Autechre – EP7

The beginning of the end for Ae, more duds than good. Still, a few classics like Maphive6.1. But soon, up their own asses they go with the boring Gantz Graf and Confield.

edit I was wrong about this record. It's an excellent follow up to LP5. I'm not wrong about the work that followed this album. I don't know what mood I was in when I listened, but a follow up listen made me realize my error.

Reading these comments/reviews, it's interesting how many people insist on this being an album, when it is actually an (albeit long) EP. Let's just take it from the horse's mouth (the creators as well as the freaking title), shall we? That they regularly crank out EP's that are longer than some actual albums is just part of the fun, innit? No need to color it anything else really.

Fun fact: with the silent gap for the hidden tracks removed EP7 is actually 3 minutes longer than LP5 (67 minutes vs 64 minutes).

One of their best pieces of work. Simple !!

I'm writing this review from the perspective of listening to this nearing the end of 2012. EP7 to me is an amazing album by Autechre, and perhaps is in their top 3 to 4 albums along with LP5 & Chiastic Slide. Obviously it depends on what era Autechre you enjoy, but if you enjoy LP5 then I believe you'll love this album. This album took me a long time to appreciate, at first I thought nothing of it. It seemed like an album filled with ideas, not necessarily songs. However, out of all the Autechre releases this one has grown on me the most, as I've come to realise what this album is about. It's about form, technique and the sound design, which for it's time, is insane. Lately I've been getting really deep into my Nord Modular G2, and the deeper you get into this amazing system, the more you realise how insanely complex and well performed the work on EP7 is. This album is a digital modular textural/sonics monster. The work they did on this album with the Nord, max/msp & samplers, back in 1999! just shows they ahead they were. I can't imagine what I would have thought of this album back when it first came out. I can almost guarantee it would have been beyond me and probably discarded as 'too experimental'.

In the end this album deserves far more credit than it ever received. Luckily, it's aged extremely well, and if anything it makes far more sense today than it ever would have back in 1999. This therefore still makes it a fantastic album which I highly recommend to people into electronic music. I'll go as far to say, that this album might actually be very appealing to the new younger generation of electronic music enthusiasts since there is a mix for everybody on this album. Futuristic hip-hop, to straight up hard techno, to abstract sound design, to sounds of drunken robots playing the accordion. This album has something for everybody! :-)

5 Stars.

The fractured, industrial sound evident throughout the whole of this 'EP' is a sound that epitomises Autechre - a sound that was deemed unclassifiable has now become classifiable in itself. EP7, like other Autechre releases seems to draw inspiration from science and technology and the tracks here wouldn't be out of place used in TV commercials of the same thing. By coincidence, the track title 'Zeiss Contarex' is uncannily similar to Zeiss Contax - a german brand of camera originating from Dresden in East . The sleeve design by Designers Republic echoes Autechre's work and the line fractals beneath the frosted jewel case suggest precision engineering and repetition. This repetition is evident throughout EP7 as with the 8-minute 'Maphive 6.1'. Certainly enough to make the early avant garde musique concrete composer's heads spin. I wonder if the late Pierre Schaeffer, the so-called inventor of musique concrete would have made of Autechre's work?

Six years on and EP7 is still a strong contender as any of today's electronica, one wonders what direction Autechre will go next. Their releases up to now follow are consistent, it remains to be seen (or heard rather), if they come up with something less predictable.

Maphive 6.1 sounds like a lost track from the Super Metroid soundtrack. Spooky, alien, maddening, almost as if it was sent backwards in time from an archaeological dig site on Mars. Sometimes these guys miss the mark, but sometimes you're sure they're channeling something greater than us all.

Although this release is labeled an EP, there is about 60 minutes of new music on here. A companion album really, to LP5. However I find LP5 much more enjoyable then this one. The beats, sounds and style are similar on both releases but this one seems to lack the bite that LP5 provided. If you are a fan of LP5 though, you'll most likely wanna pick this one up too.

Autechre has been on a path of increasing abstraction since 1995, but particularly, to my mind, from ep7 on and especially Confield and Gantz Graf. To me, it is Autechre's mastery of abstract rhythm/arrhythmia that makes Booth and Brown geniuses.

Almost all critics hate this album/ep. It walks a fine line between being absolute genius and being a couple of once imaginative musicians who have writer's block. However, they do stumble onto some really great ideas, but I find myself listening to only certain parts of certain songs. For example, the last two minutes of "Left Blank," "Zeiss Contarex" gets really good at the 4:19 mark and the opening few chords of "Outpt" are really good before the track becomes monotonous and boring. It's really just very strange and twisted, and along with "LP5" and "Confield" makes for one third of their descent into absolute madness. You may have noticed Autechre doesn't really sound like "music" anymore. This ep has the right idea, but it could have been better put together i think.