Sign - Autechre: Review
are a British electronic music duo who have blended their sound across many different sub-genres of electronica through their 3 decade long career of innovating. In the past few years the band has taken to releasing a pair of incredibly long albums with elseq 1-5 and the nearly twice as long NTS Sessions 1-4. Sign is the first conventional and moderately lengthy album from Autechre since 2013's Exai.
Review By Lavender:
I love many of the most influential IDM artists of the 90's including Autechre. I was excited to finally get to review one of their albums without having to commit 4 or even 8 hours each time I wanted to get through the records material, even I have to say come on at some point. Sign is actually really the tale of two albums spliced together and mixed around. Half of this record is densely layered, rapid fire IDM and the other half is deeply arranged and distantly mixed pseudo-ambient tracks. Making sense of the order in which these tracks are presented can be difficult and feels almost arbitrary but I can't deny that I enjoy quite a bit of what is here.
There are a number of great IDM tracks here and they make up many of the albums most interesting sections. The opener M4 Lema kicks off as an incredibly glitchy and dissonant piece but once it takes for it does so as a thunderous and detailed IDK track with more layers of sounds than I can count. The track also has a rewarding progression that continues to reach louder and louder passages throughout. si100 has a core loop that I find really interesting, at first it sounds like some kind of generic ringtone but it ends up being sped up and manipulated as the track rapidly increases in tempo and pressure. The result is a manic series of sounds firing off in every imaginable direction that is thrilling. au14 is a hard-hitting highlight with some synth tones to deep they sound like percussion. This serves as the base for a combination of fluttering and driving synth lines and it all sounds like being abducted by raving aliens.
Speaking of aliens the track sch,mefd 2 returns to the alien synth passages but this time with a much more driving groove grinding away at the core of the song. My only issue here is that the whole thing is pretty one note but I don't really mind getting lost in the songs atmosphere. I have similar thoughts about F7 a jittery track punctuated by layers of shrill synths each of which sound like they are trying to crash in louder to out-do the others. This track is a bit on the long side given that this is pretty much its only trick but I still enjoy most of it. I can't really say the same about the record shortest track gr4 which features synth lines so shrill they are far more annoying than engaging. The rumbling percussion that serves as the base of the track is buried too far in the mix to really be impactful at all and the result is a bit of a waste of a song. th red a is a song that sort of blends the two worlds of this album together with these loud crashing synths that pulsate into the song in momentary intervals. It's fine at first but this is literally going on for the entire 6 minute runtime of the song and it can absolutely get brain numbing even alongside some of the bells and whistles the band attached to it.
The ambient pieces here make up some of the longest tracks of the bunch and I guess I can say it was a little bit more difficult for me to classify how much I liked them as a group compared to the IDM songs. esc desc isn't a song I would call organic necessarily but it certainly aims for a more populated soundscape than a lot of the other songs here. It works primarily through droning synth walls and I think the sounds are pretty effective for the most part. Metaz form8 is one of the most unsettling tracks with a tinney electric atmosphere that never settles of gives you a moment of relief across the tracks 6 minutes. The song is often nearly ambient in its droning sound but when other synths do emerge in the mix it's usually for the better as they chime high over the base of the song and keep it at a refreshing steady pace.
pain AM is the quietest song on the entire record but that doesn't make it low impact. There is plenty of motion in the deep synth drones and everything feels very calculated making the song breeze through it's 6 minute runtime with mostly bliss. Finally the closer is r cazt a song that dabbles in drone but repeatedly breaks the pattern for pretty interesting results. Sometimes there's a series of deep unsettling synths pulsating in and out and shortly after there will be a triumphant soaring synth line that shines a bright spot over the track. It's an ending that can be hard to pin down emotionally but keeps me on the edge of my seat throughout.
Sign is quite the rollercoaster from Autechre. At just over an hour they hit you with a huge variety of experimental and abstract electronica sounds that result in a mixed bag of tracks. Fortunately I like a lot more of this than I don't and I wouldn't expect anything else from veterans of Autechre's caliber. 7/10
Album Cover Review By Tyler Judson:
I really like the minimalism of this cover and the graduated shapes that make up the compelling focus. The grey of the background makes these colors stand out but also grounds it so it's not just a blank space. The abstract shapes of each step in the gradient also adds more visual interest that wouldn't have been there is it was just a standard circle. The small white text is also a nice touch to ass personality to branding. 6/10
For more IDM check out my review of Matmos' The Consuming Flame here
