Autechre – Incunabula

An absolute must if you're knee deep in LSD or Psilocybin.

A wonderful album, lovely naïve in places, long before Booth & Brown became too clever for their own good.

With this album AE established to a big event due to songs like bike. And they deserve it, but to me it is more about the songs Lowride and Autriche because they are more sophisticated, more experimental, more of something that lasts forever. Both songs do not have this mechanical and repetitive patterns like the rest of the album, both songs have a more friendlier than darker atmosphere.

After all those years digging in Autechre's releases until their too much experimental era since Confield (NTS sessions 2 & 4 have something interesting too), I'm still convinced that Incunabula is their best and most profound album. Not by far compared to Tri Repetae, Amber, Garbage, Anti and their Peel Sessions but this 1st album is a bit ahead and very coherent, this is pure zenitude. Tracks such as (monsta) "Doctrine", "444" and "Bike" are just IDM Gems. Highly recommended LP !

Runout etchings are same as silver vinyl version

Matrix / Runout (Runout side A): WARP. LP. 17 Aι
Matrix / Runout (Runout side B): WARP. LP. 17. Bι
Matrix / Runout (Runout side C): WARP. LP. 17 Cι
Matrix / Runout (Runout side D): WARP. LP. 17. Dι

I've just listened to the 2016 vinyl repress from start to finish on a fairly good system & it sounds near perfect to me. A timeless classic, as enjoyable now as when I first heard it in 1993.

The images up for this release are the wrong ones. They are in fact of the 2001 reissue. Could anyone who has a copy of the original release please pic's and add any other ways in which they differ?

Incunabula has to be one of THE essential electronic music albums of all time. When it was released I had been collecting WARP 12"s from the bass-and-bleep days, and bought the first "Artificial Intelligence" on faith. That album didn't set a foot wrong in my ears, and the subsequent series of AI LPs from most of the individual artists did not disappoint.

But the debut from virtual unknowns Autechre was the last in the series to be released (save AI vol 2 some time later) and as far as I'm concerned WARP really had saved the best to last. This album totally opened up my ears and blew me away. I couldn't get it away from my record player for weeks.

Every track brings lush textures, haunting melodies, and crisp clean intricate rhythms all underpinnig a variation of light and dark shades, moods and emotions. Instrumental music rarely comes more engaging than this. Coupled with this is the highly innovative artwork from Designers Republic, which really to me does look like a visual representation of the music - lush yet fractured, superficially subtle yet intricate and many layerd in detail.

My first copy was on the limited metallic grey vinyl - I took it back to the shop and exchanged it for a black one as it was pressed off-centre on one side and also suffered from pressing faults often found in coloured vinyl. A further coloured copy I acquired later also has the off-centre pressing, so maybe this was a common problem. These days I'm lazy and generally reach for my CD.

Incidentally the word Incunabula is Latin and refers to something in its infancy or early stages of development. Highly appropriate in the light of what was to follow from Autechre (and also from WARP, and the whole "IDM" scene).

I still can't believe that this record is made in 1993 (although some beat structures remind me of that, but synths are in front of time. Thats is for sure). Such tracks as lowride or 444 have changed the understanding of music of a lot of people.
One of the first albums that demonstrate untraditional approach to eletronic music and rhytmic structures and does it good:)