Autechre – SIGN (2020)

Sharing the pure discovery of new music and sound. Can you imagine anything more important? Or have we forgotten our higher purpose?  (Honestly… it can’t be a good idea to start a review with a series esoteric questions. What am I to do? Begin again?).

There is something intimate, even sensual about sharing new music with another person. It’s one of those rare, most sincere moments. Exploring and discovering sound connects us in an (almost) physical way. Music is much more than an intellectual exercise but can be shared as spiritual experience. Laying on the floor in front of the speakers, the music washing over us- for that moment we escape the clutter of the everyday and declare the time ours to own and share. Those moments last forever. 

The experimental electronic music of Autechre is probably not the place most people would go for intimacy. Sean Booth and Robert Brown are the duo that have taken avant-garde and experimental sound in brave and exciting directions. Often dismissed as abstract and complex by those unfamiliar with their music, Autreche’s music simply evolves. Not just from album to album, but even within each piece of music they make. Their music is a living, like electronic vine crawling its way through the environment, growing and twisting with each listen. However cerebral Autechre may first appear, the life within the music was always there to seek out.         

On their newest album, SIGN, the Autechre-sound blossoms with a surprisingly warm melodic beauty and intelligence. The hyper-speedy electronic glitch of previous albums has grown into a lush and increasingly personal symphony. SIGN begins almost as a lost AM radio broadcast. At first, clarity is difficult. With abstract beats, angular rhythms are washed over with static, the music pulling in and out of the frequency. The individual track titles sound like pirate radio signals: “M4 Lema”, “F7”, “si00”.  We struggle to get the signal reception in focus.     

With each turn of the station dial the excess is stripped away and the static pushed from the soundscape. The surrounding clarity and ambience grows more fluid, more familiar. More intimate. A warm, liquid neon glow pulls us closer. Let’s close our eyes together now. Independent shapes, forms, and structure remain loose and difficult to define. That can occasionally be unsettling if you need clear lines and rules. But the music never alienates us. Vibrating particles of synthetic sound grow increasingly more melodic and accessible. Can you imagine it now with me? Together we submerge into this atmosphere of sound. This will always be our place.  

SIGN shares the melodic appeal of early Autechre albums like Amber (1994) and Tri Repetae (1995), while maintaining the musical complexity of their more recent work on Exai (2013) and NTS Sessions (2018). More importantly, the duo exposes the intimacy and humanity that has always been the undercurrent of all their music. The sounds on SIGN are an affirmation; a musical portrait of our “forgotten purpose”.  Over the course of four album sides, Autechre’s music acts as a narrator through the depths of human condition and the search for purpose. This is music that is well beyond the genre known as “intelligent dance music” or the restrictive definitions of techno or glitch. Booth and Brown have managed to create a beacon of creativity and innovation that has not been smashed, reduced or compromised in this materialistic jungle of our culture. 

This is the place we can still find each other. The place that we always knew existed, but could never quite find. And it’s true, some people wait a lifetime and never get a glimpse. A signal. A sign.  

by Shawn Ciavattone