"
Experimental"
electronica duo signed to
Warp Records (
Aphex Twin,
Squarepusher,
Plaid etc.). Their early
material is mostly quite
ambient and
chilled, but later material (about
Tri Repetae onwards) includes more
harsh and/or frantic tracks.
So far they have six albums, and more eps. The newest ep at the time of writing is called Gantz Graf and comes in both a CD and CD/DVD version. The DVD has different tracks (though both obviously feature the title track), each of which is accompanied by the video. The track itself at first sounds like just a noise, but makes more sense with repeat listenings, and upon watching the video. The video features a futuristic-looking computer-generated construction that changes and shifts along to the sound of the music. It's something you have to see rather than have explained, but it really brings out the patterns of the music and is quite mesmerising to watch.
Some people consider Autechre's ep material to be better than their lp material, in that they tend to put their better material on their ep's, and they are more of an important part of their development. Ep's allow them to put maybe 4 or 5 tracks (wheras lp's usually have at least 10) on the cd, and these are often very long tracks. In fact, some of their Ep's are as long as an average album (about 40-60 minutes).
One Ep of particular note is from early on in their career. The release Anti contains the only official instrumental protest song. It is in protest of the Criminal Justice Bill, which banned raves. A rave is defined as a gathering of more than a certain amount of people dancing to music with repetitive beats, hence the track "Flutter" on the ep is designed so that no bar repeats the same rythym pattern.