March 19, 2010

Album Review: Autechre - 'Oversteps' (Warp)

An imaginative offering from these pioneers of electronica

8 / 10 Rob Brown, one half of duo Autechre, was an architect by training, which perhaps goes some way in explaining the highly stylised, hyper-structural awareness that underpins their electronica. In their 19 years of activity, they’ve swung from epochal experimentalism to the ear-splittingly unlistenable. So it is that ‘Oversteps’ has its erratic, car-spinning-out-of-control moments but is nonetheless an enticing ‘Welcome’ billboard for their sometimes harrowing, often hopeful City Of Sound. True, Warp & Aphex’s age of electro may have passed, and some tricks here that were once jarring now seem familiar, but their prickly oeuvre of tantalising possibility still feeds the imagination.

Alex Hoban

Click here to get your copy of Autechre's 'Oversteps' from the Rough Trade shop