Most feel that this is Autechre's most experimental album. They may be right, but this doesnt mean that it is in any way inaccesible. Ae have abandoned for the most part the D in IDM on this release. The whole album in my opinion is the most ambient they have done. And the one that rewards most the attentive listener.

The album's opener slowly pulls you into the rest of the tracks.

Cfern stumbles almost in a drunken stupor with a symmetrical type sound. Detuned bell sounding synths are enveloped circling and colorful patches throughout.

Pen Expers is a masterpiece. The piece is actually in 4/4, and starts out with rapid drums swirling around the speakers. The melody doesnt appear for a few minutes, and when it does, creeps through like beams of light trying to escape through dark clouds.

Sam Gishel is the most repetative track. Sounds like the walls are ceeping in on you.

Parhelic Triangle is another uber creeping track. Most of the tracks on this album are creepy, except Pen Expers and Vi Scose. Confield is their darkest album, Parhelic fits right in.

Bine is the track that they probably use that mathematically generative software that everyone is on about. Listening to this with headphones in the dark late at night is kind of like a horror movie. The whole album lends it self to headphones in the dark really.

Eidetic Casein is like a carnaval run by evil clowns.

Uviol is Ae's best ambient track even in my opinion. Airy bells circulate throughout.

Lentic is nuts. Great groove for the first half, followed by controlled glitch crazyness.

Best album ever. Buy it.

Now, there is every vynil, cassette and CD of all types of musics I've ever listened to and enjoyed, and then there is this... this THING, this phenomenon-producing thing in the guise of a music CD with the arbitrary word 'Confield' announcing it.

I was disappointed when their next full-length came out, because the duo had gone back to making mere music. Confield is more like a hologram or something... or maybe a tecnology facilitating a peek into an alien dimension that actually exists in reality... a cast so far into The Beyond, further than anyone dared cast before, and By Gum! they CAUGHT SOMETHING, and reeled it all the way back in, and THERE IT IS! in all its utter bizzareness. A cast flailed so far outside the sphere of the sum total of all previous human experience that what that cast brought back is simply staggering!

Confield is a pioneer, exploring places so far away from the safe and snug bubble of all accepted human knowledge gum that it can be scary chewing it. A real shake-up! A stirrer of the pot. This mysterious thing labeled 'Confield'; nothing else is even in the same universe, not even remotely. No other AE album, no other album period. No, there is something else going on here... something unprecedented, and, it seems, with each new AE release, never to be delved into further.

Only two albums i own have spoken to me from a time and city of the distant distant future, and this is the only one ive owned long enough for it to stand the test of time.. [the other is juxtaposition by radian...] ..i guess six years have passed since i first heard this, and it might as well be sixty... i have still yet to hear anything, i repeat , ANYTHING, remotely like this.
I was much younger when I first picked up confield, on advice from a thom yorke interview, and i remember connecting only with the first track, and then carefully relocating the album to the back of my cd carrier. it was my first autechre experience, and while i wanted to like it, i didn't really respond and instead that year fell in love with their earlier 'tri repetae'. only in the last two or so years have i really began to HEAR confield, which makes tri repetae seem almost childish in comparison..
first, autechre, prior to this and since this has made nothing like it. it was a singular occurrence, whatever manic sessions gave birth to the sounds on this album . to try to go through it and critique the album would be wholly pointless , they have crafted something you are forced to respect, even if you respond to it by foaming at the mouth and falling into a seizure..no, this album is not for everyone.
a word that comes to mind is 'organism'. this is a very life-like album, and as dissonant and a-tonal the melodies are, this is the duos least clinical and most vibrant work, churning with visceral energy and textures. there is such an overload of audial activity it has been overlooked by many critics as being too chaotic or abstract, however many of them fail to see the interplay of this activity, how each minute sound reacts to each other. even at it's most chaotic, 'bine' , there is a certain cohesion as if they plugged a sequencer through garbage disposal and threw four weeks of the same colored left overs into it..
certain tracks, like my personal favorites 'sim gishel', 'parhelic triangle' and 'uviol' rely on the a seemingly blank room tone to fill the body of the tracks , and only on second and third listen do you hear something previously thought of as silence pulsating in and out of your headphones, reacting and compressing under deep nearly inaudible sub bass tones..
this album is still shockingly state of the art after six years, even surpassing one of my other favorite albums , boards of canadas geogaddi, which came out around the same time.. but while bocs easy child-tone melodies can at times get old, autechres melodies seem almost harder to find, and ultimately longer lasting as each listen yields new treasures ...

