''Quaristice'' is the ninth studio album by British

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

duo

Autechre Autechre ( ) are an English electronic music duo consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, both from Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Formed in 1987, they are among the best known acts signed to UK electronic label Warp Records, through which all o ...

, initially released on 29 January 2008 by

Warp Records Warp Records is a British independent record label that specialises in Electronic music, electronic, indie rock and experimental music. It was founded in Sheffield in 1989 by Steve Beckett, Robert Mitchell and Robert Gordon. It has released recor ...

. It was made available for download via bleep.com in

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...

and

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

format on 29 January 2008 and then received a physical release on 3 March 2008.

Production

members Rob Brown and Sean Booth changed their approach for ''Quaristice'', moving from a more deliberate studio process to a more spontaneous and "

jam session A jam session is a relatively informal musical event, process, or activity where musicians, typically instrumentalists, play improvised solos and vamp over tunes, drones, songs, and chord progressions. To "jam" is to improvise music without ...

" style of songwriting, approximately doubling the usual number of tracks per album to twenty. Booth said in a March 2008 interview, "a lot of the album tracks are edited-down jams; some of them hour-long pieces we made in a day and then worked them down ... We’d have a fifteen-minute jam, a ten- or a seven-minute and end up with a three- or four-minute track, and we just kept them all." The album is accompanied with track-by-track artwork from

The Designers Republic The Designers Republic is a British graphic design studio based in Sheffield, England, founded in 1986 by Ian Anderson and Nick Phillips (graphic designer), Nick Phillips. They are best known for electronic music logos, album artwork, and an ...

. The last thirty seconds of "The Plc" contain a brief repeated sample of

Run–D.M.C. Run-DMC (also formatted Run-D.M.C., RUN DMC, or some combination thereof) was an American hip-hop group formed in Hollis, Queens, New York City in 1983 by Joseph Simmons, Darryl McDaniels, and Jason Mizell. Run-DMC is regarded as one of the most ...

's 1985 track "Here We Go".

Release

In an interview, Booth said "the actual product is the FLAC file – but I don't object to those who want to own something that they can hold." The album was also released as a 2-CD set with alternate versions of 11 tracks on a second 68-minute CD. The casing is a photo-etched, steel case and the release was limited to 1000 copies. The limited edition sold out within 12 hours of being announced.

Critical reception

''Quaristice'' received somewhat positive reviews overall. Andy Kellman of

AllMusic AllMusic (previously known as All-Music Guide and AMG) is an American online database, online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on Musical artist, musicians and Mus ...

said that despite the large amount and short running time of the tracks, that "the ideas arrive fully formed, never appearing to be dashed off or loosely sketched," and that "not since LP5 has being impressed been so obviously secondary to enjoyment." Mark Richardson of

Pitchfork A pitchfork or hay fork is an agricultural tool used to pitch loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves. It has a long handle and usually two to five thin tines designed to efficiently move such materials. The term is also applie ...

said that while the album was "in some ways the most listenable album hey'dcreated in a decade," he warned that it was "ultimately no easier to parse, and can be very rough going indeed if you're not in the mood for their peculiar world." However, Andy Gill of

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

gave a negative review, saying that the album found "the Autechre duo of Rob Brown and Sean Booth still searching vainly for structure and meaning among a largely impenetrable undergrowth of synthesized ticks and tones."

Track listing

''Quaristice (Versions)''

A second disc, entitled ''Quaristice (Versions)'', was included in the limited edition.

Release history

References

External links

Listen to Quaristice at Bleep.com

Quaristice at metacritic
{{Authority control Autechre albums 2008 albums Warp Records albums Albums with cover art by The Designers Republic