Album: Autechre

Untilted, WARP

Their eighth album finds the abstract-electronica duo of Sean Booth and Rob Brown in much the same brittle, airless space that housed 2003's Draft 7.30, making music that tries so hard to confound expectations that it ends up confounding its own raison d'être. Brutally obstreperous in tone, tracks such as "LCC" and "Ipacial Section" are not suitable for dancing, background music or close listening - so what's their point? Both feature uninfectious electro loops repeated over and over, perhaps on the principle that just about anything becomes acceptable with repetition; but the looped elements collide with a randomness that just grows irritating after a minute or so. "Pro Radii" pits big, booming bass tones against smaller, staccato click-beats, like tiny mammals scurrying in the shadow of dinosaurs, and "Augmatic Disport" - the titles are as off-putting as the music - offers more jittery drum'n'bass stutters for dancers with three left feet. "Fermium" and the lengthy closer "

Their eighth album finds the abstract-electronica duo of Sean Booth and Rob Brown in much the same brittle, airless space that housed 2003's Draft 7.30, making music that tries so hard to confound expectations that it ends up confounding its own raison d'être. Brutally obstreperous in tone, tracks such as "LCC" and "Ipacial Section" are not suitable for dancing, background music or close listening - so what's their point? Both feature uninfectious electro loops repeated over and over, perhaps on the principle that just about anything becomes acceptable with repetition; but the looped elements collide with a randomness that just grows irritating after a minute or so. "Pro Radii" pits big, booming bass tones against smaller, staccato click-beats, like tiny mammals scurrying in the shadow of dinosaurs, and "Augmatic Disport" - the titles are as off-putting as the music - offers more jittery drum'n'bass stutters for dancers with three left feet. "Fermium" and the lengthy closer "Sublimit" involve marginally more satisfying progress from hyperactivity to sombre synthesised washes. But there's no acknowledgement of the way that different sounds trigger twitches in hips, toes or shoulders, a physical grammar essential to dance music. This, by comparison, is just a clutter of clicks and bleeps, the electronic equivalent of Tourette's.