Autechre started simple and appealing, with everything in a safe synthetic world on a minor scale. If you want to get a look at the early days, don't go here. Why? Well, if their first album was a high-school term paper, this is a Ph.D dissertation; their work has become that much more sophisticated.
Confield sounds random. Let it lie at that, because it is not random. I have no doubt that there are stochastic elements to the "music" (I'm not sure that term fits very well with what they do) but chaos plays a part all music.
The fascinating thing here is that melodies and rhythms and textures are, as so often cited, all interchangeable in this fabric of sound. In fact, the three frequently shift places when you listen to Autechre, and it works. The best way for me to give a general description of what you'll find here is this: picture crystalline structures of great complexity slowly growing, but incorporating organic fragments in a way that seems random and orchestrated at once. Now translate that to sound. It is abstract, and it is often not musical, but Autechre's work is surely brilliant in its own right. Note that it isn't very emotional, nor is it altogether lacking in feeling. Here emotion is subdued, quiet, while the intellect takes the reins.
If you buy this album, be prepared to give it your full attention. Like the music of great composers, it is to be listened to, not merely heard; otherwise, everything of value in it will escape the hearer.

Sensory overload for the first few listens, until one gets used to processing so much information at once, unless you've heard this kind of music before. Dense, rich textures, some songs have a dark or sinister feel, some have odd bizarre sounds. Contrary to how it may seem, these songs are in 4/4, as the beats stray from their places but always come back to 4/4 time. The first time I listened to this I got strange images in my minds eye with eyes closed, with no chemical help!

To describe Autechre and more specifically "Confield" to listeners who haven't experienced this type of music is truly a difficult task. Suffice it to say that while the band is clearly electronica Autechre's "Confield" pushes the limits of the genre and even questions the very rules of music. It may sound haphazard and disjointed at first but in actuality it is precise and deliberate music. By going into several different meters and time signatures in each piece and playing very sophisticated "tricks" upon the listener the music, while I find it quite beautiful and relaxing, does require active listening. Upon first play each piece with their obscure names like "parhelic triangle" may simply appear to be interesting sometimes engaging (and sometimes not) works. Further listen often reveals that there is much more at play. For example on track 3 "pen expers" one will notice that the organ and the "beat" are played using the same algorithm but at very different speeds. You may not notice this at first and continued listing only provided the listener deeper more insight into the music. This makes listening a very rewarding endeavor though it might not be for everyone. Just pondering how the brain takes in music and retains it at different levels leaving room for deeper retention is just one of the fruitful rewards of listening - buy this CD and find out.

I think if you have heard any Autechre especially the later stuff you will enjoy this music. I recommend this to fans of experimental music of all types and anyone who wishes to broaden their musical scope. This is an easy CD to get hooked on if you just listen a few times. Once you have it you will want more so go buy Untilted next. - enjoy

Ted Murena

damn brahmin... this is inaa fine style. jagged beats spin and contort, go out of focus, come back together. sounds like milford grave ripping apart acid house and early hip hop and putting it all back together as cubist dub drug cult funk.

"pen expers" is the banger.

About a year ago, when I was becoming less interested in classical music, I heard about the "holy trinity" of electronic music, happened upon this Autechre cd and bought it without having any idea of what I was getting into.
This CD is the SHalskjvlkelkjT. Gorgeous tracks, amazing textures, and then some things which completely astonish me every time I listen, which is quite regularly. But yah, not for the adventure-intolerant.
I won't say that its absolutely like perfect music or anything, and I don't really get the feeling that these guys are totally in control of what they're doing. Compared to "grantz graf" and "draft 7:30", which are significantly less successful, I'd have to say they got lucky, although "untitled" is quite good as well and I recommend that as a companion to this.

