Incunabula

100 Greatest Electronic Albums (100 items)
list by spiegel

2010:MUSIC (63 items)
list by salvoandolina

What was going on in 1993? We had the grunge craze, rap music was starting to get very big and no one gave to shits about IDM or even heard of it. Hell, I didn't hear of it until 1998 myself, 5 years after this album was out already. In any case, I wouldn't really call this album IDM but more like ambient techno. You sure can't dance to this music so I think it fits better.

This al... read more

Description: Although Autechre's Sean Booth and Rob Brown are firmly rooted in the British hip-hop and electro scenes of the early 1980s, their music is experimental, mathematical, and precise; electro is used merely as a starting point for further exploration of synthetic sounds. On Incunabula, their contribution to Warp's Artificial Intelligence series, the roots of their sound are laid bare. Electro beats are tranquilized and obscured, shifted into alternate time signatures, and used as anchors for repetitive synth hooks and dense layers of effects, resulting in a sound that is exquisitely cold and mechanical. The title, which means &quot Although Autechre's Sean Booth and Rob Brown are firmly rooted in the British hip-hop and electro scenes of the early 1980s, their music is experimental, mathematical, and precise; electro is used merely as a starting point for further exploration of synthetic sounds. On Incunabula, their contribution to Warp's Artificial Intelligence series, the roots of their sound are laid bare. Electro beats are tranquilized and obscured, shifted into alternate time signatures, and used as anchors for repetitive synth hooks and dense layers of effects, resulting in a sound that is exquisitely cold and mechanical. The title, which means "beginning," couldn't be more appropriate: as the years passed, Autechre's music became more dense and oblique; hence, a quick listen to "Incunabula" is essential to decoding the plot. --Matthew Corwine ... (more) (less)