Of The Digital Archive And The National Treasure That Is Autechre

Life now feels like just a matter of waiting for the World Cup to start...a terrible reflection on the state of my existence...which reminds me of the Hancock sketch about Sundays where he sighs and says something like: ‘It’s just waiting for the next meal to come along’. Not that I’m expecting a feast of great football from England...

   The wait is made more endurable by music, of course...and in particular, right now, Autechre’s latest work, ‘Oversteps’. They should be made a national treasure, officially...by the sonic equivalent of the National Trust. Well, maybe not, because if such an organisation existed they’d be busy preserving traditional Folk music...and Elton John, perhaps, who can afford to preserve himself. Although as demonstrated by the new hair he got himself years ago, self-preservation doesn’t always yield the greatest results...

   We have all this music preserved on the PC’s museum of sound, but my generation recalls the legwork needed, once upon a time, to track down oldies-but-goodies, and the extortionate price demanded should that object be deemed desirable by the ‘right’ people.

   There’s an argument that says all music is devalued now, not only in the monetary sense, because it comes to us too easily. I can see that. I mean, there is so much sound stored digitally on my PC that really listening to even half of it feels like an impossibility. Then again, I wouldn’t opt for returning to the days when we paid £35 for an album with one ‘killer’ tune on it. By ‘we’ I mostly mean us Rare Groove/Jazz DJs. Oh yes, the good ol’ days of being handed a pile of singles which Patrick Forge pulled out from under the counter at Record & Tape...

   The other day I had the idea of deleting three-quarters of my digital sound library so as to concentrate on what was left. But I don’t like the thought of deleting something that I might not remember to list again. It’s not the room on the PC, but the room in my head that’s the problem. Some days I flick in a frenzy, just because I can, which results in a brain filled with so much musical spaghetti that I edge towards insanity. I’ve often argued the case for cultural ‘pruning’, but doing it to a list of names is contrarily easier, and harder. Well, it’s not crowding out the bunker, is it?

   ‘Oversteps’ is an album that I’ll be ‘keeping’. It feels like a positive affirmation just to stick it on a digital list. It’s satisfying in so many ways, not least in the inventiveness, which you could reasonably expect from these two, but in the direction it takes overall. In a sense it is more about an ambient atmosphere, rather than their trademark chopped up time signature techno. They are, after all, the Dave Brubeck of Techno (ha!) – and ‘Redfall’ is even kind of ‘jazzy’ with its freeform keyboard ‘solo’...the way Herbie Hancock could have progressed in step with the present, but didn’t. And to add to that, ‘Krylon’ is in a similar mode, but reminds me more of Alice Coltrane harp-playing. Here and elsewhere, they create a kind of harpsichord sound, conjuring up something like church music for the 21st century. I’m sure Alice would approve.

   This is easier listening than many previous works, whilst at the same time being anything but Easy Listening. It’s something to treasure, for sure.