Autechre Albums Ranked
15. Incunabula (1993)
A famous line of Autechre’s around the time Tri Repetae came out was that they’d decided to remove the “cheesy bits” (aka melody lines) from their music. Amber and Incunabula are both decidedly more melodic than what came afterward, but Incunabula is the only Autechre release that I’d refer to as even moderately “cheesy”. I’m sure it sounded cutting edge when it came out in 1993, but of all Autechre’s albums, this is the only one that sounds like a clear product of its era. Look no further than the opening synth groans of album opener “Kalpol Introl”, which sound almost comically dated in 2020. The album improves from there—the middle stretch from “Basscadet” to “Doctrine” is particularly strong—but when listened to in the context of what their peers were making during the same time (Selected Ambient Works 85-92 actually predates Incunabula by a year), it doesn’t stand out in any meaningful way. Also worth mentioning is how long this album is. At 77 minutes, it was Autechre’s longest album until Exai, and it feels it. It’s worth checking out as a sort of creation story for the band, but within a couple of years they’d grown by leaps that make Incunabula sound like the work of a different, inferior group.
14. Untilted (2005)
Untilted was the first Autechre album I ever heard, and I thought someone was playing a joke on me.* The punishing, repetitive percussion of opener ”LCC” was so comically ridiculous to my 13 year-old brain that I couldn’t believe anyone would actually listen to this music for enjoyment. 15 years later, parts of Untilted still sound humorously difficult. It’s a twitchy, busy, uptempo album, skittering all over the place with a nervy energy that stands out amongst their discography. On the fantastic opening trio of songs—the aforementioned “LCC”, along with career highlights “Ipacial Section” and “Pro Radii”—this bewildering percussion is used to great effect, dizzying in its complexity such that it feels akin to listening to a caffeine overdose. Unfortunately, there’s a distinct drop off in quality after that initial run, turning Untilted into one of Autechre’s most (ahem) uneven albums. Closer “Sublimit” ends on a fittingly wild note, scattering millions of snare hits across its 16-minute run time, but the middle section of the album really sinks what could have been a standout record.
13. Quaristice (2008)
Autechre’s middle period, post-LP5 and pre-Exai, found the band searching out new forms in ways that became more and more inscrutable until Oversteps. Upon its release, Quaristice seemed like a break from the pack merely because of the number of tracks (there are a lot) and their duration (they’re short). In hindsight, though, Quaristice seems more like a precursor to Elseq or NTS Sessions, with the mammoth running times of those albums condensed into a breezy 73 minutes. Like those long collections, Quaristice skips from ambient waves (gorgeous opener “Altbizz” and Amber-like closer “Outh9X”) to S&M bangers (“Tankakern”) to what sounds like several car crashes being played in reverse at the same time (“Fol3”, which is very much worth listening to). The quick cuts between tracks makes Quaristice the album equivalent of a show ride at Disneyland (think “It’s a Small World”), with each room bringing new surprises and giving the listener little to do but enjoy it until you’re swooped to the next one. While this makes for a rarely boring listen, though, it also doesn’t give many of the tracks room to breathe,** a quirk the band would overhaul in a major way with following releases. This makes Quaristice a decidedly lower-tier Autechre album, despite the strength of individual moments.
12. Chiastic Slide (1997)
Chiastic Slide is one of only a couple Autechre albums (the others being Draft 7.30 and PLUS) that come across as “generic Autechre album”. There’s no real concept that the band follows here, instead pinging back and forth from song to song from the melodic machine music of their earlier records (fab album opener “Cipater”) to the pure sound design that would come to define later albums (the harsh “Rettic Ac”) in a way that doesn’t cohere into a satisfying whole. It also represents the only real step backward in Autechre’s discography—if you moved it up in time before Tri Repetae, you could trace a pretty clear progression from Amber all the way through at least Quaristice in their sound. Even though it lacks a cohesive theme, though, Chiastic is chock full of highlights. “Tewe” foreshadows the moodier grooves of LP5, while “Cichli” looks back to the robotic textures of Tri. But there’s no disguising that the second half of the album isn’t nearly as good as the first.
