For the last date in their European tour, coinciding with the release of their tenth album, Oversteps, Autechre took over the Bocking Street Warehouse in Hackney, north London, and threw a party, inviting Russell Haswell to perform live and Rob Hall and Didgit to DJ for the event. After an opening DJ set for Didgit, Russell Haswell took the stage just after 12.30, and submitted the audience to an intense digital assault. Layers of distortions and interferences built up a particularly abrasive set of textures, pushing the sound system to the limit of the bearable, but ten minutes in, the intensity went up a few notches as the complexity of Haswell’s sonic fragments increased greatly. Barely twenty minutes in, it was all over.

Autechre are renowned for their hard-hitting sets, yet they kicked off this evening’s performance with a surprisingly smooth and straightforward beat, which for the first few minutes, eased an expectant crowd in gently. This led to a more complex and abstract rhythmic structure, close in essence to the pair’s minimal work of the early 2000s, but soon, this all changed as Sean Booth and Rob Brown switched to much sharper beats and more abrasive soundscapes. Shards of digital noise, slicing through increasingly anarchic beats, were sent flying through the room. Those expecting a softening of the duo’s live incarnation comparable to that of their recent recordings were in for a chock. If anything, once the set was in full motion, Autechre produced some of their most abrasive and hard-hitting beats and soundscapes, to the delight of the cheering crowd.

Glitch in the alarm system or express encore, it was difficult to determine, but after a very brief interlude, during which the music stopped and a ghostly light came on, Booth and Brown returned to their uncompromising sonic assault, beat leading the way into another complex form bearing very little in common with their recordings, apart for the fact that it was gritty, abstract, and utterly like nothing else you’re ever likely to hear. As the pace began to slow down drastically for the last segment of the set, Autechre revealed much more detailed and refined textures and, eventually, fragments of melody. After over an hour and a half played, as is de rigueur with the duo, in near-total darkness, the digital onslaught stopped without warning, lights went back up and Rob Hall took on his DJ post to conclude a mighty fine evening.

Autechre | Autechre (MySpace) | Russell Haswell | Warp Records | Bocking St Warehouse