Autechre, "SIGN"

Discourse among even the most devoted Autechre fans can be distorted and backwards sometimes.  When Autechre's music turns more experimental, abstract, and unconventional, technology becomes a major motivating factor in shaping the band's outlook.  The technology is there, they are the purported experts, and thus they can't help but follow through with pursuing it.  Stretching the capabilities of their equipment becomes an end unto itself, perhaps even the key purpose of making the music to begin with.  The duo become the conduits for developing a process dictated by the machines, and that's why, save for outliers like "Oversteps", they've not made anything similar to their 90's output.  

"SIGN" strongly suggests that Autechre haven't made another "Tri Repetae" because they simply haven't felt like it.  I really enjoyed the unfiltered jams in their past two albums/filedumps, but this is a refreshing about face, taking me back over twenty years to the days when Autechre albums weren't such a challenge to listen to, in one sitting or not.  They have arguably not come this close to anything on the "Anvil Vapre EP ("au14") or LP5 ("si00") or "Amber" (Metaz form 8") since those times. The Slowdive reunion album was the best of its kind because it pulled off the impossible trick of updating their signature poses to make them contemporary again which simultaneously sounding exactly like they always did.  "SIGN" certainly comes close ... and it's not even a reunion album.