11. elseq 1-5 (2016)
Chronologically, chronometrically and stylistically, Elseq sits right in between Exai and NTS Sessions. Split across five separate sections (nodding toward NTS’s splintered release) and twice the length of Autechre’s previous album, it seemed like a natural endpoint to seeing how far the band’s music could stretch out. And indeed, the best moments here feel like wild curveballs hurled out of the same universe the band first flashed with Exai. Where Elseq falls short is in its organization. Since each volume can be heard as a single album, there’s a natural ranking that occurs when listening to it all at once.*** 1 and 4 in particular stand out as evolutions of Exai’s strongest moments, and the whole album closes on the high one-two punch of “freulaeux” (a nasty little piece of near-dubstep, of all things) and “oneum”. But Elseq sags the most when it foreshadows NTS. Whereas the long, droning soundscapes of NTS served to build and release tension across its 8-hour runtime, similar tracks in the context of the shorter volumes 2 and 3 take up too much weight, sinking the songs around them. When it’s good (“feed1”, “pendulu hv moda”), Elseq ranks with the best of their work. But taken as a whole, it doesn’t stand up to the pillars on either side of it.
10. PLUS (2020)
Autechre’s most recent album and second of 2020, PLUS practically begs to be compared to SIGN. An unruly and more contorted twin of that album’s relatively straightforward approach, PLUS uses a similar sonic pallet to explore a more diverse landscape. The album is really structured around three long, top-notch tracks: “X4” (which sounds like Drukqs-era Aphex Twin), “ecol4” (a heady shapeshifter that would’ve been a highlight on NTS Sessions), and flittering closer, “TM1 open”. These three call back to their mid-2000s period without sounding redundant, standing in stark contrast to SIGN’s more restrained approach. Scattered between these three tracks are six shorter pieces, none of which are weak per se, but in total do little to make the whole thing cohere as an album. Some, like typically strong opener “DekDre Scap B” and the hilarious air conditioning drone of “marhide”, are great tracks on their own. But taken as a whole, PLUS is hard to pin down.
9. Draft 7.30 (2003)
By 2003, Autechre were operating at the height of their powers, making electronic music so unlike anything that had come before that it was difficult to know how much of their sound was even possible. “Surripere”, the centerpiece of Draft 7.30, is probably the best song Autechre has ever made—a staggering, jagged juggernaut of noise that shifts from a propulsive krautrock groove into stomping violence, resembling a hurricane as much as it does music. Alas, if only the rest of Draft were at that level. Scattered amongst avant garde gems like “VL AI 5” and “IV VV IV VV VIII” are regressive, repetitive tracks (“61E.CR”, “V-Proc”), a mishmash of styles that calls back to the similarly directionless Chiastic Slide. Hardly worth skipping, but a difficult one to recommend for anyone but hardcore fans, Draft 7.30 could’ve used another couple more rounds of editing.
8. NTS Sessions 1 - 4 (2018)
If there’s another band that’s released an 8-hour album of new music, that’s news to me. Commissioned by UK radio station NTS, Autechre’s 13th “album” was initially broadcast over four weeks as two-hour dispatches, collected and pressed as the 12 LP NTS Sessions. Broken into four distinct pieces, NTS initially scans as less of an album and something closer to performance art, auditory landscapes to inhabit, explore, and step in and out of at your leisure. But upon closer listening, the curves and flows of NTS begin to reveal themselves. Session 4 is the ambient one, Session 2 is the aggressive one, etc. But on their own, each volume is surprisingly strong. 2 and 3 in particular work well as sonic sequels to Exai, taking that album’s sounds and stretching them out to their furthest reaches. For casual listeners, that’s probably maddening—if you’re not in the mood, tracks like “gonk tuf hi” or “bqbqbq” could send you to the mad house. But the highlights on NTS—“north spiral”, “dummy casual pt2”, “fLh”—are peak Autechre in their ability to confound, intimidate, and surprise. Sure, there are 20-minute tracks that you probably don’t want to hear all the way through, but the mood that NTS sets and maintains throughout its running time is bewitching. Is it an “album”? Who cares. It’s a towering achievement and worthy of all eight hours of exploration.
