It’s probably not surprising that I’m a big fan of Autechre, given that the title of this blog is lifted from their album LP5. Quaristice, their newest release, is probably the most enigmatic for me, since it departs from a lot of the traditions I’ve come to expect from an Ae release.
The critical opinion of the album is very mixed, some calling it their best release ever, some saying it’s their best release in the last decade, others saying it continues their decline, and still others saying it’s starting a decline they didn’t have before. It’s definitely a strange release–the usual Ae album has a little less than twenty tracks, this has 20. Typically, they’re long and contain a lot of variations and subtle changes, here most songs are only three minutes or so and meditate on one idea. In every previous album, particularly the last few, the songs had obviously been meticulously constructed and composed, I’ve read elsewhere that these were improvised and simply “jammed” out.
My first thought was “This sounds like Amber.” I’m not sure whether or not that’s a good thing, since Amber is my least favorite Autechre LP. There are none of the spastic clicks and buzzes that have been present everywhere since Confield (though they had been toned down for Untilted, the previous release). In fact, there’s very little glitch at all. The opener, “Altibzz”, could be straight off a release of theirs in 1995. Lots of tracks sound like they were written by a slightly-more-abstract Ochre.
When my friend Dave played me a leak of Quaristice, which was the first time I’d heard it, I didn’t believe that it was actually Autechre. I said that it sounded like a very good imitation of Autechre, but not them. I stand by that sentiment as much as I can–the lack of composition really shows here. There are a lot of good ideas which aren’t developed as much as I know they can be by guys like this. It’s interesting that they get so far with just improv (though I don’t know how true that is), but it’s not far enough to match my expectations.
That’s not to say that there’s nothing good about this album–”plyPhon” and “rale” are great, and “Simmm” is maybe the best track they’ve released since Confield (my favorite of theirs; I’m sorry, not much can beat “VI Scose Poise”). There are a handful of other nice songs, as well. The problem here is the quality control: some tracks are aggravating, many are throwaway. I also don’t have the feeling this will improve with successive listens as each previous Autechre album has for me.
I guess in the end that I agree with people that say this is a natural place for them to go after Untilted hinted at it, and I’m glad they’re doing something new, but this is the first album of theirs where I feel like they haven’t tried as hard to make it good. At the moment I’m ranking it above Amber and Untilted, somewhere around Incunabula and Draft 7.30, and below their classic period between Tri Repetae and Confield, but we’ll see what happens as it ages.