Other reviewers keep prattling on about figure this out, figure that out concerning the mid to later works of Autechre. And I ask: what's to figure out? What's to get? It's music. And it's music generated by precision computers and isolated into a digital, i.e. unchanging, form - no decay. No matter how many times you play the music on your little CD or on your cute pink Ipod mini all the beats still fall in the same place and all the melodies still flutter about in the patterns. There's nothing to figure out or get! It's music. Get over it. I find the best way to listen to ep7 onward is to let myself go and stop trying to force the music into all those rigorous, enslaving conceptions of music and order so tightly programmed into my head. Do the music a favor for once, figure yourself out first before and then give this disc a listen. Maybe then you may finally "get" the music.

(...)

Don't buy this CD if you like the structured melodic/thematic framework that other less challenging (and for me far less engaging) music offers. For me, this lies just behind `Incunabula' (their first album) and `EP7' (their 6th `full' album I think?) at the top of the impressive Autechre repertoire.

The jangly, tap-on-a-can beats that accompany the lovely minimalist theme of the opening track "VI scose poise" could be aggravating in others' hands, but they just enhance the beauty of what they surround. Don't fool yourself into thinking that this beauty will resurface very often through the remainder of this consistently taxing album though.

"cfern" is another Ae track where broken-up jaunty beats try their best to deconstruct underlying themes and melodies (and indeed are themselves deconstructed in the attempt). This is no music for sonic wimps, but it has its own aching anarchic beauty that would escape those who would just dismiss this ascerbic later-Ae style as `noise', or just another example of repetitive electronica . The laboured beats in the `development section' rivet this frankly disturbing track into your quivering synapses. Whew!

"cfern" somehow ingratiates itself into becoming "pen expers", which is an unrelenting throb of beats that refuse to morph into anything approaching melody. If "cfern" was disturbing, this is murderous in its attack on the ears and the ear-consciousness that is forced (and I mean forced, as it's no easy task) to process it. The mind, having been `softened up' by "cfern", is congealed into something quite frankly terrifying by the harshness of this aural onslaught. I wonder if this track has ever led to lawsuits for psychological assault?

Phew!, "sim gishel" seems to offer some relief, but it has its own perverse sound-world that refuses to let us off lightly. Its deep bassy throbs, surrounded by jerky, ripply washes make it a track that never seems to get off the ground, but it obviously doesn't want to. This, the preceding two tracks, and the two that follow, "parhelic triangle" and "bine", take music close to a `deconstructionist' extreme that is only extended by more in-your-face industrial terrorists such as `Throbbing Gristle' and their ilk (my fave of this latter genre is the relatively unknown `Metal Machine Music' album by Lou Reed, which is extraordinary in its abject refusal to be anything other than pure noise).

The bell-like sounds that inflitrate the `thracking' beats that drive "parhelic triangle" introduce just enough `beauty' to stop the mind from rejecting its virulent, hackingly relentless throb. Its dissolution into almost total anarchy makes this a very hard sound-world to populate with one's mind.

"bine", with its eerie background `melody-washes' amid constantly restless beats and splashes, is even more anarchic in its refusal to find a tonal or emotional centre.

"eidetic casein" has a more organic and earthly feel, with a wider cast for melody than the previous five tracks. It almost has an oriental feel, with swelling melodic beats punctuating the more elemental bassy throb that drives it. The wandering theme that permeates it begs to find itself, but there's too much happening around it for it to rest anywhere. This is `wibbly-wobbly' music that wraps itself around your ears and sucks you into its sonic black hole without the mind-screwing relentlessness of what preceded it.

