EVERY AUTECHRE TRACK RANKED | Breaking Down the 100 Greatest Autechre Tracks

Welcome to my breakdown of the greatest pieces of music released to date by the prolific and restlessly creative duo Autechre. What initially began as a project writing about my favourite tracks from Rob and Sean spiralled into a comprehensive ranking of every release of theirs that I was able to find while scouring every corner of the internet. I want to emphasize that the framework of a ranking is not designed to be reductive or purely an exercise in pedantry. You won’t find a negative or pointlessly comparative sentence here; merely expressions of why I love 100 tracks in particular as much as I do. I hope you enjoy and find my analyses and descriptions useful in helping to unlock the elliptical and enigmatic world of Autechre, my favourite musicians of all time.

Please note: This list does not include live recordings, remixes, alternate versions, bootlegs, or any unofficial releases.

Key:

* Track features on an EP or single

⧫ Track features on a compilation

✝ Bonus track

#291 | Accelera 1 & 2 (Cavity Job — EP, 1991)*

#290 | Cavity Job (Cavity Job — EP, 1991)*

#289 | Xektses sql (Oversteps, 2010)✝

#288 | SonDEremawe (Quaristice, 2008)

#287 | 19 Headaches (Peel Session 2 — EP, 2000)*

#286 | Bronchus 2 (Incunabula, 1993)

#285 | Melve (LP5, 1998)

#284 | peal MA (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#283 | Autriche (Incunabula, 1993)

#282 | wetgelis casual interval (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#281 | Lanx 3 (Volume Eight, 1993)⧫

#280 | Lowride (Incunabula, 1993)

#279 | paralel suns (Quaristice, 2008)

#278 | sinistrailAB air (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#277 | Cep puiqMX (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*

#276 | Blifil (Peel Session 2 — EP, 2000)*

#275 | ClnChr (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*✝

#274 | Left Blank (EP7, 1999)*

#273 | ylm0 (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*

#272 | Steels (Quaristice, 2008)

#271 | y7 (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*

#270 | Gaekwad (Peel Session 2 — EP, 2000)*

#269 | Nonima (Mind the Gap, 1995)⧫

#268 | Glitch (Amber, 1994)

#267 | Zeiss Contarex (EP7, 1999)*

#266 | Ccec (EP7, 1999)*

#265 | Caliper Remote (LP5, 1998)

#264 | Naftwa4 (WARP WIFOF2003 Mix, 2003)⧫

#263 | Theswere (Quaristice, 2008)

#262 | Silverside (Amber, 1994)

#261 | Maetl (Incunabula, 1993)

#260 | nu-Nr6d (Quaristice, 2008)✝

#259 | t1a1 (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#258 | no border (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*

#257 | bqbqbq (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#256 | Etchogon-S (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*

#255 | Vose In (LP5, 1998)

#254 | iris was a pupil (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*

#253 | Medrey (Tri Repetae, 1995)✝

#252 | Squeller (EP7, 1999)*

#251 | 9010I-I (Quaristice, 2008)

#250 | p1p2 (PLUS, 2020)✝

#249 | Kalpol Introl (Incunabula, 1993)

#248 | plyPhon (Quaristice, 2008)

#247 | pendulu casual (Elseq, 2016)

#246 | Stop Look Listen (We Are Reasonable People, 1998)⧫

#245 | pce freeze 2.8i (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*

#244 | st epreo (Oversteps, 2010)

#243 | We R Are Why ([single], 1996)*

#242 | Coenc3 (45 Tribute, 2008)⧫

#241 | bnc Castl (Quaristice, 2008)

#240 | g 1 e 1 (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#239 | psin AM (SIGN, 2020)

#238 | Carni (EuroWarp, 1995)⧫

#237 | TBM2 (Elseq, 2016)

#236 | /]{-/](||) Excerpt (All Tomorrow’s Parties 3.0, 2003)⧫

#235 | redfall (Oversteps, 2010)

#234 | Gnit (Tri Repetae, 1995)

#233 | deco Loc (Exai, 2013)

#232 | Rpeg (EP7, 1999)*

#231 | shimripl air (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#230 | sinistrail sentinel ([single], 2018)*

#229 | Dial (Gantz Graf — EP, 2002)*

#228 | chimer 1–5–1 (Elseq, 2016)

#227 | dummy casual pt2 (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#226 | nth Dafuseder.b (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*

#225 | Foil (Amber, 1994)

#224 | os veix3 (Oversteps, 2010)

#223 | Liccflii (EP7, 1999)*

#222 | Tankakern (Quaristice, 2008)

#221 | M62 (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*

#220 | Outh9X (Quaristice, 2008)

#219 | Yeesland (Cichlisuite — EP, 1997)*

#218 | Calbruc (Chiastic Slide, 1997)

#217 | splesh (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#216 | Inhake 2 (Peel Session — EP, 1999)*

#215 | rale (Quaristice, 2008)

#214 | JNSN CODE GL16 ([single], 2017)*

#213 | Iera (Untilted, 2005)

#212 | Dropp (EP7, 1999)*

#211 | SYptixed (Bleep:10, 2014)⧫

#210 | tuinorizn (Exai, 2013)

#209 | PIOBmx (Garbage — EP, 1995)*

#208 | Tapr (Draft 7.30, 2003)

#207 | acid mwan idle (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#206 | Fol3 (Quaristice, 2008)

#205 | spTh (Elseq, 2016)

#204 | Konlied Mx (WARP:Routine, 2001)⧫

#203 | Second Scout (Anvil Vapre — EP, 1995)*

#202 | prac-f (Exai, 2013)

#201 | r ess (Oversteps, 2010)

#200 | Are Y Are We? ([single], 1996)*

#199 | VL AL 5 (Draft 7.30, 2003)

#198 | rew(1) (Move of Ten — EP, 2010)*

#197 | spl47 ([single], 2017)*

#196 | All Tomorrow’s Linoleum (All Tomorrow’s Parties 1.0, 2001)⧫

#195 | Netlon Sentinel (EP7, 1999)*

#194 | Theme of Sudden Roundabout (Draft 7.30, 2003)

#193 | ts1a (Benefit Compilation for Japan, 2011)⧫

#192 | Krib (Cichlisuite — EP, 1997)*

#191 | 6852 ([single], 2011)*

#190 | 13x0 step (Elseq, 2016)

#189 | C/Pach (Tri Repetae, 1995)

#188 | Osla for n (L-event — EP, 2013)*

#187 | Pencha (Cichlisuite — EP, 1997)*

#186 | Milk DX (Peel Session — EP, 1999)*

#185 | Rettic AC (Chiastic Slide, 1997)

#184 | fLh (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#183 | Laughing Quarter (Envane — EP, 1997)*

#182 | sch.mefd2 (SIGN, 2020)

#181 | Characi (Cichlisuite — EP, 1997)*

#180 | Crystel (Artificial Intelligence, 1992)⧫

#179 | qplay (Oversteps, 2010)

#178 | Second Scepe (Anvil Vapre — EP, 1995)*

#177 | IO (Quaristice, 2008)

#176 | 18 (keyosc) (Exai, 2013)✝

#175 | M39 Diffain (L-Event — EP, 2013)*

#174 | Fold4, Wrap5 (LP5, 1998)

#173 | clustro casual (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#172 | mirrage (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#171 | lux 106 mod (PLUS, 2020)

#170 | artov chain (Elseq, 2016)

#169 | krYlon (Oversteps, 2010)

#168 | Eggshell (Incunabula, 1993)

#167 | Second Bad Vilbel (Anvil Vapre — EP, 1995)*

#166 | four of seven (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#165 | Latent Quarter (Envane — EP, 1997)*

#164 | The Trees (Untilted, 2005)

#163 | debris_funk (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#162 | newbound (L-event — EP, 2013)*

#161 | marhide (PLUS, 2020)

#160 | Doctrine (Incunabula, 1993)

#159 | Further (Amber, 1994)

#158 | Windwind (Incunabula, 1993)

#157 | Gelk (Peel Session 2 — EP, 2000)*

#156 | fwzE (Quaristice, 2008)

#155 | 9 chrO (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#154 | Corc (LP5, 1998)

#153 | Chatter (Artificial Intelligence II, 1993)⧫

#152 | Rsdio (Tri Repetae, 1995)

#151 | recks on (Exai, 2013)

#150 | elyc9 7hres (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#149 | Outpt (EP7, 1999)*

#148 | P.:NTIL (Draft 7.30, 2003)

#147 | Slip (Amber, 1994)

#146 | tac Lacora (L-Event — EP, 2013)*

#145 | Basscadet (Incunabula, 1993)

#144 | IV VV IV VV VIII (Draft 7.30, 2003)

#143 | Second Peng (Anvil Vapre — EP, 1995)*

#142 | Tilapia (Cichlisuite — EP, 1997)*

#141 | Perlence (Quaristice, 2008)

#140 | Fermium (Untilted, 2005)

#139 | ilanders (Oversteps, 2010)

#138 | The Plc (Quaristice, 2008)

#137 | Montreal (Amber, 1994)

#136 | Goz Quarter (Envane — EP, 1997)*

#135 | DekDre Scap B (PLUS, 2020)

#134 | carefree counter dronal (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#133 | Treale (Oversteps, 2010)

#132 | Pule (Chiastic Slide, 1997)

#131 | curvcaten (Elseq, 2016)

#130 | Yulquen (Amber, 1994)

#129 | Flep (Exai, 2013)

#128 | Bike (Incunabula, 1993)

#127 | Stud (Tri Repetae, 1995)

#126 | si00 (SIGN, 2020)

#125 | Drane (Peel Session — EP, 1999)*

#124 | d-sho qub (Oversteps, 2010)

#123 | Nine (Amber, 1994)

#122 | Hub (Chiastic Slide, 1997)

#121 | ii.pre esc (PLUS, 2020)

#120 | six of eight (midst) (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#119 | nodezsh (Exai, 2013)

#118 | Puch (Elements, 1997)⧫

#117 | runrepik (Exai, 2013)

#116 | Cap.IV (Gantz Graf — EP, 2002)*

#115 | Lost (Anti — EP, 1994)*

#114 | 777 (LP5, 1998)

#113 | T ess xi (Exai, 2013)

#112 | O=0 (Oversteps, 2010)

#111 | oneum (Elseq, 2016)

#110 | Simmm (Quaristice, 2008)

#109 | Arch Carrier (LP5, 1998)

#108 | LCC (Untilted, 2005)

#107 | Djarum (Anti — EP, 1994)*

#106 | frane casual (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#105 | jatevee C (Exai, 2013)

#104 | n cur (SIGN, 2020)✝

#103 | gonk tuf hi (NTS Sessions, 2018)

#102 | vekoS (Exai, 2013)

#101 | gr4 (SIGN, 2020)

The Top 100

#100

Nil (Amber, 1994)

Amber is a more ‘conventional’ IDM record than most others in Autechre’s catalogue no doubt, and though they may play it down as mere contract fulfilment for Warp so that they could adventure with more ambition on the absurdly brilliant leap forward that would be Tri Repetae, Amber nonetheless has its fair share of highlights, and the warbly low bass rumble of Nil definitely serves as a preview for the heavier bass textures that would dominate Tri Rep, even if they sound positively light and fluffy by comparison here. The heavily reverbed beats though serve as a nice counterpoint, balancing the track and giving it a searching, atmospheric feel that immediately registers it as a particularly cogent highlight in the backloaded Amber’s superb second half.

#99

7FM ic (PLUS, 2020)

7FM ic is maybe the most gutteral, ugly track on PLUS. The first time you hear it it almost seems like a random series of colliding textures, some whooshing and some metallic and percussive. However, as with much of Autechre’s later-period stuff, close interrogation reveals a carefully refined construction. For one, the rhythm itself is regular, it is just that the particular tonal qualities of the sounds that make it up are always shifting in every iteration. However, the piece does have resonant melodic lines at its core, weaving in and out, and the heavy squelches that develop in the back half of the track in particular recall au14 from SIGN, providing a subtle but clear link to that other record that reinforces their intertwining relationship.

#98

gonk steady one (NTS Sessions, 2018)

This 22-minute standout from the first NTS Session became an immediate, iconic fan favourite for its insistent, regularly shifting, slapping and reverberating rhythm section — it is one of the hardest, most relentlessly aggressive tracks across all four sessions. Its throbbing bass pulses continually drive beneath a multifaceted canvas of sound that weaves through delightfully twisted dancefloor grooves, metallic drone, and a more eerie, squelching, but no less intense second half. Its length may test the patience of newer listeners, but it’s never less than totally engaging. It also, notably, began the use of the term ‘gonk’ to refer to Rob and Sean’s heavier material. If it has a beat and you can dance to it, the shit gonks.

#97

FLeure (Exai, 2013)

The disarming skittish beat and blown out grooves of the Exai opener is a fitting and uncompromising welcome into the dense world of one of Rob and Sean’s most consistently thrilling and impressive achievements. If you’re looking to get into late-period Autechre specifically, Exai is the perfect place to begin, and the five-minute opener wastes no time in throwing you into a world of relentless, fast-paced, but neatly constructed bangers that surprise, confound, and delight in equal measure. Much like the album as a whole, it may overwhelm at first, but once you get a hold of the rhythm it feels like flying.

#96

Eidetic Casein (Confield, 2001)

Confield is the most seamless, revolutionary, intoxicating journey Rob and Sean have ever constructed with the album format. It defies expectations and somehow manages to be both wilder and more uncompromising, but also tighter and more tethered to rhythm than you might expect from its lofty expectation. Eidetic Casein is a fantastic example of the record’s central goal, which is to disorient, disarm, and playfully toy with you, like a predator teasing its prey before devouring it whole. Sometimes when I listen to this track I can’t decide if the music wants to pull me through some foreign jungle to an untapped wilderness or throttle me to death. The cut-up, cascading melodic tones at the centre of the track are like a demented circus theme, but the thrumming beat ensures the track keeps you in its grip.

#95

Eutow (Tri Repetae, 1995)

The arrival of Eutow to kick off the second half of Autechre’s breakthrough third record is startling; following a first half mostly dominated by skittish but pulsing, bass-heavy beats that have a jagged edge to them, Eutow begins with a warm, swelling synth that’s almost inviting, massaging; and then, suddenly, these absolutely gargantuan synth bass tones brush atop the mix. It cannot be understated how huge the sound is; it’s almost like a jet flying over your head, but as melodic and welcoming as it is heavy and dominating. That the duo put a straightforward, shuffling beat atop it to push the track forward is almost irrelevant, as it’s pure bliss to just get lost in the pads, and the way Rob and Sean manipulate them with a technique evoking DJ record scratching is cheeky but irresistible.

#94

Pir (EP7, 1999)*

The EP7 closer is a prime example of Rob and Sean’s trademark technique of complicating a beautiful, plaintive, but shifting melody with these assaultive, twisted mechanistic shards of sound, and the result is one of the more overtly affecting tracks on an otherwise scattershot EP. That it comes at the finish is only fitting, as it serves as both comedown and summary for one of their more elliptical, unusual, and dare I say it, experimental non-album releases.

#93

chenc9 (Quaristice, 2008)

The superb final quarter of the otherwise mixed-bag Quaristice is loaded with highlights that take advantage of longer runtimes (longer in the context of this particular record being 5 minutes as opposed to 2 or 3), and chenc9 is among the most immediate and pleasurable. It kicks off in full propulsion with a clipped white-noise beat and these detuned tones squeaking a hooky melody. Eventually, though, as the beat begins to stumble over itself, the song suddenly opens up to a more contemplative space, as though a dizzy spinning has ended and left the listener dazed, still seeing objects in their environment move as they gradually settle into place.

#92

Maphive 6.1 (EP7, 1999)*

The standout of EP7 for me (which I’ll handily admit is not one of my favourite Autechre releases by a long shot) is one of the most unique and singular tracks in the duo’s entire catalogue, in terms of the particular tones it utilizes and the feelings it evokes. The track has a rattling beat in its opening stretch and these crystalline tones that actually sound remarkably similar to some of the textures the duo would employ on Oversteps, though predating that record by over a decade. However here, the tones sound more organic, and also more haunting. Much of the eight minute track, the longest on the 60+ minute EP, is content to meander around these tones, and the result is a track that has both a fulsome depth and a hollow, brittle core; more than any other Autechre track perhaps, it sounds vulnerable.

#91

Sim Gishel (Confield, 2001)

It opens with sounds that feel almost like a distorted memory of a Super Mario video game, but then quickly settles into a lurching beat that texturally sounds like it is infected by some kind of parasitic, flesh-eating host, eating away at it from the inside out such that all that is left is a hollow, crackling shell. Accompanying it are these equally bizarre and unsettling tones that sound as though they are decomposing, lifeless debris that might perhaps have come in the wake of some more ‘normal’ piece that was brutally assaulted. It’s an utterly fucked piece of music, which of course is the name of the game for Confield, but the way this track in particular scrapes and brushes at your inner ear will have timid listeners throwing their headphones in disgust but adventurous ones confused but awestruck.

#90

F7 (SIGN, 2020)

Those bouncing, careening synth tones almost feel like a violent collision at the outset of this track, but SIGN highlight F7 is nowhere near done disorienting the listener. It plays like a spiritual sequel to the baroque melodrama of Oversteps’ highlight known(1), that track’s clear and staccato melody here malformed and melted into a series of bleeding tones that almost blur together and points and surge in a frenzy of descending melodic progressions. It’s more minimal only in the strictest of senses; the tones are not necessarily clashing like they would in an earlier Autechre piece as they are brushing together violently, and the feeling that is evoked here, especially through that low, descending melody that serves as the song’s bedrock, is one of panic, disorientation, and fear.

#89

glos ceramic (NTS Sessions, 2018)

This third session highlight is among its more dramatic pieces, beginning with these bleeding, harsh tones that fold into each other but form a relatively straightforward, even playful melody. The clanking beat that underlies the track’s first section is heavily reverbed and sounds deceptively like a hammer hitting a nail, and so a theme of construction is established. Those aforementioned harsh tones weave through a number of different, equally pleasing melodies before around five minutes in, the track takes a sudden and dramatic turn: the tones dissipate and we are left with this brittle, violent, but spacious beat, gradually increasing in intensity and warping, mutating itself into different forms. It’s a staggering piece of sound design that stands as one of many shining examples of the duo at the peak of their progressive powers.

#88

icari (NTS Sessions, 2018)

By contrast, the 20-minute closer to Session 3 is much sparser, less beat-heavy, almost deceptively so. The progressions and shifts here are much more minimal and suggestive, but the track does an awful lot with a little. It subtly calls back to many of the tones heard throughout the session, and feels like the wake of the collapse resulting from the session’s heavier moments, a kind of pool of sound that swirls, thickens, curdles, as it gets you in its grasp. In its langurous, methodical pace and subtlety it also hints at the direction of the drone-heavy and abyssal fourth session, but there’s so much going on here, so many different elements weaving in and out, layering atop and fracturing, disintegrating, that it wasn’t until I approached the session more attentively, with proper headphones and total darkness, that I began to feel it latch onto me.

#87

Augmatic Disport (Untilted, 2005)

Untilted’s propulsive, beat-heavy, fractured take on dance music is among the most immediate material the band ever released, and if you check out the bootleg Glasgow Art School live set from this time floating around the web you’ll see the boys could make full-on apocalyptic rave shit if they wanted to. Untilted is a wrigglier, more subversive beast than that though, which is of course to be expected. Mid-album centrepiece Augmatic Disport is among the most aggressive tracks on the record, glitching and splicing, fracturing and reforming, gloriously pulling you through various start-stop rhythmic excursions before, hilariously, just collapsing into a simple 4/4 dance beat of fuzzed out bass tones. The cheeky gits.

#86

Teartear (Amber, 1994)

The Amber closer has an almost theatrical darkness to it, announcing itself with these portentous, doomy overhanging chords, before introducing a trudging beat and plodding like a gently seductive call to the dancefloor. The central three-note melody feels almost apocalyptic hanging atop the drama, and though you might expect the duo (or any more conventional act) to build this tension by accelerating it, driving the whole thing skyward, Rob and Sean buck expectations by doing the exact opposite: they slow it down, almost turning the whole thing into an extended breakdown, atop which a lighter-sounding, almost plinky melody serves as a teasing counterpoint. The whole thing is a stunning finale to a superb record, and hints at the more subversive shit to come on Tri Repetae the following year.

#85

32a_reflected (NTS Sessions, 2018)

This dreamy, shimmering closer to the first NTS Session is notable for being palindromic: it is the same seven-minute drone piece played twice simultaneously, one forwards and one in reverse, entirely overlapping and meeting in the middle to make this plaintive, ghostly echo of a track that allows for a moment of, ahem, “reflection” on the varied mayhem of the rest of the session as well as being an early hint at the dramatic conclusion of the project in its final installment. The whole thing has the feel of skating along a planet made entirely of ice, looking up at a glistening glass sky, seeing what was behind you in the distance ahead of you as you circumnavigate your new home.

#84

V-PROC (Draft 7.30, 2003)

If Untilted is the duo’s warped and twisted vision of dance music, then Draft 7.30 is the most direct incorporation of the influence of hip-hop on their production style and the way they view rhythm. Nowhere on the record is that clear than the propulsive collisions of sound that make up V-PROC, the record’s penultimate track and a piece that makes prominent use of a heavily Autechrefied breakbeat, constructed from analogue equipment as similar blasting percussive hits from 90s club records were. They combine this influence with the overall deconstructive and mutative style of the rest of the record’s construction, where a few basic, interrelating elements are gradually pulled apart and mangled beyond recognition.

#83

esle 0 (PLUS, 2020)

The penultimate piece on Autechre’s second record of 2020 is cascading, voluminous, emotional. It feels like the preparation for some gigantic battle, or stealing yourself in the midst of overwhelming emotions to be strong, to stand up and move forward. The pulsing hits of sound here feel less haunted, less disorienting, and more pointed, forward-moving, powerfully effective; they brush against each other in a similar fashion to a track like F7 on SIGN, though where that track is laced with a sense of inevitable doom, the psychological space evoked by the sounds here is more complex, evocative, and moving.

#82

pt2ph8 (Oversteps, 2010)

This shimmering epilogue to the gigantic known(1) is one of the more peaceful, plaintive tracks on Oversteps. It exists in a similar tonal space as something like NTS’s 32a_reflected, evoking icy and shimmering imagery; however, this piece is much more colourful, varied, explorative; it moves through various suggestive melodic motifs, and curiously never settles, constantly churning and revolving; that it can sound so at peace, so calm, while on the surface being so ostensibly busy and restless, is a fascinating contradiction that is at the heart of why the piece is so immediately attractive and perfectly, for lack of a better word, “Autechrian”.

#81

au14 (SIGN, 2020)

The most violently propulsive track on an otherwise more measured, beatless LP, au14 has a hammering and unrelenting pulse that in its tactile rawness recalls Confield’s Cfern. Additionally, there are these inconsistent washes of colourful noise that recall Sim Gishel, and as such the track itself seems to serve as a modernized, comparatively more minimal and driving tribute to their 2001 record. The melody in this track is more buried, but the effect of the track is stronger for it, as your ears continually search for that sound to focus on to but in the process get absolutely battered by everything piling on top. It feels like your brain getting a workout.

#80

nineFLY (NTS Sessions, 2018)

I talk at many points of the sound design on some later-era Autechre tracks being truly fucked, but nowhere is it as sickening as the monolithic nineFLY, a deep cut on NTS Session 3 that stands as one of their most defiantly strange exercises in pure textural manipulation. There’s the barest hint of a melody here, but it’s buried in the unearthy, enormous, groaning bass tones that rattle your speakers, and most pertinently, it is entirely overwhelmed by the clanking, buzzing, rattling glass textures that dominate the piece’s stomach-churning ten minutes. It’s not for the faint of heart, nor can it really be appreciated without a properly decent sound system. Even on high end headphones the tech struggles to fully convey the weird sense of contorted grandeur this piece has, and why it works for me and some other listeners is not something I think typical musical analysis can really tease out. A slightly more accessible but still bewildering variant on this track is the even more perfect ecol4 from PLUS, but nineFLY is unique and respectable for its total refusal to go easy on you.

#79

TM1 open (PLUS, 2020)

PLUS closer TM1 open is, fittingly for an Autechre album-ender, a bit of a curveball, somehow minimal but oppressive, with a throbbing, regular beat, atop of which the band introduce and playfully toy with a surprising texture, these dynamic 808 squelches that sound taken straight from a piece of 90s kit but in all likelihood are entirely synthetic. It’s a strange and anachronistic inclusion on a track from this new era, but it serves to delightfully bring the duo full circle after 30 years of restless invention, calling back to the acid house and techno scene of the late 80s and early 90s from which the duo emerged, a reflective capstone on a record that otherwise pushes relentlessly forward, ultimately a reflection of the duo’s consistent ethos of pushing the possibilities of electronic music ever further, with each successive record and sonic reinvention. This restless persistence is encapsulated by the final moments of the track, which gradually dissipates until all that’s left is a gentle pulse that resembles a heartbeat, puncturing the space and the silence.

#78

Draun Quarter (Envane — EP, 1997)*

This final piece on one of Chiastic Slide’s two accompanying EPs perfectly elicits the palpable sense of emotion laced across that record through these warm, fuzzy pads that evoke the same sense of isolation and sadness as that album’s masterpiece Cichli, and a similarly pulsing though more skeletal beat that lends the piece a real sense of palpable urgency that only heightens its sense of tragedy. Throughout the track, this very gentle melody slowly develops, one of the most simple and heartbreaking the duo have ever laid to tape, occasionally rising out of the chaos with a soft warble — it’s almost unbearably sad by the time the track wraps up in a purely ambient space, and absolutely essential listening for fans of Autechre’s more unguarded moments.

#77

pendulu hv moda (Elseq, 2016)

This early standout of the Elseq series, featuring on its first disc, is among that record’s brightest tracks, with these shimmering, gorgeous textures that are mauled by a ripping, punching beat. The contrast is stark, galling, but in its fast pace and relentless batter it becomes absolutely intoxicating, an apocalyptic dance anthem that stretches across twelve busy, paranoid minutes, feeling constantly on the brink of collapse with delirious tension. It is among the most in-your-face floor-filling bangers on the entire project, and the first of many, many career standouts we will touch upon in this top 100 from their manifold 2016 release.

#76

Recury (Chiastic Slide, 1997)

The clank and bang of Chiastic’s deep cut highlight Recury evokes a factory at work in darkness, its many moving parts connecting, reverberating, clicking into place. It’s hypnotically repetitive, and it’s gentle, woozy melody is almost an afterthought at first, a hum from which these ghostly sounds gradually emerge, resembling distant echoes of human voices. It’s a starkly haunting addition to the track, as a previously cold and mechanistic landscape is suddenly punctuated, with increasing loudness and clarity, by the afterimage of people, not their clear intrusion but an ephemeral presence. None of the shifts across Recury’s nine minutes are dramatic, but they shouldn’t be; the intent of the track is to hypnotize, to lure you in, as the voices grow louder and louder and threaten to overwhelm all else. You are being led to the monster.

#75

Leterel (Tri Repetae, 1995)

The screeching tonal qualities are almost ear-piercing at first; they may even prove too noisy to bear for the unaccustomed, but the track mixes these more challenging, tinnitus-evoking elements with a sense of dramatic melodic development and rich, eerie depth. It feels half horror movie score, half futuristic Blade Runner-esque cityscape, laced with portent and wide-eyed possibility. It is at the centre of Tri Repetae’s game-changing, musically inventive first half, imagining an entirely new vision for IDM and shifting away from the acronym’s D to something beyond dance, something that fuses film score with a more attention-grabbing rhythmic sensibility. The high pitched strings in the back half only amplify this, lending the whole thing a sense of icy grandeur that makes it feel massive. Fans may also wish to check out how the track’s central melody is reprised in the duo’s 2016/2018 sets, near their conclusion as a series of enormous, staccato organ stabs. To this day, Tri Rep’s legacy lives on.

#74

444 (Incunabula, 1993)

Much of Incunabula may not have aged well, at least in this listener’s eyes, relative to the rest of Autechre’s career, and including only one of its tracks in the top 100 will undoubtedly irk some long-time fans with a particular attachment to their early era. Rest assured, the early era was where I began too, and I spent a long time with their comparatively wider-known first three records before even beginning to dive beyond them. Even if I find less to come back to in the pre-Tri Rep era in particular, the standouts nevertheless speak for themselves. Incunabula’s closer is a beautiful widescreen soundscape of wriggling, hypnotic melody and cheekily clattering beats. It feels larger than life, and across its well-paced 9 minute runtime that sense only increases. Synthetic string tones and playful textures emerge that were doubtless heavily influential on UK acid techno duo Orbital, whose 1996 masterpiece In Sides is one of the best electronic records of the 80s and the clearest, most successful and triumphant example of the effect Rob and Sean had on their fellow musicians even so early into their storied career.

#73

7th slip (Elseq, 2016)

This is pure fucking insanity. It sounds like falling through a gigantic sound system that stretches for lightyears in every direction, except for every two seconds you fall you’re then jerked back up again for another second, with the time spend flung in each and every direction varying wildly with each iteration, careening, cascading, bursting, banging. It’s not until you surrender to it that you realize there’s even a fucking beat too, buried in bass beneath the layers of chaos. In terms of sound design, it almost feels exploitative, pushing at the boundaries of comprehension but remaining utterly intoxicating and texturally diverse. There are maybe a hundred different unique sounds in this unrelenting six-minute piece, and burying it at the end of Elseq’s most accessible movement is another cheeky example of how the duo love to fuck with expectation.

#72

Dael (Tri Repetae, 1995)

The delectably bass-heavy purring that opens Tri Repetae is an iconic moment — the ascension of a humble IDM duo from talented sound designers to iconic musical innovators, the first of many instances in their storied career that make you stop in your tracks and ask “how the fuck did they make this?”. By the time the shivering, reverbed, chopped-up beat enters to disorient you further, Rob and Sean are already much of the way into crafting one of the most unique statements of 90s electronica, a beat that makes you want to invent a new dance to express the specific way it moves your body, and that also serves as hypnotic and charming with its more plaintive melodic underbelly.

#71

c16 deep tread (Elseq, 2016)

At the second-track position on the mammoth Elseq, one could almost mistake this for the record’s most ‘single’-like piece, a murky, bubbling, but playful track that nevertheless has a chilling, eerie backdrop. In many ways it is emblematic of the musical style and compositional goals of Elseq as a whole, restlessly manipulating rhythm in curious but heavy ways that wrestle for your focus while texturally lathering the mix in metallic moans of pain and grief. Here, that’s represented by this consistent, looping metallic tone that resembles an air raid siren blaring in a nuclear wasteland. It gives the entire track this deeply disconcerting feel that serves as an apt preview for the many ways in which Elseq will proceed to challenge listeners’ perceptions of what Autechre do and how “dance” music can feel.

#70

esc desc (SIGN, 2020)

esc desc is one of many tracks on SIGN that is instantly notable for its emotional directness and intensity, as Rob and Sean utilize brushing melodic pads that collide and wash together like a turbulent oceanic storm to evoke a state of deep mental unrest. That sense of ominous dread is affecting for its seeming simplicity, such that it is easy to get swept up in its core melody and not notice the way in which Rob and Sean also play with dissonance and fragmentation here — the piece is actually constantly shifting, though it seems stable, and this contrast feeds into the sense of paranoia evoked here masterfully. As for the suggestive title, I’ve heard a few different interpretations of what its abbreviated terms refer to (‘escalator descends’, ‘[a]scend descend’), but the one I think fits best and encapsulates all that the song makes me feel is much more poignant: escape and descend.

#69

Overand (Tri Repetae, 1995)

This restrained ambient piece buried in the back half of Tri Rep is among that record’s more measured, disarming cuts. It initially may seem slight, but it’s reflective, simple melodic loop, lathered in reverb and countered by these twinkling, lingering, vaguely sharp tones, manages to feel both utterly tranquil and also quite emotionally evocative. It is the perfect soundtrack to contemplation and calm, and I’ve put it on many times when trying to ease my mind and put myself into a place where I can think freely and with focus. Even the gently intrusive beat that lays against these tones awash in gentle fuzz does not sour this mood but enhances it. It’s an easy track to overlook perhaps, but I think it’s the strongest entry on the back half of that record, which is not nearly as consistent as its first half but offers plenty of its own surprises.

#68

VLetrmx (Garbage — EP, 1995)*

From calming ambience to calamitous, VLetrmx is the closing track on the post-Amber EP Garbage, a disintegrative but bravura project that stands as handily their best release in any form of the 90s period, even besting my beloved Chiastic Slide. It’s also the first sign of the duo’s desire to go beyond their up-to-this-point interesting but somewhat boilerplate IDM to something more arresting and visionary. As such, VLetrmx is the closing track on an EP where each song is less traditional and more beatless than the last, a purely droning piece of apocalyptic doom and portent. In the sheer scale of its drone, the hopelessness of its melody and the heaviness of its emotional intensity, it conjures imagery of escaping the Earth’s atmosphere in a tiny space capsule, watching the home you grew up in burn and destroy itself. It only makes too much sense that the next song in their discography after it is Dael, as that track represents rebirth and reinvention, where this is only death.

#67

eastre (Elseq, 2016)

One of two dual 20+ minute centrepieces at the core of Elseq, eastre is perhaps the Autechre track most relentless and punishing in its minimalism. It is anchored by a repetitive two-note drone that evokes unease and paranoia, and this unceasing drone is punctuated, complicated, fucked with by these clipping, punching, stumbling beats that actively avoid forming a rhythm by virtue of their inconsistency. There are also layers of deep-fried, decomposing static and noise churns that enhance that paranoid feeling and lend the whole thing a sickly, nightmarish glow. It feels like proceeding through the digestive system of some great beast, its stomach acids slowly, painfully eating away at your skin, and its motion constantly bombarding you, inducing a sense of gutwrenching seasickness. For many it will be too long and unchanging to bear, and indeed in that respect it is not like other Autechre pieces; the deliberate lack of development and change here is what makes it feel so completely bleak and disturbing.

#66

Piezo (Amber, 1994)

Amber is a record that clearly evokes its cover. It is a collection of sonic soundscapes that feel distinctly alien aesthetically, but into which a quite palpable sense of humanity gradually seeps. It is quite easy to imagine being lost on a desert planet and wandering aimlessly when listening to many of tracks on Amber, but in none of them is that particular feeling more clearly and powerfully evoked than Piezo. The track has this immediately gripping advancing and receding percussive twang atop a simple but repetitive melodic motif, both of which gradually become swallowed by this incredibly haunting synth. The result is a straightforward, affecting feeling of crushing isolation the duo would capture many times through more complex means on later releases but feels refreshingly simple here, in a way that only heightens its elemental power.

#65

Notwo (Quaristice, 2008)

A playlist of Autechre ambient (“Aubient”, if you will) would be incomplete without Notwo, and it’s such a definitive slab of dark droning bliss that I have it right at the end of my own such compilation. As the first of two more ambient, reflective, and longer tracks closing out the eclectic and busy Quaristice, it feels almost like an afterimage of the pieces before it, if they were all blended together and then sanded out such that only the vaguest sonic trace of their existence remains. Notwo feels formless, void. There are moments where it goes completely silent only for a wobbling bass hit to punctuate the emptiness, and these are moments so haunting and pure that it almost feels as though you can hear that tone reverberating throughout your entire skull. Elevating Notwo beyond pure drone though are multiple quite satisfying melodic progressions baked into the pads that give the whole thing that sense of finality I alluded to.

#64

acdwn2 (Elseq, 2016)

The comparatively more accessible fourth movement of Elseq kicks off in true Autechre fashion with a bang, the enormous and throttling acdwn2 bursting to life with this rattling, stark, start-stop percussive claps, which are soon joined by a surprisingly straightforward three note melody captured in warm, buzzing synthy tones. Rob and Sean, restless as ever, soon proceed to play with and manipulate this melody and its rhythmic counterpoint, and the track soon evolves into something more eerie, atmospheric and unsettling, as though its ‘dancefloor banger’ components are slowly being pulled so far apart from each other that it instead melds into a soupy pool of harsher, clacking, waxy tones that feel almost sinister and creepy by its end. It’s a fascinating progression that recalls Draft 7.30 and Untilted highlights like 6IE.CR and LCC in its construction but sounds larger than life in the context of the unwieldy, shapeshifting Elseq era.

#63

irlite (get 0) (Exai, 2013)

This early highlight from Exai’s first disc spreads across a luxurious, shifting ten minutes of music that perfectly melds into an almost symphonic form. It feels weightless, bouncy, enthusiastic and light, while also boasting the colourful tonality and reflexive rhythm ‘section’ that makes Exai as a whole one of their most satisfying and cohesive album experiences. Throughout its progressive runtime it weaves in atmospheric passages, jumbled almost guitar-like melodic slabs of sound, a breakdown of cathedral-sized reverb in its midsection, and a curiously wriggly conclusion. It is the first of many examples throughout this decade of pieces that are content to simmer and wrangle across longer runtimes, ending in a very different place to where it begins but charting a journey that feels consistent, fun, and packed with ideas.

#62

WNSN (Quaristice, 2008)

This late-album highlight from Quaristice is initially almost scary in its twisted carnival-house horror, serving as a stark and disconcerting counterpoint from the otherwise more playful material that precedes it, but it also works as a superb bridge between the record’s more hectic, clattering elements and the moments of ambient stillness that gradually consume it; the beat here is steady, regular, but complicated by washes of noise, before eventually settling into an eerie, affecting groove. The stormy, bass-heavy second half of the track shows that the duo can really get inside your head and fester even with a relatively minimal set of components. No other Autechre tracks really sound quite like this one, and it leaves a stark imprint.

#61

Nuane (Chiastic Slide, 1997)

If there is one thing Rob and Sean are particular masters at with regard to album structure (and there are obviously many more), it’s closing tracks. Without fail, each Autechre closer leaves you in a space of both contemplation of the arc of the sonic journey that led to it and also a necessary point of finality and tying-together of whatever ephemeral musical narrative the record evokes. Nuane is particularly masterful in this respect — the three album closers preceding it were various shades of great, but this is something else. The track echoes the percussive intensity of album opener Cipater but in a more fixed, hypnotic way, constructing and then disassembling a fairly straightforward melody, pushing and pulling at it in a way which looks ahead to the more aggressive melodic fuckery of LP5, Confield, and Draft. Nuane slowly unfolds into a pool of its own constituent parts, as a metallic rain of static blips saturates the mix in its second half before taking the track over entirely, as though the grand, abandoned factories that the record regularly evokes have simply collapsed under the weight of the elements.

#60

l3 ctrl (NTS Sessions, 2018)

This is, I think, the exact point in this ranking where the quality elevates from ‘really fucking great’ to ‘spectacular’. This 17-minute highlight of the first NTS Session is among the most spacious but hard-hitting tracks across all eight hours of the project. The first session does admittedly start slow, but this is the point where the project triumphantly announces itself as the most sonically remarkable and uncompromising work of the duo’s career to date. The sheer fucking sound of this thing is so colossal that at points it approaches high melodrama, but a relentless, clacking beat keeps its regular surges of sound pulsing and pushing forward. The structure itself is quite simple, and at its core does not change a great deal, but the duo never stop adding and subtracting from its basic shape, gradually malforming and redressing it into something shimmering, awesome, and commanding.

#59

Flutter (Anti — EP, 1994)*

The story behind Flutter is as interesting as the track itself, and this is a rare case in Autechre’s discography of contextual information being a massive part of the track’s impact (though it is purely pleasurable, immediate, and affecting even without it). As you probably already know if you’re a fan, Flutter (and the Anti EP as a whole) was a response to the UK’s Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994, which attempted to ban raves by making it illegal to perform music that consisted of a “succession of repetitive beats” — you can probably see where this is going. Flutter is anchored by a simple, plaintive and affecting melody, but the percussive underbelly is hectic, in a constant state of dizzying shift in order to avoid any point-to-point repetition whatsoever. Such an idea might seem quaint now, in light of where Autechre would go with the rest of their work, but as the first hint toward it, and easily the most impressive piece of their career up to this point, it is significant in all the ways music should be, both in how satisfying it is as a piece of propulsive, fuck-you dance music, and also in how it serves as a blueprint, even a mission statement, whether intentionally or not, for a career of restless innovation, cheeky subversion, and artistic vision.

#58

6IE.CR (Draft 7.30, 2003)

6IE.CR is a great example of Draft’s deconstructive style that also serves as one of its friendlier moments, where the gradual degradation is easy to track and particularly dramatic in terms of the difference between where the piece begins and ends. It kicks off with an incredibly robotic, harsh-sounding hip-hop beat (seriously, take a second to imagine someone like Danny Brown on top of this) that cycles through an immensely satisfying loop, with small, subtle shifts that extend and/or undercut it as it progresses, and the gradual seeping through of a lighter atmospheric layer that becomes primary when that driving beat eventually becomes a shadow of its former self and these wistful, wondrous chords become the track’s new primary focus. The piece ends in this delightfully pretty melodic place, the utter inverse of its opening, and the compactness of its 5-minute journey shows Ae highlighting this fascinating compositional technique in a concise and moving manner.

#57

turbile epic casual, stpl idle (NTS Sessions, 2018)

NTS Session 2, in and of itself, is one of the most well-structured releases of Autechre’s entire career, serving as a sweeping, digressive journey through the many variants of sound that the duo were playing with during this era as well as also working as a microcosm of the wider structure from Session 1 to Session 4, slowly constructing a tapestry of rhythm and then pulling at it til it disintegrates into something free-flowing, dramatic, like a dam bursting and water flowing freely where once there had just been jagged, weathered rocks. Nowhere is that better exemplified than its shimmering 20-minute closer, which meanders through passages of reverberating drone that approaches and recedes in ultra-slow-motion, presaging the mammoth closing track of the fourth session, and also calling back to Elseq’s closer oneum in its dense, fill-your-ears wall of blissed out fantasy. It’s a track to put on and lay back on a pillow, close your eyes, and leave your body.

#56

spl9 (Exai, 2013)

This is probably the most violent and nightmarish track on Exai, a rare moment on an otherwise playful record where the duo throw a curveball by battering you with a fast-paced, repetitive beat and melody that gradually devolves into a cavalcade of crackling electrical violence. Trying to keep a grip on this track just gets harder and harder as the textures grow more abrasive, noise-fuelled, even spiteful. It’s akin to watching some ferocious monster accumulate mass by consuming everything in its grasp, pulsing to the point of total collapse and then shuttering into a bonfire of static, eventually consuming itself in a frenzied conclusion that sees the entire piece just… disintegrate.

#55

M4 Lema (SIGN, 2020)

SIGN’s opening track is the clearest link on the record to the era that preceded it, glitching and surging through cavernous spaces with violent, clashing tones, in much the same way material on NTS and particularly Elseq was wont to do. For about two minutes it seems Rob and Sean’s MO has really not shifted from that at all, until, quite gloriously, these gigantic, gorgeous melodic pads ripple into the track, and the frenetic chaos of the opening section reshapes itself into a more focused rhythmic backdrop. It’s a bit of a bait and switch, but it serves as a brilliant and striking transition to the new, more pared back sound they have adopted to begin this era. It has a formless quality to certain familiar sounds that recontextualizes them to a more measured style, linking this new era to the previous one and setting the stage for the rest of the record.

#54

north spiral (NTS Sessions, 2018)

The buzzing, pumping beat of north spiral heralds the second hour of NTS Session 1 in blood-pumping fashion. This is one of the most immediate, purely danceable tracks across all four sessions, and it announces its presence in a skull-rattling manner, refusing to let up from there for the entirety of its blistering 15-minute runtime. In my eyes it’s the easy standout of the session, demonstrating all that Rob and Sean do best in terms of their mastery of rhythmic interrogation through textural shifting, and when a flood of bubbling, swirling sounds invade the mix three-minutes in, it is clear to expect the unexpected. From there the beats playfully manoeuvre a string of ringing, cascading melodic shimmers, before the final two minutes introduce something I honestly have to say I never expected: a half-speed breakdown. It has to be heard to be believed. Keeping still is not an option.

#53

known(1) (Oversteps, 2010)

Though two great tracks in their own right precede it, known(1) feels like the arrival, not just of Oversteps, but of an era of more resonant, massive sound design characterized by a density and depth that feels larger-than-life and all-encompassing compared to the sharper, more squalling sound design of the 2000s records. Though Oversteps is far from the fullest realization of this new sound, it is a comparatively underappreciated and delightful record that has its own wandering-through-space quality and sense of flowing dramatic tension. Nowhere is that better encapsulated than this dominant, baroque-esque track, which tracks these booming, relatively straightforward chords with a squalling nest of suffocating noise, creating a tense and cathartic, melodramatic piece of tremendous grandeur and memorable impact. Almost nothing else on the record has the same sense of brute-force directness as this, and it’s the kind of sound I imagine hooked hundreds of new listeners at the turn of the decade.

#52

xflood (NTS Sessions, 2018)

The circling, looping clank of xflood’s beat has a sense of deranged, wonky energy and a faintly recognizable but disorienting quality that resembles a pitch shifted sample of a creaking door, broadcast against clacks of staticky percussive hits. It’s pure NTS in other words, but what really elevates is the way this recurrent progression feels against a bedrock of pure fucking nightmare fuel drone that gradually eases into it and then swallows it whole. The feel of the track is akin to wallowing in thoughts of punishing anxiety until you eventually feel a full-scale panic attack coming on but are powerless to stop it. There are many cavernous drones dotted across NTS but none feel as doom-laden and terrifying as this one; at points it feels like staring into the heart of a black hole, a void of emptiness that seems to call to you with its awful power as it swallows everything around it. Even the beat cannot escape, and we watch it get torn apart like putty. Fair warning: it’s enough to induce a full-blown existential crisis.

#51

th red a (SIGN, 2020)

Seemingly overlooked relative to the rest of SIGN (as of today on Rate Your Music it has a track rating of 3.3/5, by far the lowest of any song on the record), th red a is a deceptively simple beast that nonetheless exemplifies the brilliance of Rob and Sean’s sound design mastery in a form that is much easier to grasp though no less rewarding than their comparatively dense earlier output. Here the duo utilize silence and space to highlight an individual synth tone and repeated melody, and derive emotion not just from the progression of the melody itself, but from the way they vary and manipulate the textural surface of the tones. They really necessitate good headphones or a good sound system to fully appreciate, but this is one of the most rewarding tracks on the album in the sense that initially it seems perhaps too minimal, but once you really try to pin down the details of it, you realize it is a beast of detail. And then once you get lost in the detail you come back to the melody, and realize how affecting it is, how fragile. The fulsome heaviness of the tones perhaps overwhelms that fragility, but it’s there, and it’s very beautiful.

#50

Xylin Room (Draft 7.30, 2003)

How do you follow up a record like Confield? It was an album that thoroughly reimagined who Autechre were as sonic pioneers, casting their previous records in an entirely new light as a gradual build towards a seeming final-form achievement at the turn of the century. Where Confield flirted with generative software in a manner the duo would embrace head-first later in the decade, Draft 7.30 by contrast utilizes more analogue equipment, tying it to earlier records like LP5 aesthetically, while pushing even further forward with the progressive nature of the pieces that defined Confield. The result is abundantly and beautifully demonstrated in opening track Xylin Room, which after seconds of faintly buzzing silence rattles to life with these metallic ripping sounds that resemble a sheet of nylon being torn in half, looped, and fuzzed out. They are the first of many textures the record flirts with that sound downright unpleasant upon first glance, but also beguile with their sheer uniqueness. The way the track devolves and then shifts into its second half with the arrival of twinkling pads recalls Confield opener VI Scose Poise, but blown up to IMAX size. It’s quite something.

#49

Reniform Puls (Draft 7.30, 2003)

The disintegrative nature of Draft climaxes with one of its most minimal and haunting compositions, a stark contrast to much of the noisier, cluttered arrangements that precede it, and something which almost resembles a slow death, the sonic inverse of Confield closer Lentic Catachresis in the sense that it gradually removes clashing elements as opposed to adding them, and where that track ends in a frenzy of suffocating glitches, Reniform plods its way to an ending of almost pure silence. It is initially also driven by one of the more tangible melodies on the record, but that soon gives way to washes of reverberating, occasionally clipping pads that feel weary, exhausted, on the verge of dissipating entirely. In some senses, to me, it evokes a similar feeling as The Caretaker’s recent work in evoking the hazy stupor that dementia leaves its sufferers trapped inside of, the final remnant being a shadow of itself, hanging shrouded in the silence of its final minutes.

#48

Gantz Graf (Gantz Graf — EP, 2002)*

The infamous Gantz Graf is a four-minute slice of electronic meltdown that stands as one of Autechre’s most well-known pieces of noise music, an utterly throttling and unwieldy, thrashing beast of assaultive sound that is nonetheless more tangible, rhythmically cohesive, and melodic than its reputation might suggest. Relegated to an (otherwise also excellent) EP that accompanied the release of Confield, it serves as a fitting and memorable counterpart to that record, extending its universe of sonic violence into a subgenre one might call ‘thrash IDM’, though the track’s latter minutes are more patient if equally throttling, as the arrangement seems to become suspended in a slow-motion iteration of itself that then falls away into only occasional slaps of noise. It’s efficient, memorable, and weirdly addictive.

#47

Tewe (Chiastic Slide, 1997)

Chiastic Slide’s opening stretch is dominated by a barrage of staticky, clumping and thumping noise, orchestrated into deliriously addictive rhythms and sometimes just entirely overwhelming crunches of sound; that is, until you get to Tewe, a startlingly lowkey track that represents a surprising and welcome moment of calm at this juncture of the record. It is one of the most serene pieces from this era of the duo, featuring skittering and clacking percussion that skirts surprisingly gracefully atop the surface of an isolating, contemplative melody. It’s another of many tracks to get entirely lost within, despite its relative simplicity and lulling repetition. It’s perhaps an easy one to overlook but I find it dazzling, serving as a crucial and inspired link between that aforementioned noisy opening stretch and the perfect fusion of the harsh and light that is Cichli; there’s no question in my mind that Chiastic is among the most consistent, flowing Autechre LPs, and Tewe is an important part of its langurous progression.

#46

Uviol (Confield, 2001)

Seven of Confield’s nine tracks are in the top 50 of this ranking (and the other two are also still in the top 100), and if that speaks to anything it is how multifaceted and brilliant an encapsulation it is of all the duo’s strengths, refined and concisely pulled into one flowing beast with absolutely no weak points. Relative to the hectic sonic mania of the other tracks on Confield, Uviol is a moment of comparative calm — or so it initially seems. It is a minimal but unnerving arrangement that is filled with a curious tension despite a relatively placid arrangement. That tension is heightened by the way that the track slowly and subtly decays, in a manner that the duo would expand on with Draft 7.30’s Surripere. It conjures imagery of an icy landscape that evokes the feeling of being stalked by an unseen figure; every direction you look seems fine, but the air is thick with a choking menace that no matter how hard you try, you just cannot shake.

