Missed the day (Feb 17th), but read a nice piece in Fact:
Probably my second favourite Autechre album after Amber. It definitely marks the point when they began morphing from what you could loosely defined as ambient techno into, well, full-on Autechre. At risk of sounding like a 6th form student music journalist, I remember thinking (in 6th form) that Amber sounded like what would happen if our future AI overlords decided to make classical music. I think that article, with its reference to a laundry machine, is bang on - Ciapter sounds like a hyper-intelligent dishwasher having a crack at a techno record.
The whole record is gold, but Cichli is the other standout for me. It’s probably the most obvious example of their professed love of hip-hop. But again, it sounds like hip-hop made by your dishwasher. As with so much of their first few albums, they add in layers of rhythm and melody, one additional detail at a time, giving you time to appreciate the nuance of each new layer - it’s gritty, playful, and beautiful all at the same time - and it sounds like nothing else.
It may be their most influential record as well? Listening back, it’s hard to imagine Raster Noton or Mille Plateaux without this evolution of Autechre. Hands down, 10/10 stone cold classic.
