Track Listing

1. Xylin Room
2. IV VV IV VV VIII
3. 61e.CR
4. Tapr
5. Surripere
6. Theme of Sudden Roundabout
7. VL Al 5
8. P.:Ntil
9. V-Proc
10. Reniform Puls

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #755945 in Music
• Released on: 2003-04-08
• Number of discs: 2

Album Description
Seventh album from Sean Booth and Rob Brown on Warp Records. 2003.

Amazon.com
The fertile sonic imagination of Autechre wanders through the digital wilderness on Draft 7.30, burying understated melodies with dense noise from the avant-garde fringe. Since their more mainstream dance beginnings, Autechre’s Rob Brown and Sean Booth have operated in the same non-rhythmic, wired turf occupied by Oval, Plaid, and other experimental techno artists. But they’ve always retained an echo of their earlier accessibility, using recurring themes that give their music a Boards of Canada-like elegance. On the other hand, recent work like 2001’s Confield has involved a more cerebral mix of order and chaos that lacks such carbon-based ballast. Draft 7.30 goes even further off into the land of 1s and 0s, manipulating theories and formulas with a fascination usually reserved for higher math classes. Your ability to listen and enjoy will depend on your tolerance for difficult concepts and willingness to embrace chaos. --Matthew Cooke

From URB Magazine
(Warp) Autechre’s duo status is apt, as producers Sean Booth and Rob Brown’s abraded compositions gestate and alternate between antitheses, generating evenly split opinions. With Draft 7.30, Autechre’s seventh LP, Booth and Brown settle on neither ideal, though they play both against the middle. Opening with hollowed jungle drums and cracked-leather creak, unsteady as if momentarily dazed by glint through damp tropical canopy or the porthole of a sweltering galley, they plod into the equally wafting "IV VV IV VV VIII." "6ie.cr" welcomes the chunky crunch of rotted robo-funk (revisited on "V-Proc") before "Tapr" descends into the off-kilter obtuseness of their last outing, Confield, sounds swelling, contorting and flailing. Draft’s second half will hold more sway over those pining for the minor-key melodiousness of works through Tri Repetae++, summing up these DSP surgeons whose swarming nano-bots question whether to rend or repair.

Tony Ware

Customer Reviews

the hills are alive with the sound of music...eating itself.
I have to say that I honestly don't know how they do it. I listen to some relatively "different" stuff-- prefuse, mum, books, etc. -- but all of them, as "out there" as they are, have a certain grounding in familiar melodic and rhythmic patterns.

the last two autechre albums, by contrast, are unique (in my collection anyway) in the sense of utter, stupefied bewilderment they generate with each listen. I simply have no frame of reference for this. Yet, in certain moods, I find it an immensely satisfying listen.

As with confield, I find there to be something peculialy organic about this album, much more so than autechre's previous output. With all of the glitchery and oblique processed beats, it nevertheless feels as though there is something *alive* in this music.

Also like confield, I find this to be particularly good music to listen to when you don't feel like listening to music. There is something decomposed about it, something cannibalistic, something destructive... it's as if you're hearing the elements of music shredded, and smashed, and pureed, and strained, and then finally reconstituted -- into something that, miraculously, ultimately, reaffirms your faith in music.

If that doesn't help you understand the appeal of the new autechre, think of it this way: a lot of the essence of rock'n'roll lies in how *dirty* it is. But if the rolling stones are a pack of young ne'er-do-wells with grime on their faces and unkempt hair, autechre is a mossy, shapeless, moving hulk of mulch and smashed silicon chips, wired incorrectly and coming after you.

now, which is scarier?

My Brain is Short Circuiting!
That's how it sounds in my headphones right now. If you're looking at this, you're probably aware that Autechre is a very challenging listen. Their explorations seldom resemble music these days; it's an amalgam of breakbeat arrhythmias merged with granular dysfunction over a swath of downsampled melodies that skip and blurp in a seemingly random fashion. Most of the reviewers here concede that Autechre doesn't care if they alienate their fans. Maybe so, or maybe they're just so far ahead that it will take us years to catch up and fully appreciate it. Whatever the case may be, I continue to buy their records. Whether you love 'em or hate 'em, one thing is clear: nobody else sounds like Autechre. My 3 year old son says it sounds like broken robot music. Yeah, that's about right.

Amazing
What's amazing about this album is that I find it compelling - and yet it barely satisfies anyone's definition of music. It's harsh, has little in the way of melody, nothing ever seems to repeat consistently enough for me to say it has a rhythm, and yet over and over again I'll put it on and listen to it.

I'll try to articulate what I feel about it. For one thing, when you get over a certain hump it's not boring. It simply doesn't repeat. You're trying so hard to latch onto any kind of repetition in an attempt to find some kind of rhythm. But each time it almost repeats it's different and once you think you've seen the new pattern it trips over itself and slips from your grasp. And yet it's not random. It's just so damn interesting.

I have to admit I also like the sounds - the glitches, the clicks and the static. Probably comes from years of tinkering with electronics and computers. There are no organic sounds here - this is pure electronica trying to sound like electronica. Few of your sweeping synth sounds sewn from silky smooth superpositions of sine waves. This stuff is digital with corners, ugly angles and steps.

If you've only time to listen to one track, and you're not sure which one to try, have a go at Surripere. It starts off pretty accessibly with haunting notes (not glitches, not clicks, actual notes) and a heartbeat-like rhythm, though in true Autechre fashion it twists and turns skipping a beat here and there intertwining with other less predictable sounds. Of course this apparent accessibility is just there to lull you into a false sense of security as the music slowly decays into much more convoluted Autechre territory. 6ie.cr also has plenty of more accessible sections.

But don't just listen to the easy bits. It's all good, every bit of it. And I really can't explain way. Just get it.