#45

Bronchusevenmx (Garbage — EP, 1995)*

The tranquility of Bronchusevenmx is curious, considering that it is bombarded constantly by this tripping beat of what sounds like tactile drips at hyperspeed, and yet rather than giving the piece a sense of motion as such an inclusion typically would, their monotonous constancy grounds the piece inside of a single moment of contemplation. Fractured echoes of human voices clip through the mix from all angles, suggesting a presence that never quite feels tangibly real; in this sense it is not unlike the ghostly chatter of Chiastic Slide’s Recury, though where that track churns and stomps, this feels small, insignificant, isolated. The quietly chirping melody that eventually eases in during the track’s second half sounds like distant bird calls, and combined with those vocal snippets the feeling that is evoked is one of being on the edge of civilisation, staring into some unknowable darkness and pondering what lies beyond. I imagine that, were one to approach death slowly in their final moments, the sensation they might experience could be similar to how this sounds.

#44

Cfern (Confield, 2001)

The second piece on the suite-like opening stretch of Confield is deceptively melodic and even warm at first. It feels frankly welcoming compared to the disorienting minimalism of opener VI Scose Poise, though you quickly notice the ugly tactility of the percussion, which ensures that every beat feels violent, stabbing, and after a time, thoroughly unpleasant. It is a kind of raw, punching sound that feels like percussive corruption, seemingly working against the soft, major-key primary melody, the two locked in a furious battle to undermine and overtake the other. The ways in which that wretched beat gradually splits itself apart, growing more impatient, furious, panicky with each iteration becomes downright terrifying, its unpredictability making it as gripping as it is feral. At points it has the timbre of some buzzing, vengeful vespid, stinging repeatedly at new angles to ensure the impact is felt across as much of the surface as possible. Even that pleasant melody cannot stand the force and eventually disappears, leaving only the beat and whatever tonal remnants can bear to push against it.

#43

Clipper (Tri Repetae, 1995)

One of the most instantly memorable tracks on Tri Rep, and a prime example of all that record does so well in demonstrating Rob and Sean’s skillset at this point in their career. If Tri Rep is the Autechre record that most casual IDM listeners gravitate toward, then tracks like Clipper and Eutow are the reason why. Clipper in particular is maybe the most quintessential track on the record, a sharp, white-noise filled beat that loops and this cascading, stretching, purring bass-y synth tone that steamrolls across the top of it, burrowing its way into your grey matter. By the time other gently plaintive tones ease in at the sides and a plinking, circling melodic line layers atop it, the track has become a festival of different percussive and melodic progressions, coexisting and complementing each other and all unified in worship of that overhanging, elongated bass tone. The climax is practically ecstatic, all sounds in congregation, a beautiful harmony of musical diversity.

#42

YJY UX (Exai, 2013)

The dramatic and foreboding finale to Exai’s diverse two-hour headtrip, YJY UX leaves the record on a curiously open-ended, searching note, but one that, with it’s pulsing bass beat and enormous, stretching tones, sounds positively gigantic and epic in scope, a closer that instantly makes you want to dive back in to the rest of the record and pull it apart, to see the sounds perfected here re-examined at new and peculiar angles as they often are, and to appreciate the magnificence of the record’s suite-like construction, the way its two halves mirror each other in fascinating ways, and also to appreciate the way that, despite a relatively measured pace, this thing actually, kinda bangs? The track twinkles like constellations flooding your eyeline, and sends the record and the duo off searching into the darkness, soon to re-emerge with something even more spectacular.

#41

Acroyear2 (LP5, 1998)

LP5 is a curious record for me, or at least it occupies a curious place in Autechre’s discography. It is doubtless a development from the skyward-reaching emotional soundscapes and industrial grind of the magnificent Chiastic Slide, as it incorporates even busier percussive arrangements and more varied textural experimentation, but compared to the dramatic sonic shift that would occur with Confield it feels comparatively slight, even transitional. A more generous way to look at the record would be as an attempt to summarize all the development the duo had achieved throughout the 90s before their next big reinvention, and as a victory lap, it feels utterly triumphant. This is immediately clear from the skittering, squelching, crackling speed of opener Acroyear2, which disorients upon first glance but quickly settles into an addictive, hooky groove driven by a plinking music-box-esque melody and melodic bass. It metamorphoses in its second half to something fuller still, even more chaotic and propulsive in its rhythmic complexity but still welcoming, inviting even. It gestures at listeners to follow them in this curious rabbit hole, as all the best Autechre openers do, but it manages that feat while being a lot of fun to boot.

#40

Yuop (Oversteps, 2010)

The Oversteps closer is a glorious climax that the record builds to with some degree of expectation, weaving a textured tableau of twinkling interstellar evocations and shuttering bass; Yuop brings those elements together in the most thrilling of ways, constructing this snaking, ascending melodic loop from almost skittish tones that appear to tiptoe across the mix, as these gigantic waves of bass hits stomp down on top of them. It is like listening to dozens of robotic ants attempting to escape the crushing boot of some enormous god. The ways in which these sounds grow to cavernous depth, absolutely swelling and swirling in the mix until they are simply a sea of sound, is among the most majestic and awe-inspiring that Autechre have ever sounded, and as such the track serves as a delirious capstone to an undervalued record that ropes you in with its beauty but is also never afraid to completely pull the rug from under your feet.

#39

Parhelic Triangle (Confield, 2001)

I’ve used the term ‘sickening’ a number of times to describe aspects of tracks on Confield, and it never stops being one of the most appropriate words in my estimation for that absolute headfuck of a record. The rhythms themselves on a track like Parhelic Triangle are unconventional, but not particularly difficult to get used to with some patience; it is not the patterns themselves that sicken, but the timbres and qualities of the textures used to express them. Parhelic’s beat squelches, gurgles, folds into itself and thrums, and has the feel of some kind of robotic hand placing its palm against the folds of your brain and slowly squeezing, the putty of your gyri oozing between its fingers and settling into foreign, inhuman shapes. This is not even mentioning the hollow metallic drone that hangs over the track, inducing a sense of nightmarish paranoia as it holds you in place and forces you to squirm.

#38

Rotar (Tri Repetae, 1995)

There is something so perfectly hypnotic about Rotar, which is a symphony of percussive groops, loops, and eerie analog noises that coexist in a beautiful amalgam of sound that epitomizes the IDM or ‘braindance’ sound to its core to me. You could absolutely groove and move to this track, which opens with a faint ambient hiss atop which layers of blissful music unfold, but more than danceable I just find it utterly transfixing, so much so that I can clearly recall a recent time listening to this record on an afternoon walk and finding myself nearly finished it having entirely blanked out the last five minutes of my life while it was playing; in my perception, I had basically teleported, so enraptured in flow that all my conscious processes became fully automatic. It was surreal, but it’s the kind of thing Rob and Sean are able to pull off on Tri Rep in particular with a track like this, which feels so much like a swirling perfection of the sounds road-tested on Incunabula and Amber that it handily puts those records to shame.

#37

Sublimit (Untilted, 2005)

The incredible Untilted is one of Autechre’s tightest-sounding records, despite a 70-minute runtime and tracks that average out around 8–9 minutes. Nowhere are these seeming contradictions reconciled more effectively and brilliantly than on the resplendent, ass-kicking 16-minute closer Sublimit, which begins on 10 and proceeds to slap, shake, and whirl the listener through a myriad of twisted dancefloor-filling metallic grooves that will make your head spin and feet tap, perhaps so hard that they might dislodge and become sentient entities in and of themselves, entirely dedicated to the lifelong pursuit of rocking the fuck out. The track goes through disintegrative shifts and moodier subsections that might recall similar progressions on Draft, but the crucial difference here is that the piece never makes a point of falling apart entirely or losing its rhythmic edge and insistence; it simply evolves slowly into a different, more atmospheric and heavily reverbed beast, contorting its way to a final section that feels almost cathedral-sized in its swirling ambience but never once losing sight of The Beat. It’s a raw and unfettered triumph of an ending.

#36

cloudline (Exai, 2013)

The mysterious cloudline is among the most beautiful tracks on Exai’s superlative second half; like Rotar on Tri Rep, it effectively induces an almost hypnotic state of transfixing focus and awe, but it does so in typical late-era Ae fashion with a subversive piece of groove-heavy rhythm fuckery. It has a steady, throbbing beat that pushes against these ghostly tones that whine and screech as they fluctuate across the mix, approaching and receding like a nervous phantom. The central sound feels almost sampled, a twinkling piece of enigmatic noise that evokes a shining treasure of some kind, hidden inside some clear but impermeable wall that the rest of the mix attempts to perforate. It would serve well as a piece of video game music to accompany a task that requires a little unconventional thought to solve. As the ten-minute track develops, various melodic counterpoints dance in and out of view, pushing the piece gently forward as you become lost in the swirl of parts.

#35

ecol4 (PLUS, 2020)

The mammoth ecol4 handily stands as the longest piece on either PLUS or SIGN, at a whopping almost 15 minutes. It is a slippery fucker that wrestles for your attention as much as it seems to fight comprehension. The textures here are shining, metallic, slippery; the beat clanks and pulses, and the way everything shifts around evokes an image of a rotating maze of mirrors, where the walls are constantly moving and you’re seeing yourself in three different places at once, your images colliding as the surfaces bend, retract, advance. Eventually you notice, as you always do with longer Autechre pieces, very subtle additions, subtractions, and changes to elements that are more in the background of the track. The beat becomes a little more sparse and eerie around five minutes in, as these squalling, hollow tones start haunting it. It’s like the lights have gone low and you’re suddenly manouevring in darkness, and you can hear distant ghostly wails that you can’t place or identify. The final five minutes of ecol4 feel easier to grasp thanks to the backing of a beat that initially seems more straightforward, but the textural soundplay only grows more adventurous, with the shining mirror textures sounding louder, more defined, sharper — it’s like sheets of jagged metal are raining down on you and you have to dodge them while you still try to get to the centre of this labyrinth.

#34

c7b2 (Elseq, 2016)

The abrasive, buzzing attack of c7b2 represents maybe the most outright violent, relentless moment of attack across all of Elseq, an utterly fucked beast of stomping, dominative rhythm that shakes you like prey in the mouth of some enormous creature. It’s not afraid to throttle you, and across its 13 minutes a number of different rhythmic patterns and grooves develop, all of which slap as hard as anything you’ve ever heard, and many of which are punctuated by bursts of absolutely cacophonous harsh noise static, which are mercifully brief but still terrifying and thrilling in equal measure with each seemingly random iteration. The development of this piece can be traced through many of the live sets that exist from this era, and here on the record it sounds laser-focused, committed constantly to going in for the kill in a way that I find entirely exhilarating. Around 9 minutes in, it settles into one particularly memorable groove, oscillating between metallic rattling and noise bursts, and gradually increasing the intensity of each of these sounds with every iteration. It’s pure fucking mayhem, and I adore it.

#33

1 1 is (Exai, 2013)

The opening track of Disc 2 of Exai follows up the incomparable, blissed out atmospheres of bladelores with almost its exact inverse; this track is hammering, decisive, noisy, and filled with these delightfully resonant metallic ambience that weaves through the mix like a kind of viscous goo. The track packs an incredible punch, driven by a clanging, abrasive beat that cheekily moves around the audio channels, creating a sense of disorienting three-dimensional space that you’re spinning around the inside of, as if on some haunted merry-go-round, watching the world around you become only a vaguely familiar blur. Eventually this beat itself is attacked and then swallowed by these pristine, shining tones that emerge from the metallica ambience, compressing and crushing the beat violently until it eventually just folds into itself. It’s as masterful and invigorating a display of sound design mastery as you will find on Exai, and other examples of such genius are thankfully littered across its two hours.

#32

Under BOAC (LP5, 1998)

LP5 standout Under BOAC follows a stretch of more contorted, bizarre tracks to return to the irreverent playfulness of the record’s first two songs, particularly 777, though there is more space here, and the way they manipulate and toy with the mixing and sequencing is easier to observe and pulls you along in a more immediate way. The mid-track breakdown, which creates a new, more melodic percussive progression, leaves the synth pads aside and establishes the beats themselves as a new melodic core. As the tempo speeds up, Rob and Sean splice more beats into the mix to extend the melody and riff on it in various ways, in a manner that almost evokes jazz. Ghostly pads wheeze subtly behind them, almost like an afterimage of the percussion, which then becomes, itself, a new countermelody, playing off the ever-shifting percussive melody, as the two rise to an ecstatic, overwhelming climax. It’s one of the most immediate and showy examples of the ways in which the duo were interested in pushing the boundaries of percussive arrangements, and an easy standout on the record.