7. SIGN (2020)
“Beauty” is a word rarely associated with Autechre, which makes “Metaz form8” perhaps the most striking moment in their whole discography. Forlorn synths snake their way through each other in a way that recalls Thom Yorke’s “Dawn Chorus” more than anything the duo have ever produced, and I’ll be damned if it isn’t as emotionally affecting without a single word spoken. While an outlier on Autechre’s first album of 2020, it’s also representative of the approach taken on SIGN: thoughtful, concise tracks that communicate feeling more directly than anything else with the Autechre name on it. It takes about two minutes into SIGN to pick up that Sean and Rob were going for something radically different than on their previous behemoth releases. Opener “M4 Lema” blooms and collapses with every chord hit, eventually riding a beat(!) you can bob your head to without needing to see a chiropractor. And while the rest of the album doesn’t quite hit the heights of these two standout tracks, it’s one of very few front-to-back consistent albums in Autechre’s discography. No song overstays its welcome, and they all build on each other before reaching their climax with swirling closer “r cazt”. SIGN probably resembles Oversteps more than any other Ae album, but it casts its own unique spell, a snowy wonderland to immerse yourself in for a relatively compact 65 minutes.
6. Oversteps (2010)
Compared to what came before (the 20-track Quaristice) and after (two hours of Exai followed by Elseq and NTS), Oversteps seems downright slight in Autechre’s discography. But those who overlook it are missing out on one of the most unique, well-developed albums in the band’s oeuvre. The sonics and melodies here are darker than most anything that came before, calling back to some of Amber’s more haunted passages. Where Oversteps really succeeds is in creating Blade Runner-esque soundscapes, fully-formed future dread like imposing album opener “r ess” or the screeching alien take on classical music, “known(1)”. That’s not to say it’s all extraterrestrial doom and gloom, though. Fan favorite “d-sho qub” sounds like an early Nintendo song trapped in a vortex, adding some light and levity to the mix. Like nearly all Autechre albums, Oversteps could have lost a track or three and would be all the tighter for it. But the creeping sprawl of the album is part of its draw, making Oversteps an album very much worth losing yourself in.
5. Confield (2001)
The best sounding album in Autechre’s discography, Confield is an auditory mindfuck from beginning to end, one of the all-time great headphones albums, and probably the most impressive release the band has ever produced. “VI Scose Poise” is the best opener of any Autechre album (not a small achievement by any means), a swirling, percussive wind-up of deconstructed chords played over what sounds like a stuttering, bouncing glass ball. From there, it only gets weirder—the puddle-hopping plonks of “Cfern”, the jet engine rush of “Pen Expers”. With the right pair of headphones, “Parhelic Triangle” sounds like your ears are closing in on themselves. Confield is where Autechre sound most interested in shaping noises into unusual, even alarming patterns. But it’s also one of their least melodic releases, a hard turn from the song-oriented LP5. Your mileage will vary based upon what brings you to the band in the first place, but it’s impossible to listen to this album without a sense of reverence and awe for what Rob and Sean were able to achieve. Required listening.
4. Tri Repetae (1995)
Widely considered their most classic album, Tri Repetae is where Autechre first went full robot, adopting the “machines making machines” sound that would come to define their later work (though the machines would get much wonkier). Compared to what would come later, the jump from Amber to Tri Repetae isn’t as colossal as it first seemed, but Tri is handily the best summation of early Autechre, the pinnacle of what they’d been iterating on through their first three albums. What stands out most as compared to Incunabula or Amber is the new sense of rhythm, pounding (“Eutow”) and flickering (“Rsdio”) in shapes that give the songs more blood than they’re usually credited for. “Eutow”’s synths in particular are so gorgeously revved that it’s hard to understand why so many people call the album cold. From the opening mechanical groans of “Dael” through the last imposing notes of “Rsdio”, Tri Repetae never lets up. Truly spectacular.
