Details of the forthcoming Autechre album, their ninth, have been revealed in a recent Warpmart newsletter. The album, entitled Quaristice, is due to be released on 3 March and is the follow up to Rob Brown and Sean Booth’s 2005 Untilted album. The album will feature no less than twenty tracks. The cover, designed, for the first time since the Cichli Suite EP, by The Designers Republic, was also unveiled.

Full track listing as follow:

1. Altibzz
2. The Plc
3. IO
4. Plyphon
5. Perlence
6. SonDEremawe
7. Simmm
8. Paralel Suns
9. Steels
10. Tankakern
11. Rale
12. Fol3
13. fwzE
14. 90101-51-1
15. bnc Castl
16. Theswere
17. WNSN
18. chenc9
19. Notwo
20. Outh9X

The band will embark on a full European tour to coincide with the release of the album. Dates as follow:

FEBRUARY
29 Manchester, UK, Music Box

MARCH
01 Glasgow, UK - Arts School
02 Newcastle, UK - Digital
03 Birmingham, UK - Med Bar
04 London, UK - Venue TBC
05 Koln, Germany - Stattgarten
06 Amsterdam, Holland - Melkweg
07 Antwerp, Belgium - Petrol
08 Hamburg, Germany - Hafenklang
09 Berlin, Germany - Berghain
10 Katowice, Poland - Jazz Club
11 Budapest, Hungry - Merlin
12 Zagreb, Croatia - Kset
13 Graz, Austria - Post Garage
14 Italy - Town and venue TBC
15 Rome, Italy - Venue TBC
16 Italy - Town and venue TBC
17 Lyon, France - Epicerie Moderne
18 Strasbourg, France - La Laiterie
19 Paris, France - Rex Club
20 Geneva, Switzerland - L’Usine, Electron Festival

Autechre (MySpace) | Warp Records

Here we are, a year of music distilled into the 20 albums which made the biggest impression of me. Inevitably I’ve forgotten something, but for now, no regrets. The choice for number one was neither clear nor easy, but the Strings Of Consciousness tipped the scales with its adventurous spirit of collaboration, song, sound atmosphere, and poetry. 2007 was a good year for psychedelic electronics, represented here by artists as diverse as Supermayer, Ulrich Schnauss, and The Field.

In addition to the old favorites, some new mavericks came out of nowhere with leftfield brilliance, including releases by Burial and I Am Spoonbender. 2007 also saw a number of minimal masters expanding into new territories, whether it was Matthew Dear playing the role of singer-songwriter, Supermayer as a prog- and krautrock-loving comic book duo, The Field’s shoegazing atmospheres, or Ricardo Villalobos’ Japanese and jazz drumming.

All in all, 2007 was a year full of solid albums, looking to the past (Queens Of The Stone Age’s retro grit), the present (Matthew Dear’s modern-man situations) the future (Amon Tobin’s post-modern sample pastiche), and, in the case of Panda Bear’s updated Beach Boys harmonies or Björks earthy futurism, all three at once.

1.

STRINGS OF CONCIOUSNESS
Our Moon Is Full
Central Control

 

2.

AVEY TARE & KRIA BREKKAN
Pullhair Rubeye
Paw-Tracks

 

3.

BURIAL
Untrue
Hyperdub

4.

THE FIELD
From Here We Go Sublime
Kompakt

5.

AMON TOBIN
Foley Room
Ninja Tune

6.

PHAROAHE MONCH
Desire
SRC

7.

THOBBING GRISTLE
Part Two: The Endless Not
Industrial / Mute

8.

DIZZEE RASCAL
Maths + English
XL

9.

PANDA BEAR
Person Pitch
Paw Tracks

10.

SUPERMAYER
Save The World
Kompakt

11.

RICARDO VILLALOBOS
Fabric 36
Fabric

12.

MATTHEW DEAR
Asa Breed
Ghostly International

13.

BJÖRK
Volta
One Little Indian

14.

QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE
Era Vulgaris
Intersope

15.

FELIX DA HOUSECAT
Virgo, Blaktro & The Movie Disco
Nettwerk

16.

ULRICH SCHNAUSS
Goodbye
Domino Recording Co.

17.

UNDERWORLD
Oblivion With Bells
Side One

18.

LUKE VIBERT
Chicago, Detroit, Redruth
Planet Mu

19.

GUS GUS
Forever
Gung Ho!

20.

I AM SPOONBENDER
Buy Hidden Persuaders
Mesmer Detector Ltd.

THE 2007 REVIEW

Eleventh Volume
Joe Muggs
Max Schaefer
themilkman

 

 

THE FIELD
Sound Of Light
Heartbeats International 2007
04 Tracks. 60mins35secs

Music and hotels make interesting bedfellows (pun not necessarily intended). Some of the world’s poshest and most modern hotels have commissioned exclusive, original works to “soundtrack” one’s stay. Rifling through these compilations, one comes across a smattering of cool – trip hop, smooth house, jazzy breaks, among others – tailor-made to stick to walls and encourage a seductively elegant atmosphere.

