skin. I've been putting it off because it's two hours long. Soundtracks To The Blind was 140 minutes, and the only Swans release I think I can say I fully enjoyed. I've only listened to three others though. Children Of God is damn overrated.

So anyways, I'm currently at somewhat a loss for words on how to judge this music, so let me start by saying these song titles are ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT. known(1)? pt2ph8? os veix3? How do you pronounce this garbage? To compare this to the most famous Autechre track which I believe to be Gantz Graf, most of these songs actually have melodies, instead of just glitch sounds. In fact, very few songs here have glitch sounds, seeming to be driven predominantly by old, outdated synths and old outdated drum machines. see on see, for example, is basically percussion-free, driven by a constantly changing bassline and sparkly, high-octave synth notes. A rather pretty song. Judging by these first 7 tracks, the main atmosphere of the album is icy and slightly retro. Example of icyness, the first track starts with pure silence for 20 seconds that feel like 20 hours, then slowly build up into cold ambience. Cold ambience is found in most of the tracks on this album. Slightly retro, as in it sounds like an attempt to make modern music with old equipment. The drums on Treale, for example, sound like they're taken from a broken Roland, incredibly lo-fi and buzzy to the point of almost being grating. These synthesizers sound like they were custom made by Martenot. These don't sound like they were ever used in popular music, it's like they deliberately got the oldest sounding synths ever.

This is a pretty hard album to describe. "A bunch of outdated freeform synths on top of cold drones and occasionally some lo-fi drum machine beats" doesn't sound too pleasing but it's better than it sounds. Personally though, this is just a bit too abstract for me at least upon first listen. And 70 minutes is way too damn long for this type of music.

Best Track: see on see (Why do they choose to not capitalize most titles? Why)
Rating: 6/10