#31

Pro Radii (Untilted, 2005)

At the centre of a trio of impeccable 9-minute tracks in the first half of Untilted, Pro Radii is one of the most creative, immediate, and propulsive tracks on the album, utilizing vocal samples from a tennis match and employing some wonderfully deep tones that sound like the distant bouncing of balls in a basketball court. The clipped eruptions of audience applause add a strange tension to the arrangement which is resolved thrillingly by the arrival of a more measured metallic backing beat, that then ushers in a heavier, clacking midsection. In its back half, Pro Radii settles into this irresistible melodic groove, with these pulsing ambient pads elongating the beats and providing a surface on which we can observe Rob and Sean cheekily pulling at the edges of their creation. By the time those basketball-thump beats are brought back in the whole thing has delightfully come full circle, as the listener is breathlessly pulled along to the next sonic excursion.

#30

Drane2 (LP5, 1998)

The closing track of LP5 is perhaps one of the most enormous sounding in sheer atmospheric scope of Autechre’s career up to that point. Once its initial grunting noise abates, these resonant synthetic horn sounds ring through the silence, sounding like some elegiac clarion call from the heavens — it’s immediately quite moving, and lends a sense of cosmic tragedy to the feel of the whole thing, as though the duo are lamenting some kind of fantastic loss; the end of a musical era for the duo is suitably grandiose, as Rob and Sean gently manipulate the percussion beneath these horn tones, creating the sense of something that is unfurling, unravelling, moving from contained and fulsome to flowing and moving. This unfolding and even self-destruction, which of course look forward to the musical progressions on their subsequent albums, feels particularly like a textural exercise in how sounds feel, the duo seeking to give every clack and pulse a sense of devastating impact.

#29

see on see (Oversteps, 2010)

This radiant highlight of Oversteps’ first half immediately stands out as one of the record’s most melodically resonant, accessible, and entrancing cuts. Like many tracks on the record, it evokes both ice planets and the burning fires of distant galaxies in the night sky; the feeling of being suspended in space, in constant awe of the terrifying majesty that both surrounds you and holds you at a distance. It’s an incredibly tactile track, tonally, and the ambience beneath its sparkling tones has a terrific sense of real depth, like peering into a canyon. It’s a track that perfectly highlights the comparatively modest goals of Oversteps and hints at the terrific grandiosity of the subsequent records. To overlook it is to rob yourself of a true delight.

#28

tt1pd (NTS Sessions, 2018)

There are plenty of bangers on NTS Sessions; in many respects, despite its memorably beatless finale and many strange diversions, it is one of the most aggressive Autechre records in its most focused moments, lacking the pure sonic terror of Elseq in exchange for something more varied, multi-faceted, and altogether impressive. There are those tracks, plenty of them. But then there is tt1pd. Not even Elseq, let alone any other Autechre project, has a track that balances being both so utterly, relentlessly propulsive and thoroughly technically brilliant, varied, absolutely committed to musical evolution, as the third track on the third session. Across 22 staggering minutes, tt1pd blasts its way through many different forms, its core consisting of the juxtaposition between these bellowing, stretching, whining synth tones and a noticeably wooden, persistent percussive rattle. Eventually, around ten minutes in, the tempo dramatically slows, as the track tears and splinters apart, slowly, never losing its core but warbling it, pulling at it, contorting it. It makes for some of the most engrossing music the duo have ever released.

#27

shimripl casual (NTS Sessions, 2018)

Finally, a chance to talk about the utterly unique fourth NTS Session (though certainly not the last time it’ll come up in this breakdown). I consider the NTS Sessions a holistic, eight-hour single project, but if one were to consider it four separate but related records, then NTS 4 would handily be my favourite Autechre album (this would also be a universe where Elseq is considered five separate records, which to me is even more egregious in missing the point). For those who are unaware, what is unique about NTS 4 is that it is two hours of pure dark ambient drone — there are beats here, in some places, but they are either so subdued as to be barely noticeable or torn apart into smithereens floating through a vast interstellar space. shimripl casual is an example of the latter, a terrifying void in which remnants of sound vaguely echo and bleed into the ether. Depending on how you approach it, it’s either a gaping exercise in minimalism, or a feast of strange and eclectic sounds colliding with each other and bursting apart. For me, it’s firmly the latter, a piece as beguiling and rich as it is haunted and cold.

#26

Lentic Catachresis (Confield, 2001)

The nightmarish closer of Confield is about as close as a piece of music that I’ve heard has come to simulating the experience of drowning. The frightening denouement of an album thoroughly and relentlessly dedicated to violating and crushing its listener in dense walls of claustrophobic sound, Lentic Catachresis takes the sonic ideas explored on Confield to their logical and ultimate conclusion, beginning with a flood of clashing, static-laden, sharp-edged tones pushing and squirming at each other atop a gently wavy pad that is itself violated by cutting, ear-piercing stabs. Eventually, the pads get stuck in a haunting loop, those ear-piercing stabs accelerate in pace, stumbling and tripping over themselves, and the static clashes become a formless wash of horrific noise, suffocating your eardrums and piercing your brain like a madman waving a syringe. The final half of the track is an insistent exercise in sonic annihilation, as the parasite that tore at each element of the mix finally mutates into a heaving, bubbling, swollen-to-burst monstrosity, before ultimately death comes as quickly and suddenly as it

#25

Metaz form8 (SIGN, 2020)

Metaz form8 sits at the centre of SIGN, a mood piece breaking up two varied (and frankly quite different) sides of transformative music for the duo. It is also one of the most emotionally devastating pieces that Rob and Sean have released to date. It sounds cold, defeated, and alone, where earlier tracks on the record sounded warm, frightened, and desperate. There is a resigned quality to it that shakes me to the core and taps into something deep in my brain, a repressed feeling of hopelessness that I don’t like to confront but to some extent is simmering every single day of my life. It is the soundtrack to staring out the window at a rainy cityscape, thinking on your insignificance in a bleak, smoky urban sprawl. That the boys can evoke that purely through the collisions of beatless pads is truly the mark of their practiced, professional artistry; the decades of work and refinement that have made them such a singular and attractive musical voice.

#24

Ipacial Section (Untilted, 2005)

The buzzing ten-minute highlight of Untilted is both that record’s purest exercise in deconstructive dance music and also one of its most breathtaking, surprising, and beautiful pieces. Beautiful is not a word that comes to mind when one thinks of this particular album, yet this track, which begins in frankly unpleasant fashion with fractured pinpricks of insistent, buzzing, high pitched noise and kick beats that feel like they’re punching a hole through your speaker, blossoms and evolves in the most startling of ways. Around two minutes in, a new reverbed beat is introduced to give a previously claustrophobic mix a breath of fresh space, and eventually the track stumbles into this repetitive breakdown, removing some elements and tightening others into a smoother groove, resulting in a perfect evocation of the utterly fucked take on dance and techno that the record generally seems to be going for. However, it is in the second half that something remarkable happens: all of the harsher, more assaultive tones are pared back, and the beat becomes more minimal, bouncing off of these looped waves of spacious sound that make something which felt three square feet in size suddenly expand for miles in every direction.

#23

Altibzz (Quaristice, 2008)

Perhaps this is a controversially high placement for such a short and minimal track, the only one in the top 100 that doesn’t exceed three minutes. However, the ambient opener to Quaristice manages to be one of their most memorable, downright jaw-dropping tracks in its majestic beauty. Gone, at least for the moment, are the fractured, cluttered breakdown rhythms of Untilted, and now we are floating. It remains one of my most played Autechre tracks, and it’s well-suited to looping when you want to feel small and dwarfed by the brilliant size of the universe. To me, Altibzz evokes imagery of flying to work on an icy morning in the year 3000, looking from above over whatever arrangement of habitats might constitute a neighborhood in that time, admiring the sprawl of it all, the endless reach of it all, and the parts that are beyond us, ascending further and further, feeling the tender weightlessness of the clouds, treasuring every moment that your feet are free from the tether of the earth.

#22

column thirteen (NTS Sessions, 2018)

On NTS 4’s varied swaths of dark (and not-so-dark) ambient, column thirteen is perhaps the brightest and most playful piece. It sits at the precipice of the record’s final descent into darkness with shimripl casual before its baptism-by-fire finale, but it holds back from the gaping unknown, and sits in a suspended moment of wonder. One of my favourite aspects of NTS, particularly in the fourth session, is the way that you can close your eyes and be transported to the most vivid, strange of locales, or have the most bizarre but poignant imagery conjured, by the simplest of musical elements. In this respect column thirteen is among the most evocative tracks on the entire project. It could be floating in space, surveying the unknown from the security of a vessel, or it could be deep in the darkness of the ocean depths, a world illuminated by only the organic luminescence that its creatures have evolved. It could be deep in a cave lit solely by torchlight, watching stalactites puncture the reach of your headlamp. Either way you are in some kind of place that dwarfs you with its sheer size but also holds you, considers you a part of it. Whether you consider that hopeful or foreboding is a matter of perspective.

#21

Pen Expers (Confield, 2001)

Among the most beloved and well-known piece from this particularly challenging juncture of Rob and Sean’s discography, Pen Expers slams into focus abruptly from the similarly noisy Cfern, though it makes that track look positively quaint in comparison to its constantly slamming-then-slapping, disorienting beat, filled with that much-mentioned tactility and heaviness that I love so much about Confield and makes it so distinct and uncompromising. However, it is in the relationship between those percussive textures and the simply colossal wall of towering melodic noise that fights against it, rises for prominence through the brief gaps between the most assaultive hits until the two are ultimately in tandem, a fearsome and awe-inspiring symphony of thrilling musicality. At full-volume, it has the power to push you upwards and upwards with such focused efficiency that you meet the face of god and stare into titanic, unknowable eyes. If that all sounds a bit pretentious or excessive, then I heartily recommend you try the experience yourself. At the right moment, and the right time, it has the power to awaken a dangerous mixture of emotions that can have you grappling for something to keep you grounded.

#20

mesh cinereaL (Elseq, 2016)

I have used many words and waxed lyrical about some of Autechre’s darker, more colossal and terrifying tracks, in attempt to convey their power, and sometimes their sheer, frightening feeling of unknowability, because I feel that getting those feelings across is integral to honestly breaking down the core of the pieces, what they appear to aim to do, and, a more difficult and maybe even fruitless task, what they mean. Sometimes the emotions they convey are complex, and something laced with darkness also features textures that playfully bounce off of that darkness, complicate it, even run against it. But mesh cinereaL is something else. This isn’t regular ordinary darkness. This is advanced darkness. The track sits at the heart of Elseq, the second of two twin centrepieces alongside the more minimal and spare, haunting eastre, and though the two share a sense of doom, mesh functions to convey that doom in almost the opposite way, and take it further, to some vast and inescapable place that knows only death. It is a 24-minute piece of disorienting, tumbling, colliding noise. There is no melody. It is not the kind of darkness that sounds pained, suffering, resistant. Even a banal term like ‘evil’ simply would not do its lack of personality, its lack of anything resembling humanity justice. It is a nightmare. It features a rare example of an Autechre fakeout jumpscare, highlighting the sadistic nature of its experience. It barrels over you, it swallows you whole. Earlier I described xflood from NTS as feeling like the experience of staring into a black hole. mesh cinereaL is the black hole.

#19

Rae (LP5, 1998)

Another of the most beloved Autechre pieces — I suppose we’ll be hearing that a few more times. Rae connects with people because of how tangibly, achingly emotional it is from the outset and consistently all throughout. It’s stretching, whining, longing tones are among the most human, tragically sad that feature on any piece the duo have released. Thus, it’s fitting that they are up against a barrelling, punchy, dark and bass-heavy beat that just throttles the mix — the two textures feel like complete tonal opposites, and as such there’s a particularly resonant and moving quality to their juxtaposition. It feels grand, cosmic in some huge and devastating way. It’s worthy of the many countless hyperbolic words one could use to describe the universal feelings it invokes. It makes you feel small, insignificant, but also comforted in the directness and empathy of its longing. I feel, each time I listen to it, that I can sense traces of all the true sadness I’ve ever felt inside of the tones and the sensations they evoke. The track’s eventual slowing might seem a blessing on paper, allowing the beat to feel less assaultive, but really it just makes the pain worse. The more you slow down at your worst, the more you notice the thing that is eating away at you and driving the pain. Confronting that is necessary for moving forward, but that doesn’t make it easier, and with Rae, Rob and Sean demonstrate that they understand how that feels.