Entering this fray are the designed-obsessed minds behind Stockholm’s Nordic Light Hotel, who have announced the Sound Of Light series as a chance for musicians to make an aural document of their stay. First up is Swedish techno artist The Field, aka Axel Willner. Continue Reading »

CLARK
Throttle Promoter
WAP238
Warp Records 2007
04 Tracks. 14mins39secs
Format: Digital / 12″

The press for Throttle Promoter, Clark’s newest release, has described the EP as a “surprise”, intended to pique interest for another surprise – his upcoming full-length, Turning Dragon, due January 2008. So much for months of pre-release hype, then, but it would seem that Clark has had enough of that. 2003’s Empty The Bones Of You was promoted as a more mature, darker, and more industrial Clark (still using his full name Chris Clark at the time), a promise upon which it delivered. 2006’s Body Riddle saw another reinvention of the persona, with the now-truncated Clark focusing on intricately layered, obsessively DSP’d beats, and more delicate and emotional atmospheres. Continue Reading »

TOM MIDDLETON
Lifetracks
FACTOR 19
Big Chill Recordings 2007
12 Tracks. 69mins09secs

Originally envisioned as music to wind down to after a night out, downtempo found a commercial life of its own in the mid to late nineties under the guises of trip hop, ambient breaks, and any number of dime-a-dozen compilations invoking watered-down Buddhist spirituality. Like all genres, downtempo was destined to produce some more questionable compositions. Over time, the darkness (and much of the depth) was swept out from more popular recordings, replaced by a flux of reverberated blandness (looking at you, Zero 7) leading to inevitable, laughable cash-ins like the Reindeer Room series of Christmas compilations. Suddenly, “chillout” became a new buzz genre, and the most staid dinner parties had a watered-down soundtrack.

Of course, it wasn’t always like that. Just ask Tom Middleton. As a forerunner in the early movement of dowtempo fusionism, Middleton worked with Richard D. James (on the ambient house-inflected Analogue Bubblebath EP), and, most famously, as half of Global Communication, the pioneering ambient and deep house act, whose 76:14 is rightfully acclaimed as the summit of ambient house and techno. Continue Reading »

STRINGS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Our Moon Is Full
CCI 005
Central Control 2007
08 Tracks. 49mins25secs

Rock flirtations with experimental music can be some very risky territory. On the plus side, you can end up with sublime fusions of the traditional and the avant garde; on the other hand, there’s the wankery that eventually drowned seventies prog. Several groups in this decade have given the concept another go, and Our Moon Is Full, the new album from psychedelic collective Strings Of Consciousness, is a thoroughly engaging look at the potential of this merger.

First, a word of caution: this is a record steeped in post rock, featuring, on the majority of the tracks, spoken word rather than singing. It’s a pretentious proposition, but one that works out the majority of the time. Continue Reading »

RICARDO VILLALOBOS
Fabric 36
FABRIC 71
Fabric 2007
15 Tracks. 74mins13secs

It’s funny to see Ricardo Villalobos as a superstar DJ. Listening to one of Villalobos’s live sets (such as the half-hour live at Fabric mix that was released to radios in advance of this release), there are no bangers, no sudden beat drops, no satisfying moments where it all comes together. Villalobos’s music fits on the dance floor, but it can also soundtrack life’s more contemplative moments, and tends to reward the listener who can pay special attention to its subtle changes.

And, subtle change is the name of the game on Fabric 36. Instead of releasing a mix primarily of others people’s tracks, as every other DJ has done for the Fabric series, Villalobos mixed a set composed entirely of new, original material. Continue Reading »

RADIOHEAD
In Rainbows
Radiohead.com 2007
10 Tracks. 42mins34secs

In Rip It Up and Start Again, his chronicle of post-punk, journalist Simon Reynolds places Radiohead on a continuum of bands embodying the “middlebrow notions of deep and meaningful typically cherished by college students.” Describing the group as an ubermensch descended from Pink Floyd is not only a dubious honor, it’s also not entirely apt. True, Radiohead do appeal to popular music fans looking for something “experimental” to listen to, and OK Computer, the band’s 1997 breakthrough album, occupies a similar paranoid space to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, but Radiohead, as a group, occupy a much more postmodern space than any of their forbearers. Continue Reading »

AVEY TARE & KRÍA BREKKAN
Pullhair Rubeye
PAW015
Paw Tracks 2007
08 Tracks. 31mins33secs

In 1975, Lou Reed, already established as the hippest rock star of his time, released a double-album of atonal, feedback-drenched, amelodic noise, entitled Metal Machine Music. In the years since, the reasons behind the creation and release of the album continue to be heavily debated: was he trying to escape a record contract? Did he wish to alienate his audience? Or was he just trying something new, and screw what the teenyboppers thought? In time, MMM became a genesis record for noise musicians who, unlike most listeners and critics at the time, actually took it seriously.

Now it’s 2007. The music landscape is different from 1975, but in many ways it’s also the same; this is to say, an artist really going out there and experimenting – as innocent as it may be in intention – can still shock and upset its core audience, no matter how open-minded they were thought to be. Continue Reading »

μ-ZIQ
Duntisbourne Abbots Soulmate Devastation Technique
ZIQ190
Planet-μ 2007
17 Tracks. 59mins58secs

It’s no secret that Mike Paradinas’ alias μ-Ziq has reached legend status in the world of experimental electronic dance music. Even Paradinas himself labels his μ-Ziq work “classic” on the Planet-μ website, and rightfully so. Along with Richard D. James, Luke Vibert, and other luminaries, μ-Ziq’s prodigiously playful releases have guided electronic music through a plethora of different styles, from the ambient techno of 1993’s Tango N’ Vectif to the rapid-fire drill n’ bass of 1997’s Lunatic Harness.

In 2002, Paradinas released Bilious Paths, his first μ-Ziq album on his own label. An exhilarating victory lap, it showed that μ-Ziq could continue to be a relentlessly cutting edge force, while still building upon a classic structure. Continue Reading »