Amber - Autechre > Reviews > Autechre's 2nd album

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Definitely a cut above the rest
Lyrics	Not applicable
Quality and consistency of tracks	A couple of weak links
How does it rate alongside the competition	Outstanding
Value for Money	Excellent

Advantages:	Original .  Intelligent .  A specific sound .
Disadvantages:	Track 10 is a bit dissapointing .

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Autechre's textural album.

Amber is Autechre's 4th work; 2nd album.
Sean Booth and Robert Brown released Incunabula back in 1993, a roaring success. This album would attract quite a following. They would then concentrate their sounds and release 2 very singular Eps.
The first of these, Basscadet, featured 5 completely different remixes of their ground-breaking track by the same name. These were so plural in their construction that the whole concept of remixing the same material never got boring. Once again, the duo illustrate their sheer genius.
The second Ep would be a tiny 3-titled oeuvre, acting as a protest against the "British Criminal Justice and Public order act 1994". This particular law had prohibited gatherings of people listening to repetitive music. Autechre would then release two techno-based tracks and a third, Flutter, that would go in the complete opposite direction with ever-changing rhythm, symbolic of latter Autechre releases.

Amber was release in 1994, soon after the Anti Ep.
This particular album would enrich the mathematics of Incunabula by opting for reserved and cagey rhythm structures, while expanding their sounds and textures into astronomical directions. A beautiful and heart-felt album.

The cover art gives us a clue of how their musical vision works. It is a panoramic photography of some huge hill in a desert-like landscape with crimson reels of sand cascading towards us. It feels like a contradiction to the mathematical collage and strange artwork featured on the other albums. This is no coincidence.

Foil is our opening track.
It sounds like an amplified echo of a distant robot singing at the end of a long tunnel, with snappy snares and side-sticks falling into simplistic patterns. This track provides us with a sense of space that was not all that present in Incunabula.

Montreal features an upbeat hip-hop rhythm, very simplistic but extremely catchy, and long ambient drones singing their digital language in the background. It is far from being Autechre at their best but still conjures that feeling of spaciousness. A nice track.

Silverside is brilliant, like an opus for digital strings. It sways erotically into motion with vibrant colour as well as foreboding shadow. A perfect combination that brings artists like Datach'i to mind, especially his 2005 release The Elements (Sublight Records). It cannot however compare to Datach'i experimentation because of it's unadorned feel. Simple but beautiful.

Slip is a great track, although not for the same reasons. It almost sounds like a clichéd I.D.M score. But here, Autechre are not trying to expand sound, but rather use retro-keyboard sequences in a lively way. Slip has a sense of nostalgia about it; one of authenticity and classic I.D.M rooting.

Glitch uses close-fitting progression; simple technoid time signatures plus some kind of very well positioned metallic gongs. The atmosphere is so mysterious that it seems to combine human feeling with robotic frostiness. A great track.
Piezo is an expansion upon Glitch; in a way. It morphs from alien hip-hop, to dance-like mutations, to built-up ambient. All this takes place in a purely Autechre-ish fashion, in a wonderful soundscaping of vast echoing endlessness.

Nine is my favourite track. Shorter than others, it paints a deep space feel, with lush and dusty keyboard twinkling and processed vocals saying something like: "is anything real?" -at least that's what I make it out to be-.

Further is an instant Autechre classic, with the most upbeat hip-hop variation on the album. It spills in sensitively with bells and clicks, then introducing a thumping technoid groove. From a distance, it may sound like soft-core techno. Upon close inspection, the background is what really matters in this track. A hypnotic piece.
Yulqueen is a reverbed ocean of brassy strings and echoes, almost like a soft classical suite slowed down and processed through both post-1994 equipment as well as up-to-date apparatus. A unique and mature track, much closer to latter Autechre releases.

Nil is very much like Lowride from Incunabula in the sense that it spoils the rest of the album and stops it from being a complete masterpiece. It is hip-hop groove with some nice but uninteresting drone works.
It does however get better after 3 minutes and 20 seconds with cut-n-slice effects, giving this track an experimental edge. At this point, the track is actually good.

The last piece, Teartear, is a sign of things to come in latter Autechre albums. It develops a muted hip-hop movement into a slowed-down version of itself and then kicks it back into gear with a clattering side-stepped thrash. The rest of the track simply plays in slow motion, getting even slower, and finally introducing more side-stepped reverberation. A brilliant piece.

I shall conclude by saying that Amber is a superb album by Autechre.
It introduces many subtle moments and has a unique dreamlike sound. It is a very important step in Autechre's work and should not be missed out. It would also be the spring-board for their next classic release: Tri Repetae.

Highly recommended.

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(Written by myself - no violation, no lifting, no breach of copyright)