Amber
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6 Customer Reviews Posted
- Utterly unique
- This magnificent album has an utterly unique sound even within Autechre's body of work. It may be electronic music but the sound is anything but clinical with its strangely compelling textures and beats. Evoking vivid imagery, the mood varies from eerie and distant to weirdly inspirational and delicately moving.
The album opens with the whooshing synths & crackles of Foil, while in Montreal the percussion is in the foreground with the wistful synths adding desolate melodies somewhere behind, far away. The symphonic Silverside has some muted vocal samples, while tracks like Further evoke the pitter-patter of raindrops and other nature sounds.
Not all tracks have a beat & tempo shifts occur throughout; Slip is mid-tempo to fast, Glitch with its echoing horn-like sounds & the warbling percussive Piezo have a fast beat, while the bleepy Nine and delicate Yulquen unfold at a slow pace. The complex arrangement of Nil allows for rhythmic segments alternating with pure ambient synthesizer sounds.
The closest I can come to a comparison would be to the instrumental work of Peter Baumann like Trans Harmonic Nights, and then only to a certain extent, as Amber is charmingly diverse. I suppose one could describe this as classical electronic music, and Amber certainly is a classic in more than one sense of the term. - 2008-12-25, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Amazing
- Amber is honestly one of the best albums i've ever heard. If you're just after some relaxing music to come home to after a hard day at work or something alike, this is perfect. Additionally, if you're after some music for some sort of background noise, this is perfect too.
This album really impresses me, and all i can say now is that i'm going to get as many Autechre albums as i can. But if you've stumbled on this page and you haven't made up your mind yet, check out the previews and take my word for it. - 2008-09-03, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Electronic minimalism that paints an emotional landscape
- Electronic minimalism that paints an emotional landscape. I left La Jolla at one a.m. headed north on the freeway. A dark starless night surrounded me on the coast. When I arrived at the border crossing I could hear the guards heavy eyelids and see Autechre's Silverside begin its cold slow movement inside the cocoon of my '91 Honda Prelude, white in color. The night just got a little brighter.
Amber along with Incunabula and Tri Repetae are my favorite Autechre Records. Now available on 8 track tape.
Also, check out Brain Pilot from Belgium, their stuff from the mid to late '90s.
Peace,
Jimbo - 2008-08-25, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- A masterpiece
- Ae's second full length, "Amber", marked the beginning of a long string of truly brilliant releases. As I've said in my reviews of other Ae albums from this era, this is a completely different genre from the unpredictable, alien glitch worship they engage in now. "Amber" falls neatly into some subgenre of "ambient techno", probably more-so than any Ae release except their debut, "Incunabula". This is the melodic, icy beauty that alienated fans express so much nostalgia for these days, when the new album of the moment doesn't have as much melody, or slips even further into the abstract.
While I love nearly every album this duo has put out, "Amber" is definitely one of their greatest works, much more consistent than the debut "Incunabula" and more listenable than the follow up, "Tri Repetae". It's also their most ambient, containing several beatless tracks.
This is their first truly great production work. The percussion is all warm, analog static washes, muffled thumps, reverberant clicks. The synths are classic analog. Every corner of the mix is filled with some sound or other, so there's little of the space "Tri Repetae" used so effectively.
Unlike in most of Ae's work, there is little distortion or harshness of any kind... "Amber" is pleasant on the ears, emotionally intense and often melancholy but never urgent or threatening, and most definitely sympathetic and human. It's the disembodied, pensive voice of the dwellers of the modern metropolis, an ode to everyone lost in the urban sprawl, the technology, the routine, the digital communication.
The songs unfold with amazing precision and taste, something this duo nearly always has (if you've read my review of "Tri Repetae, in which I say the tracks drag on too long, I've since changed my mind) and is never given enough credit for. The pacing on "Amber" is masterful, and serves to make the album one of the most listenable in the entire Autechre catalog.
There are some truly breathtaking and heart-wrenching melodies on here, particularly in the ambient tracks "Yulquen" and "Nine"... both of which are among Ae's best tracks... they say so much with so little, creating breathtaking drama with only a few notes. "Montreal", "Silverside", "Piezo" and "Nil" are also all highlights; groovy basslines, dark, gorgeous strings, chattering percussive noise, all expertly produced and arranged.
If the album ever falters, it is in the somewhat cliched "dark" melody of closer "Teartear", which also seems to disrupt the mood and flow of the album with its harshness. Even if the album contained only the first 10 songs, however, it would be easily 5 stars.
As far as this album being the most accessible Ae album, it really depends on who you're playing it for, I think. It's certainly the least offensive Ae album, but an untrained ear could easily miss the subtlety and beauty that makes these songs more than background music.
Anyway, "Amber" is a masterpiece and highly recommended. It's the best of their first 3 LPs, and they wouldn't reach heights like this again until "Chiastic Slide". 5 stars. - 2008-08-03, 1 of 1 people found this review helpful, Rated:
- Best Introduction to Autechre
- I love this album. I have most everything that this group has produced, but I keep coming back to Amber over and over. It is wonderful from beginning to end. Interesting, amazing.
- 2008-02-19, 0 of 0 people found this review helpful, Rated:
