Cons: About as accessible as Fort Knox to a blind one-legged bank robber.
The Bottom Line: This album will only appeal to a select few individuals. If you're a very creative, very open-minded person who enjoys IDM electronica, give "confield" a listen.
furious_wombat's Full Review: Confield by Autechre
If you are a fan of electronica and have never heard autechre's music, do yourself a favour and check out some CD samples from amazon.com, or hop onto your favourite peer-to-peer network client and listen to some tracks.
The first autechre album I ever purchased was the double-disc "Tri Repetae++." While I don't regret the purchase, it didn't fill the musical gap I was searching for. I was searching for something more abstract... less concrete...
My next autechre album was "ep7." It remains one of my favourite albums of all time. It was an amazing array of genuinely unique and fascinating rhythmic and musical ideas. I found its hodgepodge nature very attractive.
Thrilled with ep7 and hearing a variety of interesting comments on confield, I decided to pick up ae's latest release.
Words cannot do this album justice.
From the delicate electronic dust scattered across the first track, "Vi scose poise" to the final rabid beats that bust down the walls of "lentic catachresis," confield is an unpredictable and exciting journey that will drag you kicking and screaming through the most heavenly and most hellish textural soundscapes you've ever heard. It will lull you to sleep, then it will shower you with sparks of molten metal and shock you into total awareness.
One stand-out track is cfern: the sonic equivalent to falling down a flight of stairs. Though it may seem off-balance at first, a solid foundation of a beat is indeed present, and even as the song flips and bounces off itself, the beat stays right where it is, floating beneath the harsh and percussive surface.
My favourite track on this album is probably "uviol." It is composed of bizarre twisted pounding mutilated metal ribbons of rhythm and subtle melodies and it's a gorgeous glittering wall of NOISE to no end. It's like being dragged behind a bullet train, and when your head strikes each railroad tie, a different metallic (but freakishly organic) tone is emitted. It feels like a machine is reaching out and giving you a hug while screaming in your ear and jabbing a needle full of pure adrenaline into your spine!
I own no other album that even compares to confield... it fits in a category all its own.
Confield is a masterpiece.
Is it for everyone? NO. DEFINITELY not... but do give it a chance. Confield will be one of two things to you: wonderful, or irritating and random noise. Give it a few listens: let it sink in, let it bounce around in your head, let it saturate you.
I did not select the "recommended" option for this review because confield is simply too much for 99% of listeners. While I listen to a wide variety of music and have a very open musical mind (I bought "confield" along with a Pink Floyd album), I believe I know how much is "too much" for the majority of music listeners.
If you accept confield, it will change the way you hear the world around you. You will stop hearing the static on the radio, the pulsating rhythm of the washing machine, or the rough rustling of leaves in the wind.
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