Confield

Amazon.com
Confield's name and its digitally dissected geometrical artwork are illustrative analogies to Autechre's working methods. Sean Booth and Rob Brown use specially developed software to shape, slice, and dice beats and sounds. Despite the English duo's past as acid-house-loving hip-hop kids, the music they make now is resolutely undanceable. In fact, anyone who tries to move to Confield's nine tracks is cruising for a date with the chiroprator. Over and over Autechre render their rhythms irregular by cutting segments out of a pattern or by putting them into reverse. They aren't completely averse to melody, and the opening track "VI Scose Pose" proves that they can compose a lovely one. More often, however, their focus is on wedding fractured rhythms and intriguing textures, like the bell-like sound waves that pulse through the transmission-trouble beats of "Parhelic Triangle." --Bill Meyer

Product Description
Electro, techno, hip-hop, ambient, modern classical, geometry and chaos theory might begin to describe Autechre. Their latest release has 9 tracks and a running time of over 62 minutes. 9 tracks. 2001 release.

Confield

Tracks:

Vi Scose Poise
Cfern
Pen Expers
Sim Ajshel
Parhelic Triangle
Bine
Eidetic Casein
Uviol
Lentic Catachresis

Amazon.com

Confield's name and its digitally dissected geometrical artwork are illustrative analogies to Autechre's working methods. Sean Booth and Rob Brown use specially developed software to shape, slice, and dice beats and sounds. Despite the English duo's past as acid-house-loving hip-hop kids, the music they make now is resolutely undanceable. In fact, anyone who tries to move to Confield's nine tracks is cruising for a date with the chiroprator. Over and over Autechre render their rhythms irregular by cutting segments out of a pattern or by putting them into reverse. They aren't completely averse to melody, and the opening track "VI Scose Pose" proves that they can compose a lovely one. More often, however, their focus is on wedding fractured rhythms and intriguing textures, like the bell-like sound waves that pulse through the transmission-trouble beats of "Parhelic Triangle." --Bill Meyer

Album Description

Electro, techno, hip-hop, ambient, modern classical, geometry and chaos theory might begin to describe Autechre. Their latest release has 9 tracks and a running time of over 62 minutes. 9 tracks. 2001 release.

Customer Reviews:

Autechre's Absolute Best.......2007-05-29

Most feel that this is Autechre's most experimental album. They may be right, but this doesnt mean that it is in any way inaccesible. Ae have abandoned for the most part the D in IDM on this release. The whole album in my opinion is the most ambient they have done. And the one that rewards most the attentive listener.

The album's opener slowly pulls you into the rest of the tracks.

Cfern stumbles almost in a drunken stupor with a symmetrical type sound. Detuned bell sounding synths are enveloped circling and colorful patches throughout.

Pen Expers is a masterpiece. The piece is actually in 4/4, and starts out with rapid drums swirling around the speakers. The melody doesnt appear for a few minutes, and when it does, creeps through like beams of light trying to escape through dark clouds.

Sam Gishel is the most repetative track. Sounds like the walls are ceeping in on you.

Parhelic Triangle is another uber creeping track. Most of the tracks on this album are creepy, except Pen Expers and Vi Scose. Confield is their darkest album, Parhelic fits right in.

Bine is the track that they probably use that mathematically generative software that everyone is on about. Listening to this with headphones in the dark late at night is kind of like a horror movie. The whole album lends it self to headphones in the dark really.

Eidetic Casein is like a carnaval run by evil clowns.

Uviol is Ae's best ambient track even in my opinion. Airy bells circulate throughout.

Lentic is nuts. Great groove for the first half, followed by controlled glitch crazyness.

Best album ever. Buy it.

One of the best albums of all time, AE's best .......2007-04-23

I can put this up against any album by any artist in any genre and for me it stands up as a classic work of brilliant genius. Other great albums in history are not better than this, just different. And this is one of the most different works I've ever heard, while retaining that solid quality all great works share in common. The level of lushness and complexity of the soundscapes, while sometimes being subtle, is astounding. Headphone listening on a quality pair brings this fact more into focus, but as long as you have a good stereo, no matter. The level of aural complexity here, when compared to a 4 or 5 peice traditional band, or even to most everything I've ever heard, is like comparing a child's small sandbox with a beach.

