Autechre – Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae

A vinyl release of this would have been killer—tracks like "90101-51-6" play out as some of Ae's most dancefloor-friendly productions.

"Perlence Subrange 6-36" microspace in hour of deep ambient sound... wery wery main track of this album

It's a shame that this never got a physical release. It contains some of my favorite ae material. Perlence suns is especially interesting.

I am not too keen on the 5 hours 12 minutes Quaristuff but there's some enjoyable music on this "EP". "The Plc Ccc" is especially very nice, and "Perlence Losid 2" is a banger!

Some reviews, like ones posted here, help me understand why Autechre polarizes opinions so much. Unfortunately, a lot of people are eager to reduce an art form as huge and massively diverse as music to these little pretentious, snobbish one-liners, weasel words and quick judgments. It's not that Autechre is so mysterious and elusive: people just want to squeeze music into a little box, with firm, rigid boundaries between what is acceptable and what is not. I think it's valid for a release like this to be ired and enjoyment. In my case, I find its excess and self-inflation gets the best of Autechre. If they truly wanted to do something ambitious, why not use a larger variety of Quaristice tracks to rework? And if they truly wanted to go down the "ambient" direction, the album sounds too uncertain. The final, hour long track is bold and confident, and nails down the "ambient" style very well. But the rest of the release is too unsubstantial. Fortunately, Oversteps presented a whole new world for the duo to explore, and they did not disappoint.

This release, which is Autechre's first digital-only release, contains enough downbeat tracks to compile them into the ambient record Autechre never made. This alone makes it worth your while. Also these longer, reworked versions of tracks that were relatively short on the Quaristice album, allow the listener to focus on the incredible detail that's hidden in the background of the music. This is especially true for the final track, at over 58 minutes an album by itself, slowly developing, shifting attention and mood. A very engaging listen.