The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). In Brackett, Nathan Hoard, Christian (eds.). ^ Seymour, Malcolm III (17 April 2001).Archived from the original on 23 February 2013. ^ a b "Reviews for Confield by Autechre".
"In producing their complex, abstract electronica, Autechre have taken the idea of the studio as an instrument to new extremes.". "MCR Quarter" (Recorded live at Band On The Wall, Manchester 1998) In 2009, chamber orchestra Alarm Will Sound recorded a version of "Cfern" on their album a/rhythmia. Forever." ĭespite the record's controversial nature, the album scores an average of 82/100 at Metacritic based on ten reviews, the highest average for any Autechre album on the site. Fiona Shepherd of The Scotsman held a similar view, saying the album sounded like "a malfunctioning dishwasher or a CD jumping. He said many of the songs sounded as though the CD player was skipping, and said the album was more madness than method. The Washington Post 's Mark Jenkins said that the duo had progressed from "making music that sounds odd" to "craft its music to sound wrong", further commenting that the pair now sounded "ragged and fidgety" rather than "smooth and pulsing" as in the past. Pitchfork gave the album an 8.8/10, claiming that, "For those willing to take these times in stride, Confield promises elegant production, accessibility in moderation, and one of the most enveloping, thought-provoking listening experiences to come forth from leftfield this year." However, AllMusic, giving the album only a 3/5, argued that Confield was "a record to respect, not enjoy," a viewpoint expressed by other review outlets.
Reception Professional ratings Aggregate scores It's like saying, 'I want this to go from this beat to that beat over this amount of time, with this curve, which is shaped according to this equation.'" For me it's just messing around with a lot of analogue sequencers and drum machines. But the fact that it's coming out of a computer, as they perceive it, somehow seems to make it different. If live musicians were playing it, they'd probably call it jazz or something. "It seems that for a lot of people, if they hear something that doesn't sound regular, they assume it's random. " you have something that some people would call random, but I would say is quantifiable," Booth said. However, in an interview following the release of Draft 7:30, Booth explained that although the beats they create using generative sequences may seem completely random to some, he and Brown exercised tight control over the limits and rules of what the beats could do.
Like EP7 before it and their 2003 release Draft 7.30, Booth and Brown make use of generative sequences on Confield. According to Booth, "Most of Confield came out of experiments with Max that weren't really applicable in a club environment." Confield saw the experimental use of computer programs, specifically Max/MSP, to form the basis of songs instead of stand-alone synthesizers. With Confield, Sean Booth and Rob Brown largely abandoned the warm ambient sounds of their earlier works such as Amber and Tri Repetae in favour of more chaotic and abstract sound palettes and methods of composition that they had been pursuing with LP5, EP7, and Peel Session 2.