Autechre – Amber

When I listened to "Incunabula", I liked every song on it the first time I heard it. As for "Amber", some of these songs took me time for it to make me realize how good they really are. "Montreal" is my most favorite track. And I bet "Slip", "Glitch" and "Piezo" would be perfect to listen to while driving through mountains. That's how I can picture it when listening to those songs: Mountains! Beautiful mountains in a calm atmosphere!

"Further" has that cool dripping sound. "Yulquen" is my least favorite track. It's a little too minimal for me, though I do like those ambient noises you barely hear in the background. And the last two tracks, "Nil" and "Teartear" are pretty impressive as well!

This album was initially four stars for me. But it's gone up to five now! A

autechre continue to make techno that's difficult to dance to, but very enjoyable to listen to, and this record retreats further from the dance floor, a pattern autechre follows for their entire career. the thing about autechre is that if you sit down and listen to their whole catalogue sequentially, you won't notice much growth, but if you listen to their first record and then their latest one you'll hear a huge difference. it's a gradual change, slowly, over time, a true evolution.

that makes it hard to write reviews for them, as it's almost as though once you've written one, you've written them all. you can't compare and contrast very well, and the music is so obscure that you can't reference the outside world very effectively either.

the sequencing on this record is outstanding, but you expect that from autechre, it's what they're all about. polyrhythms continue to crash around each other, creating the impression of chaos, but the harmonies are a little stronger here, a little more written out. there are numerous excursions into the realm of pure knob twiddling, where flangers and delays are treated as actual instruments, but some of the strongest points are the tracks that sound as though they were written directly into finale, and recorded by pressing play: slip, nine, yulquen & nil.

the flip side of these tracks are the more spacey, floaty, almost danceable tracks; these create mental illusions of multi-coloured crystal orbs floating in space, perhaps moving to some kind of tepid backbone, which is very nice to zone out into. tracks of this nature include montreal, glitch, piezo, further and teartear.

as with all autechre records, i recommend this mostly for travelling and for background music while reading. the aesthetic on the record is dark, cold, mechanical; some people may even claim that this music is written by and for psychopaths. all the gear used to record it was stolen, in fact, so maybe there's something to that....