Autechre: Confield good or bad? You make the choice!

[CRev2002]

I'm listening to Autechre's Confield right now and I'm not sure what to think. I heard conflicting views on the album and now I'm wondering what you think. What do you think of COnfield?, those of you who have listened to it.

 

[minya]

I don't really think agree with any of the answers.

"Confield" is a unique album in that it's far, far and away the most inhuman, cold, alien, and in many ways, the most difficult album Booth & Brown ever wrote.

Autechre are an interesting band because you can follow their discography chronologically and see them experiment and try new things with every album. Starting with Incunabula, starting to get more experimental with Tri Repetae, reaching perfection with Chiastic Slide, and then really started to swim in the deeper end with EP7. Confield is the album where they completely ceased making music and let the machines take over. Confield is the musical manifesto of Autechre's synthesizers.

I find it hard to listen to because there's no real groove or melody or anything. It's just cold. Alien. What keeps it interesting is the chaos in the music -- the decaying time signatures, the random and chaotic beats, and best of all, the last track, Lentic Catachresis. That's one of my favorite Autechre songs - it starts innocent enough, but decays further and further into total, complete noisy insanity.

(edit: which is to say that while I think it's an excellent and worthwhile album, it's not something I listen to often)

- Chris

 

[markl]

I listened to Confield once (haven't heard any of their other stuff), and for me the operative word here is "con". I think these guys must laugh at people who buy their music and force themselves to listen to it, I think it's a sort of scam almost. I think there's a certain mentality that will work hard to convince itself it likes this "music" because they feel they *have* to, because they are the kind of person that is *supposed* to like it.

The fact that most people will hear this stuff and hate it makes it even more appealing and attractive to this sort of person, makes them feel superior to us cretins. OK, all that sounds like prejudice, but that's really how I feel. Maybe *some* people really can honestly get into it and feel emotionally about it, but I ain't one of them.

Honestly, I'm not sure this stuff even qualifies as "music" for me.

Mark