#18

violvoic (NTS Sessions, 2018)

I remember distinctly the first time I heard violvoic; I was listening to NTS Session 2 for the first time in a darkened room where I had been working late at uni on some incredibly dry assignment. By this point I had spent a decent amount of time with NTS 1 and enjoyed it but was frankly a little underwhelmed. With the benefit of hindsight I can now acknowledge for as great as that session’s highlights are, it is the least consistent of the four by far. I was already enjoying the experience of 2 a lot more, but by the time I came to violvoic, nothing had prepared me for the intense, visceral response the track would evoke from me instantly. It is one of the most texturally singular and idiosyncratic tracks in Autechre’s entire catalogue, consisting of sounds that clearly evoke a thick, purring pool of oil or tar, some kind of viscous and dense fluid from which there is absolutely no escape once it has you in its grasp. For much of its first half, the fifteen-minute track lingers in a straightforward rhythm filled with these sounds, but then the real fun begins. In one of the most satisfying builds of any Autechre track, the entire piece collapses to near silence five-minutes in, and then slowly, gradually rebuilds itself, piece by piece, slowly eking up the tension moment by moment, adding a new percussive thum and gently easing the tempo upward, in a tense and thrilling build that had my heart skipping beats, sweating with anticipation, until finally, in the track’s glorious closing minutes, the building monstrosity falls into this utterly disgusting, crunching groove, a staggering release of tension that represents Rob and Sean at the absolute height of their creative powers.

#17

Bine (Confield, 2001)

Basically everything I said about mesh cinereaL could apply to a slightly lesser extent to Bine, which as the shortest track on Confield is more manageable than something like mesh in terms of a front-to-back experience, but certainly no easier relatively speaking, and perhaps even more banal and haunting because unlike mesh, this doesn’t even have repetition to ground you. It is a hollow, hopeless squall of flooding noise that presages closer Lentic Catachresis but somehow manages to surpass it in terms of the sheer viscerally disturbing nature of its lack of structure. More than almost any other song Autechre have released, this feels random, frighteningly so — foreboding ambience hangs in the backdrop but modulates wildly throughout in tone, and the central ‘beat’, if you could call it that, sounds panicked, frightened, but totally erratic, winding and sprinting around the mix and searching for a way to ground itself, except with each step it puts forward suddenly three more feet are sprouting from each toe and wriggling in different directions. As you can probably tell, it’s one of the most difficult Autechre tracks to describe too, but the reason I have placed it so high is that I feel it embodies everything that the experience of Confield is about: the unknowability of the universe, the frightening meaningless of death, the jaunting unpredictability of life. I don’t know if I have ever been as discomforted by a piece of music as I am by Bine, because somehow I hear its senseless, patternless horror, and it feels… familiar.

#16

spaces how V (Elseq, 2016)

A fan-favourite, and for good reason. Though the duo have a lot of contenders (more to come!), this is certainly a deserving choice for the mantle of their most beautiful track, and I’ve seen it grace a number of fans’ top 10 lists for Ae tracks overall, even a few who’ve placed it at the top spot. It comes at the centre of Elseq’s oft-overlooked softer and more spacious final movement, though like spTh, the piece preceding it, it has its fair share of brooding, bass-heavy textures that thump and moan. Here though, they don’t sound violent or assaultive, they sound like a release. Throughout the track, these consistent burbling groans and then waves of glorious synth pads beneath them bubble up and resonate out into the mix, huge and dominating, like great and overwhelming expressions of cathartic intensity, anchored by this curiously spritzy recurring rhythmic pattern that has come to resemble a kind of robotic, reverbed heartbeat to me; in sum, this is one of the few tracks that feels like a living, breathing organism, feeding and excreting, experiencing pleasure and pain, stumbling over itself at points but most crucially, continually moving forward, no matter what.

#15

X4 (PLUS, 2020)

X4 immediately stands out on PLUS as one of the most propulsive, even fun pieces the duo have released in years. It opens with this propulsive kick beat, gripping melodic tones, and absolutely serrating noise bursts that slice through the track like a robot surgeon’s arm gripping a hundred scalpels and going berserk. Around four minutes in some of the backing textures and the scraping fall away and the track gets heavier, darker, moodier, though no less propulsive. The constant forward motion evokes a chase scene through a darkened night, and around five minutes in, quite dramatically, a lot of the heaviness just falls away, but the floor is still there, so it’s like looking down and seeing the stars instead of a road. Seven minutes in, and the track’s gradual deconstruction becomes apparent; the beat is still there, but it’s more subdued, repressed, cutting through occasionally rather than constantly. The rattling core of the track is still there but itself becomes fragmented, and then, suddenly, this low, kind of mournful sounding melodic pad is added that just completely changes the tone of the whole thing! It goes from feeling throttling, uncertain, evasive, to reflective, sad, almost resigned, as though it’s gradually becoming clear that for the chasee, this desperate flight is doomed. Eventually, 10 minutes in, the running stops, as the beat slows to a crawl and the electrical noise passages become more buried, distorted, bleeding; we are hearing a slow death, with only this new sad melody and its resonances remaining. It becomes an elegy, something ghostly and tragic. The emotional arc of this piece alone is staggering, and it doesn’t waste a second in weaving its dramatic tale as powerfully and in as affecting a manner as possible. It is a high watermark of the duo’s discography.

#14

e0 (NTS Sessions, 2018)

I have lost count of the nights that I have left this incredible piece playing as I drift off to sleep. It is purely celestial, an incredibly beautiful vision of rich sights, colours unfathomable, a wall of beautiful lights flooding beneath your eyelids. It’s perhaps a cliche, or cheap, to evoke the Stargate sequence of 2001: A Space Odyssey, so if I can only do it once during this countdown, it is absolutely most appropriate here. This is a circling, repetitive, but constantly gripping piece that is among the most straightforwardly breathtaking in the history of electronic music. How the fuck is it not higher, I ask myself constantly as I write this. If the eight hours of NTS seem like a chore in concept, and are admittedly not always perfect in execution, the experience is worth it for gems of awe-inspiring, visual, and even grooving pieces like this, the scope of which is difficult to quantify beyond simply saying “15 minutes”. It manages to be both the high and the comedown, and it manages to make both somehow feel equally spectacular and joyful. I have spoken a lot of darkness, isolation, cold, and violence in these writeups, but here is a moment of crystalline, perfect awe, entirely pleasant and even addictive. And it’s only an eighth of the session, which is packed with highlights that are at this level or close to it. How do they keep fucking doing it?

#13

Surripere (Draft 7.30, 2003)

The incredible centrepiece of the ever-underappreciated Draft 7.30, overlooked as the follow-ups to classic records often are, Surripere is the clearest, most straightforward, and most effective example of the record’s conceptual core focus on rhythmic and musical deconstruction. A YouTube commenter once memorably described it as the evoking a scene in which robots are performing intensely methodical surgery when something goes “horribly wrong”. To make that fateful moment even more noticeable, the first few minutes of Surripere are surprisingly calm, especially if you factor in the progression of every other song on the record, all of which are either instantly busy, chaotic, or quickly become such. Surripere lingers in a calm but vaguely tense mode for three minutes, lulling you into a false sense of security before the malfunctions begin, at first subtle with the intrusion of cut-up metallic sounds, before suddenly the track halts and these violent punches of squelching sound enter to break up the progression, tearing at it, pulling it apart by the seams, somehow managing to disrupt it entirely without losing the core rhythmic focus. At least, at first. Eventually even the ambience underlying the track, the most persistent element of the mix, becomes warped, distorted, swelling. The final stretch feels like the aftermath of death, a persistent clatter of malfunctioning parts atop a sinister bedrock of decayed ambience. As a whole, the track set a blueprint for a style of musical progression the duo would explore in some depth throughout their career, but seldom in such a stark, effective manner as here.

#12

Cichli (Chiastic Slide, 1997)

If you had asked me before undertaking this project at all which tracks come to mind most quickly as obvious top ten locks, Cichli would be one of the first to come to mind, and yet here we are, an embarrassment of riches and Cichli sitting just barely outside the final stretch. This project was a cruel mistake. If you were to ask me to name the best track to play to someone who has never heard Autechre but wants to get a sense of what their music does without being too overwhelmed, this would be one of two that I recommend (the other we’ll come to shortly). It is the early centrepiece of the stunning Chiastic Slide, their best album of the 90s era despite what anyone else might tell you (yes, it’s definitely better than Tri Rep and LP5). It immediately kicks off with an iconic clanking, rattling beat and soon introduces one of the most memorable, iconic, and hooky melodies Rob and Sean ever composed, a gentle and playful looping progression (that is at one point carefully and cheekily disassembled and reassembled, in a slight hint at what was to come soon in their career) that is itself anchored in a clearly tangible emotional backdrop by some of the most gorgeous, haunting ambience of any Autechre track, particularly resonant to me for the way that it vaguely resembles human voices, distorted and stretched beyond recognition but with still tangibly real-feeling. That this somewhat vocal tone is the last thing we hear in the track, when all else has faded into the background, leaves Cichli having traversed from hopeful in its first half to achingly lonely at its end, disassembled and suppressed voices searching through the darkness for each other but finding nothing.

#11

bladelores (Exai, 2013)

The most majestic, richly huge Autechre track up to this point in their career (but not beyond it…), the staggering bladelores manages to balance being a stunning achievement in seasoned sound design and also one of the more conventionally accessible tracks of this period of the duo’s career, consisting of a straightforward, heavily reverbed but gripping beat that does not undergo any subversive deconstruction but blissfully progresses skyward, searching toward the heavens in concert with a slowly building wall of ambience and sympathetic echoes of itself. It’s an absolute feast for the senses, a true “holy FUCK” moment the first time that you hear it, demonstrating calmly and confidently that the duo are still capable of blowing your minds as effectively and impressively with a relatively stripped back arrangement as they are with the more chaotic, balls-to-the-wall tracks we’ve discussed many a time up to this point. Somehow the track only manages to get more huge and larger-than-life as it goes on, accumulating a greater sense of depth with each passing minute, feeling like you are actually pushing through the various layers of the atmosphere throughout its progression, the beat representing your connection to Earth and the ambience the gradually encroaching freedom of outer space. By the track’s closing minutes you have escaped the ties of the planet and are approaching something foreign but familiar, huge but intimate, unknowable but deeply rich. The glorious finale here is pure blissed-out drone delight, but fans know it’s a mere taste of what was to come in just a few years time; we’ll get to that eventually. But for now, it is time to appreciate bladelores in all its singular delights and awestruck majesty. It truly is a wonder to behold.

#10

r cazt (SIGN, 2020)

SIGN’s closing track sees the particularly dazzling pads that decorate the album in full focus here, rippling across the track as they have across many of its songs, but with a notable difference. Here, they have a distorted, longing quality that makes them feel like they are fighting to exist. They emerge from a deep, bassy bedrock like they are thrashing for air in the mix, and they continue to do so throughout the track; the lack of conventional development from that template is what makes it so affecting. They never quite seem to reach a point of comfort, a point of stasis, a point of calm. Building upon this foundation are these absolutely fucking gorgeous twinkling countermelodies, which almost seem to be commiserating with those synths in their struggle. When I close my eyes and listen to them it’s like I’m drifting at sea in the night, looking up at the stars; in that sense the track is an embodiment of the purely imagistic quality that all the best Autechre stuff has. The mix eventually introduces a fascinating sample, that of the beeps that a traffic crossing make when you’re waiting to walk. As those static bleeps signifying ‘stop’ intrude against an endless horizon of sound, I’m struck by how that clash seems to symbolize a conflict between stasis and progression, perhaps even a meta-commentary from Rob and Sean about where they are at at this new juncture of their career, waiting to cross to a new side fully but being swept up in an ocean pulling them back to the past. Perhaps this is just transitional, perhaps wherever Autechre are going is still miles away yet, or perhaps they will never get there, but they are certainly not stopping yet. The movement is as constant as the destination is distant.

#9

feed1 (Elseq, 2016)

Elseq is my favourite electronic music record of all time. I have no bones about making that call at this point, though its overtaking Confield is a change that I did make fairly recently. I grow more confident about it with each passing day. It is one of the most consistently focused, though curiously digressive and restless, single projects the duo have ever laid to wax, and each and every sequencing decision and track length is crucial to its cumulative effect. Perhaps nowhere on the record is that clearer than the opening track of its first movement. feed1 is, to put it in no uncertain terms, the best and most effective piece of noise music I have ever heard in my life (and don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t noise music either, it most certainly is; in some senses it’s like if the final movement of The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the End of Time were blown out to gargantuan size and then blended, with this track being not the result but the sound of the blending). Conceptually, it is a hell of a way to open an album, and maybe the most galling, attention-grabbing statement of purpose the duo have ever provided. Sonically, it is a confronting swirl of violent noise that pulses like the internal organs of an Earth-sized monster for eleven minutes; it creates the sensation of thrashing to stay above the surface in a pool of thick, black liquid while unseen creatures try to pull you below. It is one of the most unrelenting pieces the duo have ever released, and one of the absolute peaks of their colossal, dynamic sound design. It simply has to be heard to be believed.