3. Amber (1994)
Though separated by only a year from their debut, Amber marks a leap in sound that has aged much more graciously than Incunabula. It’s also, for my money, the easiest Autechre album to listen to by some measure.**** Steering mostly clear of the dance-y beats they made their name on, Amber is all icy sheen and skittering percussion, closer to the trip-hop coming out of neighboring Bristol than a lot of what was happening in electronic music at the time. (Tracks like “Silverside” and “Further” best demonstrate this newer, cleaner sound for the band.) But Amber also has a well-earned reputation for being Autechre’s ambient album, and these are the spaces where the record really sets itself apart in their discography. “Nine” and “Yulquen” foreshadow the quieter moments that would show up on NTS or SIGN decades later, delicate pools of loops and synth pads to dip into. That barely leaves space to wax about the chipper blips of “Slip” and dense closer “Teartear”—this album is just stacked top to bottom. The most consistent album in Autechre’s discography, Amber hasn’t lost its ability to surprise 25 years after its release.
2. LP5 (1998)
Autechre’s sound has been so singular for so long, it’s hard to think of them as intersecting with broader music (or other humans, for that matter) at all. And yet here they were in 1998, crafting LP5 album-closer “Drane2” in direct response to Aphex Twin (who himself created “Bucephalus Bouncing Ball” in response to Autechre’s “Drane”). This musical dialogue is the key to understanding where the hell LP5 came from, as nothing in Ae’s first four albums could have foreshadowed its melodicism and playfulness. In fact, LP5 sounds almost like Autechre trying to make their own version of an Aphex Twin album—whiplashing between styles track to track, hummable tunes, and a head-spinning array of effects. Far from a bad thing, LP5 stands out as a singular entry in Autechre’s discography that doesn’t really have a precedent and an influence that can’t be traced in any of their later albums, and it’s all the better for it. When have they ever hit the low end with as much swagger as “777”, sounded as sweetly nostalgic as “Rae”, or bent time quite as effectively as “Fold4, Wrap5”? Front to back, LP5 is about as accessible as Autechre’s specific brand of electronica has ever been, and it’s hard to think of a better place to dive in to their world.
1. Exai (2013)
If Autechre in 2020 can be traced back to one single point, it’s Exai. Their first double album, the one that kicked off cascading releases of 40+ hours of music over the next five years, and the one where they flexed how many ideas they could fit into two hours. Though decidedly longer and less focused than its immediate predecessor, Oversteps, there’s a consistent feeling of menace that holds the album together. “prac-f” and “1 1 is” are dark, evolving, unsettling highlights, but the true star of the show is “bladelores”. Across 12 minutes, Ae build a towering, air-filled cathedral of sound, with synths that sound like bugs tunneling into your ears and an ambient outro that sounds like singing clouds. It stands tall over the album, but it’s a testament to how strong Autechre was in 2013 that there’s no fall-off in quality from there across the two hour runtime. A sputtering, punishing monster from start to finish, Exai represents a certain peak for Autechre, perhaps the peak for Autechre. If I could only choose one of their albums to listen to for the rest of my life, this would be the one.
Footnotes
*Shoutout to my cousin Ian for buying the album on a Border’s (lol) run we took together, otherwise I don’t know if I would have ever gotten into the band.
**After the album’s release, Autechre released a series of digital EPs that include longer versions of many of the songs on Quaristice. If anything, the EPs are even better than the album, giving the tracks room to spread out and holding together surprisingly well at 2 hours.
*** Ranking of the Elseq’s:
4: The strongest volume, and a perfect encapsulation of each part of the project. As with Pt.1, the shorter track lengths and variety help.
5: “freulaeux” is so sick.
1: Like the noisier parts of Exai but stretched out to the lengths of NTS.
3: Practice for NTS Sessions, with two songs drawn out to 25 minutes. It doesn’t work as well as NTS in the short 3-song suite, though.
2: Noise, but much more grating than Pt. 1. Short track in the middle is best.
****Lest you think that means it’s totally accessible, my roommate thought I was running the washing machine when I put it on.
