Process of Time - The Wire

"Here, in the omphalos of the newly-minted Commie Corridor was a display of cultural force every bit as robust as the political one which had recently vaulted socialist Zohran Mamdani to the Democratic nomination (and, in short order, the mayoralty). So why, then, as the Rochdale duo took the stage in their preferred semi-darkness, was the atmosphere cut with an unmistakable current of dread?"

"Futurists though they remain, the future Autechre first portended is now largely history. Cloned sheep, Clippy the Microsoft assistant, and the like. Their vanguardist rhythms, swinging like sonic battering rams in 4-D, recede into the foundations of the world to come. Instead, as we attain the quarter century, artists are staking out a vital new position within the looming crisis of the digital as it develops in the here and now."

"This tendency takes for granted the dynamic and space-bending possibilities of electronic composition, and accepts them not as grounds for abandoning the field, but as a sporting challenge to their own analogue rhythms. At a time when complex computers and their pitchmen lay claim to as much of communicative life as they can, this metabolic tendency in music emerges as one possible response - not theoretical, but organic; not doctrinaire, but instinctively oppositional."

An ominous mood inflected a sold-out Autechre performance in Brooklyn, with dread perceptible despite a celebratory local leftward political moment. Concertgoers’ post-pandemic decorum and recent geopolitical tensions contributed to unease alongside musical suggestion of an unsettling future. Autechre’s earlier futurist signals—cloned sheep, Clippy, vanguardist rhythms—have become historical touchstones as their rhythms settle into the foundations of a changing world. Contemporary artists are carving a new stance amid a developing digital crisis, treating electronic composition’s spatial possibilities as challenges that sharpen analogue rhythms. As complex computers and their promoters colonize communication, a metabolic, organic, instinctively oppositional musical response is emerging.

Read at The Wire Magazine - Adventures In Modern Music