Song Review: Autechre - R Ess

Many artists follow all the classic pop music rules and recipes to get into the favor of the masses. Others just do what they like, and some, like Autechre seem to do only things that go against those rules and recipes.

R Ess, the first track of their newest album Oversteps for instance, starts with a fade in of almost 1:30. Once the melodic synthesizer part is at its peak volume it is time for the beats to slowly fade in as well.

On the left ear we hear the direct sound of the synthesizer, while the rest of the sonic panorama is covered in an ocean of reverberation as the muffled kick drum and crispy snare come in at the center. Towards the end of the track we are treated to some extra low frequencies, it is hard to really call it a bass line.

Compared to some other, rather complex Autechre songs it is quite easy to nod your head to the beat of R Ess, while enjoying the pitch shifting synth tones, even though some snare drums will not be where you expect them to be.

Autechre’s Oversteps is the first album I bought online in a higher-than-CD-audio quality: 24bit/44.1kHz at bleep.com. I really think as storage and bandwidth capacity increase, online music stores like the iTunes store should at least offer an option to buy uncompressed, or at least lossless formats.