Autechre @ The Opera House

I didn't catch the names of the opening duo* last night, but they pulled off the finest Autechre impression I've ever heard. Much like Ae's new "Untilted", they channelled the noise and chaos of "Confield" without making it feel like an endurance contest. Halfway through their set, they seemed to abandon the random blasts of noise and static in favour of chest-rattling bass to go with their jackhammer beats. "They do a better Ae than Ae do themselves these days", I thought at the time ...

But the night unmistakably belonged to the headliners. They slammed straight into the sort of harsh, minimal beats that instantly recalled "Anvil Vapre" and the "Basscadet" remixes. The first half of their 90-minute set was dominated by these body-rocking sounds, along with intervals that could only be described as Autechre getting all dubbed out. During the second half, they faltered somewhat with an overly long cooldown session in the style of the relatively bland, understated "Draft 7:30", keeping in mind that "Draft 7:30" on a booming sound system is immeasurably more powerful than hearing it at home. But they recovered to revisit the dense, scattershot beats they started with.

All this, plus they managed to rock the crowd considerably more in comparison to the other two times I've seen them. The first time, at a rave in 1996 held in a remote warehouse, inside a cramped room covered in silver foil, the dancing carried on in spite of them while the space they played in served mainly as the hallway for those in transit toward the deep house room. The second time, in 2001 (also at the Opera House) was notable for its eighty minutes of hellish "Confield"-esque mania, where hellish = exhilirating for me, but intolerable for 85% of the people in attendance who clearly had no idea what they were in store for (the venue was probably half full by the time they finished). This time, you could actually mistake the floor of the Opera House for people having fun at a dance party.

* update 12/05/05: they played with SND and DJ Rob Hall. You'd think the papers here would have advertised this. SND? They blew me away when I saw them the first time too. Their records are such bland clicksncuts fare but their live shows are explosive. Why?