#8

Garbagemx (Garbage — EP, 1995)*

Garbagemx is the first Autechre track I ever heard. Or at least, that I have a memory of hearing. My Dad has a cassette copy of Tri Repetae that he assures me he played when I was younger, but I honestly don’t have any specific memories of that experience. It was not until I was much older and discovered this track on a whim that I developed a real interest in Autechre, and of course it all spiralled from there. Earlier, in my writeup on Cichli I mentioned that if you were to ask me which track is the best to play to someone who has never heard Autechre but wanted to get a sense of their sound, I’d name that song and one other, which is this one. Across 14 minutes, the Garbage EP opener spins an increasingly manifold web of sounds that, like the best tracks on Tri Rep, eventually develop a symphonic feeling as they all dance across each other and interlock in unison. It even teaches you how to listen to it, if you pay attention, starting from one simple looping element and gradually introducing more, some percussive, some ambient, and some purely textural, across its lengthy but never less than fascinating runtime. These include clattering beats, whooshing vaguely vocal but robotic tones, synthetic string chords that rise and descend in subtle but powerful fashion, and most gloriously, a repetitive core melody that anchors the entire thing, imbuing it with that sense of grandeur and scope that makes it so remarkably impressive and unforgettable. No wonder I fell right down the Autechre rabbit hole almost instantly. With this track, so can you and all your friends. It’s the beginning of something special indeed, and one of their finest pieces to date.

#7

VI Scose Poise (Confield, 2001)

It’s perhaps a strange comparison, even a crude one, but I often like to think of Confield as IDM’s Kid A moment, where the sonic toolkit of a band that had been consistently pushing themselves to more progressive, ambitious arrangements was almost entirely upended for something altogether more unfriendly, even volatile, but breathtaking in its beauty and somehow also feeling, retrospectively, like the most logical next step and the best possible one. Nowhere is this clearer in the most unequivocally shocking Autechre opener, VI Scose Poise. Gone are the propulsive, crunching, bass-heavy beats that we are used to hearing begin Ae records up to this point — in fact, gone are all the beats entirely. Confield and Draft 7.30 both begin with a few seconds of vaguely audible metallic hiss, before a bold new world unfolds jarringly before us. VI Scose Poise is a dreamlike textural pool of tense soundplay that is dominated at first by these incredibly tactile metallic raindrop sounds, quickened to a dizzying speed, tripping over each other, tearing into the silence like a zipper through velvet. However, it is not long before this mix is given a delightful, warm depth by these beautiful synth tones that meander across one of the band’s most serene melodies. The resulting tension of this arrangement leads to a feeling of controlled chaos, that the record continues to explore across its nine tracks. It may seem a curious choice for a top ten Autechre tracks list, considering the many behemoths we have already seen off, but in many ways it is the most quintessential, even definitive track that the duo released in the whole 2000s. In terms of expectation, sonic experience, and compositional attitude, it represents everything Rob and Sean stand for, condensed into a minimal but utterly enrapturing seven minutes. I never tire of it, and once it’s on, I invariably stay for the rest of the whole album. That’s about as much as an opener can hope to achieve.

#6

Cipater (Chiastic Slide, 1997)

Five tracks in to this top 10, and we have covered four different openers so far. If that says anything, it’s that Rob and Sean know how to kick off their projects with something that feels like a summary of everything that makes their music great as well as a piece that entirely encapsulates their aims with any given project. In that regard, and many more, Cipater is their greatest opener of all, instantly iconic and unforgettable for the way that it boldly pushes forward from the past and makes a statement so definitive, so startling, that it leaves no doubt in the listener’s mind that the previous era of their sound is dead and buried. Tri Repetae was the most successful Autechre record, but it was also, in the duo’s own words, something they made to please people, to tie a bow around their era most linked to the ‘Warp’ sound and the expectations of IDM convention. With Chiastic Slide, the duo take a bold step forward into a space that feels creatively invigorated, definitive, and crucially, utterly unique among their peers. Cipater is the perfect example of all of these things. It opens with and is driven by a beat that has an incredibly tactile feel, specifically evoking the splintering wood of the crank on some medieval device, a clunk and a push forward with each iteration. Though quickly joined by a bouncing, bass-y melodic counterpoint and washes of ambience hanging, layering overtop, it is the development of this beat that is the core focus of this track. The beat eventually catches up with itself, eats itself, and then re-emerges in a new form in the track’s second half, with these staggering melodic tones brushing atop it and pushing it into some new, wondrous place. It’s as purely exciting and surprising as any moment in the duo’s entire 90s output, and as such it represents the zenith of that era, and really of everything they would do up until the mid-2010s.

#5

elyc6 0nset (Elseq, 2016)

If you asked me to highlight the single most difficult piece of music that Autechre have made to date, despite that being a relative question that is kind of meaningless the more you interrogate it, I’d nevertheless point you pretty quickly to elyc6 0nset. This is the 27-minute behemoth of Elseq, the longest track on that record and one of the most texturally unfriendly, unwieldy mammoths of the duo’s entire catalogue. Yet despite that, as with much of the most difficult stuff on Elseq, it has an undeniable groove that anchors it, and a stereo-consuming mix filled with heavy bass tones that squelch and bubble, scratch and moan, anchored by this decaying, stretched tone that fills out the back of the mix. It is a kaleidoscopic noise jam, as rewarding as it is relentlessly assaultive, and for the vast majority, it is entirely without melody. It progresses slowly, sizzling and moaning as it heaves like the breathing of some ancient creature, even as the sounds themselves instill the feeling of being slowly digested and melting from the inside out. What is difficult about elyc6 0nset is not just its length, but the blistering textures themselves, which crackle and bleep and simmer with a deliberate pace; the track does shift, but it does so slowly, and through extended sections of shifting erratic tones that violate with their lack of repetition and screeching timbre, until eventually by the track’s conclusion you’re left swimming in a verbiage of crackling electrical dissonance. The final stretch of elyc6, which is really its entire second half, basically fifteen minutes of unforgiving, desiccated glitch, is among the most alien progressions in the duo’s entire catalogue. From start to finish, elyc6 0nset has the feel of a slow death, gradually watching the decomposition of some gigantic, fearsome creature as parasites eat away at its insides, crumbling the beast into a shell of hollow, festering decay. A fair warning: if you’re feeling particularly existential, this track has the power to absolutely destroy you.

#4

latentcall (Elseq, 2016)

I don’t generally recommend listening to any individual part of Elseq without the full context, but it’s easy to make an exception for the record’s fourth movement because it contains some of the most accessible yet groundbreaking music of the duo’s entire 2010s output, and two tracks in particular that are just unequivocally some of the best they have ever done. latentcall is perhaps the most “representative” track on the record, in terms of bringing together all elements of the album that make it what it is: its heaviness, its shifting rhythmic textures, its propulsive grooving, its propensity to include walls of deafening but crisp noise, and washes of enormously beautiful, resonant ambience. All of these are out in full form on latentcall, which clatters, bangs, and pulses forward with a danceable, abrasive groove, before suddenly, halfway through, completely disintegrating into near silence. A new rhythmic pattern is formed from the gentle intrusions of warped but pretty melodic tones that whisper against this layer of heavy timbres that resemble the inside of a wind tunnel. The way in which the piece fractures into this section recalls Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, bearing more than a passing resemblance. But then, something happens 11 minutes in that changes the entire framework: a new, more propulsive beat re-enters the mix, and builds a bass-heavy, kicking dance groove out of the disintegrated wind tunnel sounds. It’s one of the most jawdropping moments in any Autechre track, and words sell short the incredible experience of hearing it for the first time. If Basinski’s Disintegration Loops codifies the inevitability of death and decay into a towering sonic loundscape, then latentcall does that better, and with a twist: from the death emerges new life, bouncing, wide-eyed, precocious even. But new, all the same. It’s the happy ending you never expect from an Autechre track, and boy does it feel good.

#3

foldfree casual (Elseq, 2016)

Silence. Then, a spark. Light, dancing across the void. The ray is soon joined by another, and the two sing together in unison. foldfree casual feels, in the most plain and direct of visual terms, like witnessing the birth of the universe. These rich, luxurious pads that stretch and sing are one of the most purely emotive and captivating textures in any piece by Autechre. Eventually, these crinkling, distorted warbles that sound like robotic birdsong join them: a new universe that began with light now features matter, solid objects forming, dotting the space that the light fills, complicating the simple, anchoring the space. And then, the most dramatic shift, the beginning of the formation of worlds: these objects collide, smashing into each other, fracturing and breaking apart. Gravity collides them repeatedly, again and again, til gigantic masses begin to form, masses that one day will support life. The intrusion of the shuttering sounds that represent these collisions, and the way that they juxtapose against the soft, serene beauty of the central shimmering chords, is among the most beautiful combinations of sound that Rob and Sean have ever crafted. The imagery of a dense universe borne from nothing and then formed through the meeting of disparate objects thrown together by chance, and by force, is so incredibly clear and visceral to me every time that I listen to this that the sense of sheer wonder it evokes, the sense of pure joy and affirmation it sends right through the core of me, is so palpable and beautiful that it can sustain me even in my worst moments. It is sheer musical bliss.

#2

freulaeux (Elseq, 2016)

This is my favourite Autechre track. Choosing between this and that other one for the top spot was agony, and many times I have wavered between the two. But I feel confident in my decision about the #1 spot, and I’ll go into it further there. freulaeux, however, it should not be understated, is by far the Autechre track that I have heard the most and the one that means the most to me deep down. It sits in the penultimate spot of the final movement of Elseq, following a tumultuous nearly four hours of noise assaults, rhythmic battering, and strange digressions. It is comparatively mild, a gently soothing track led by shimmering washes of melodic pads that lay atop a consistently throbbing, squelchy bass-heavy beat. A simple set of components, but the emotional and psychological impact of the piece, on me at least, is incalculable. As I am listening to it now, on repeat, soaking it in to try and find the right words, I’m staring out the window at a grey night illuminated by neon, through which rain relentlessly pours. It’s the perfect setting. freulaeux evokes images of cold cityscapes bathed in neon, of driving aimlessly through a jungle of skyscrapers, of sitting in the backseat as a little kid with your head against the glass, feeling the cold on your skin, watching the droplets of rain cascade down the window, seeing the buildings flash by anonymously. It evokes in me a profound sense of emotional nostalgia and comfort, but with also an inescapable tinge of unease. There is a tension here between those feelings, the former evoked by the pads and the latter by the beats, that works perfectly in translating to song that feeling of experiencing wistfulness, nostalgic longing, the comfort of the familiar but also the cruelty of its distance from the present. The track is far from the most immediate in Autechre’s catalogue, and it may even hold you at a curious distance the first time you hear it, but in its aches, its tears, its perfect sense of gentle persistence, it remains one of the most distinctly human, intimate, sentimental, and meaningful pieces of music I have ever heard. It has a permanent place in my heart, and on my dying day, if I’m cognizant of what’s happening and have a chance to process it all, the last part of my brain to go will be the part that remembers this song.

#1

all end (NTS Sessions, 2018)

Well, here we are. The end. And, really, what else could be here? It was always the only choice, right from the beginning. Rob and Sean clearly knew when they created this piece that it would resonate instantly as their most definitive, stunning achievement in sound design. It has such a sense of finality (it’s right there in the title, with it’s ‘ae’ acronym to boot) that many wondered if it really was the end of Autechre, if this was their way of tying a majestic bow around their career and bowing out with grace. Even now that we know that it’s not really the end, the power of all end is still not lost, nor cheapened, nor even remotely lessened. As the capstone finale of the eight-hour NTS Sessions project, it feels as though it is the thing the entire release had been building towards. Frankly, it feels like the thing their entire career arc had been working towards. Sure, it foregoes the complex, shuddering, ever-shifting rhythms for walls of thick, pillowing drone, but even in this respect it is the most nuanced, detailed, and rich creation they have ever released. As any fan will be quick to tell you, beneath what initially appears to be a singular wall of noise is endless melodic variation, buried detail eking its way toward the surface and then receding into the chasm. It is like listening to every piece of music ever made at the same time. It is a baptism by fire, a glorious ascent from the earth. Where some Autechre tracks evoke the feeling of floating among those stars, observing their beauty, all end is the sound of falling into the sun, shedding your form to bathe in light. It is, and I use this word hesitantly, transcendent. I’ve avoided using that word because it is a loaded one that is also overused and overly hyperbolic, but if is true of any piece of music it is this one. all end is the sound of a thousand church-sized organs hammering a single chord in synchrony, while some angelic creature floats across the insides of all of their pipes, causing the sound to ripple and cascade and exist in a state of both constant perpetuity and shift. It feels like the moment of death, the moment of confronting a vast nothingness, but suspended to last almost forever, such that you can stand on the precipice and view the rush of fractured memories from which you came and the comforting endlessness of their inescapable destination. It is inarguably existential, in the way in which the title and sounds make you confront that inevitability, but it is also life-affirming. The most existentially confronting stimulus in the world is silence, and all end is categorically its opposite: there is never a moment of emptiness or reprieve in its mix, even as the heavy drone does recede somewhat at certain points throughout. It is constant, it is all-encompassing, and it reminds you that you are alive.