BUT BEWARE! CONFIELD IS VERY HARSH, WEIRD AND UGLY!!!! (which to me is the whole point) Rare achingly beautiful moments are seemingly hidden here and there amongst dark, strange and alien soundscapes. This album sounds organic in the way that rust is organic. It is something like this: Rusting and haunted bizzare alien animal cyborgs from parts unknown, who are kind of scary and kind of sentient, plug themselves into Autechre's computer, and the "music" constantly running through their haunted, sick, and glitch-riddled alien minds is downloaded, and Autechre release the "music" as their own creation.

the future.......2006-11-17

Only two albums i own have spoken to me from a time and city of the distant distant future, and this is the only one ive owned long enough for it to stand the test of time.. [the other is juxtaposition by radian...] ..i guess six years have passed since i first heard this, and it might as well be sixty... i have still yet to hear anything, i repeat , ANYTHING, remotely like this.
I was much younger when I first picked up confield, on advice from a thom yorke interview, and i remember connecting only with the first track, and then carefully relocating the album to the back of my cd carrier. it was my first autechre experience, and while i wanted to like it, i didn't really respond and instead that year fell in love with their earlier 'tri repetae'. only in the last two or so years have i really began to HEAR confield, which makes tri repetae seem almost childish in comparison..
first, autechre, prior to this and since this has made nothing like it. it was a singular occurrence, whatever manic sessions gave birth to the sounds on this album . to try to go through it and critique the album would be wholly pointless , they have crafted something you are forced to respect, even if you respond to it by foaming at the mouth and falling into a seizure..no, this album is not for everyone.
a word that comes to mind is 'organism'. this is a very life-like album, and as dissonant and a-tonal the melodies are, this is the duos least clinical and most vibrant work, churning with visceral energy and textures. there is such an overload of audial activity it has been overlooked by many critics as being too chaotic or abstract, however many of them fail to see the interplay of this activity, how each minute sound reacts to each other. even at it's most chaotic, 'bine' , there is a certain cohesion as if they plugged a sequencer through garbage disposal and threw four weeks of the same colored left overs into it..
certain tracks, like my personal favorites 'sim gishel', 'parhelic triangle' and 'uviol' rely on the a seemingly blank room tone to fill the body of the tracks , and only on second and third listen do you hear something previously thought of as silence pulsating in and out of your headphones, reacting and compressing under deep nearly inaudible sub bass tones..
this album is still shockingly state of the art after six years, even surpassing one of my other favorite albums , boards of canadas geogaddi, which came out around the same time.. but while bocs easy child-tone melodies can at times get old, autechres melodies seem almost harder to find, and ultimately longer lasting as each listen yields new treasures ...

Futuristic view .......2006-08-28

Autechre has been dominating the IDM genre for a long time. Everything they release is analysed precisely,especially Confield.It's no wonder why this album has so many differing opinions.LP 5 and Chiastic Slide sure were experimental,but this is something totally else.The rhythms are really all over the place. Every melody you hear is totally twisted. The whole atmosphere on this album is really unique.The music changes all the time.This isn't minimal music.Beats are sliced, and they crack and bounce with the industrial buzz and strange melody bits.At first it doesent sound like composed music,but you'll realize how organized Confield actually is! Every sound has it's own place,and that makes it so special ! Autechre create listening experiences and once again they give an earthshaking work of art !

I almost never give five stars........2006-01-02

Autechre started simple and appealing, with everything in a safe synthetic world on a minor scale. If you want to get a look at the early days, don't go here. Why? Well, if their first album was a high-school term paper, this is a Ph.D dissertation; their work has become that much more sophisticated.
Confield sounds random. Let it lie at that, because it is not random. I have no doubt that there are stochastic elements to the "music" (I'm not sure that term fits very well with what they do) but chaos plays a part all music.
The fascinating thing here is that melodies and rhythms and textures are, as so often cited, all interchangeable in this fabric of sound. In fact, the three frequently shift places when you listen to Autechre, and it works. The best way for me to give a general description of what you'll find here is this: picture crystalline structures of great complexity slowly growing, but incorporating organic fragments in a way that seems random and orchestrated at once. Now translate that to sound. It is abstract, and it is often not musical, but Autechre's work is surely brilliant in its own right. Note that it isn't very emotional, nor is it altogether lacking in feeling. Here emotion is subdued, quiet, while the intellect takes the reins.
If you buy this album, be prepared to give it your full attention. Like the music of great composers, it is to be listened to, not merely heard; otherwise, everything of value in it will escape the hearer.