"uviol" has manipulated time-sequences that again surround a meandering theme that seeks to find itself, before morphing into more beat-driven landscapes. Again, the `wibbly-wobbly' style of "eidetic casein" draws you into "uviol"s warped soundspace, this time with pied piper-like jauntiness. These two tracks are a brilliant foil for what has gone before them. Without them, the album could have descended into unrelieved harshness. Bravo Ae!

"lentic catachresis" rounds off the album with a chattering jaggedness that slowly deconstructs itself into firework-like throbby beats that underpin little synth flashes of semi-melody, before a cheeky little buzzing end (or is it annihilation?). An extraordinary way to end a sensational, while eminently challenging, album.

Having read most of the previous reviews of this album, the recurring verdict seems to be "abstract", "challenging", "not for the uninitiated". Granted, this is most definitely not your average mainstream pop chart fodder, quite the contrary - this is among the most rewarding music I have encountered, and Confield is my favourite Autechre release so far, including Draft 7.30.

A common misconception among the Autechre naysayers seems to be the idea of "getting" the music of Autechre, on the analogy of solving a complex equation or understanding a mathematical theorem (on a somewhat unrelated note, I detest the "Intelligent Dance Music" label - it is bigoted intellectual vanity at its very worst). I can understand the frustration when listening to the music in this manner, since you are searching for something that does not exist. There is nothing to grasp or understand, at least not on the conscious level. This is most definitely not music to rub your analytical, mathematical ego with. But just sit down and *listen* with an empty mind, and sooner or later your subconsciousness will put the pieces together for you behind the curtains. When it happens, it will all make sense.

Indeed, the music of Confield is the most Zen-like music I have ever heard. In my humble opinion, you cannot fully fathom the soundscapes within without letting go of your thoughts, focusing on the music here and now. And now. And now. It might require some discipline of the mind, but the results are rewarding to say the least. Go ahead, give it a try.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said that architecture is frozen music. If so, then Autechre is architecture set free. Confield is truly a marvellous piece of work. Listen with an open mind and you will be rewarded in abundance.

What gets me is how bands like Autechre tend to compel people to write big long technical descriptions about what the music is doing, which, in a sense, misses the point: one does not really need to know what a brick is made of to discover what it feels like to be hit by one on the noggin. So.

If you've kept up with Autechre since "Tri Repeatae", you know to expect: Evil robot music. This is the sound of two evil robots, called Sean and Rob, plotting to take over the world in order to convert it into a giant space antenna designed to transmit evil robot communications to the evil robot homeworld on Crux Epsilon V or something about some evil robot purpose that defies human imagination. I mean, that to me is a lot more spooky and nihilstic than what you might get from, well, the Sisters of Mercy.

There's a certain bounce to the first couple of tracks, so that you could almost dance to this. If you had seven legs and a peculiar hypersense for rhythm like your usual evil robot. Personally, listening to this puts me to sleep, but then that might be the ambient aspect coming through, though it's well hidden along all the cybernetic coruscations.

All-in-all, I like it, even though most of it's so abstracted from conventional musical forms that it doesn't lodge in the mind too well - so it could be a fresh experience with each listen! That's a large part of Autechre's almost ineffible charm, I think.

When my friends get bored with what they're listening to and want to hear something original (and by original I mean that they've played out most other types of EBM, electonica, 4/4s, and need something altogether different), I always buy them Autechre CD to try on for size. The reason that works so well is because Autechre can be likened "noise pioneers," building better electronic sandcastles for the kid that has everything and still wants more, and they do through means that aren't easily manipulated. They take experimental portions of layering, hinging backgrounds of beat onto curtains of effect, and they birth articles of clothing no album I've owned before has ever worn. From the early mornings where they crafted ambient sounds to the experimental "now" that puts them totally ahead in the arms race, its really something "unique" (a word I try not to use much because of sounds like these) to form an addiction around.

Confield is an album that isn't going to be for everyone and you shouldn't feel bad if you can't get into it. I actually suffered that feeling when I first picked it up, noting some constriction in my mind and some angst in my wallet as I listened on, thinking that this couldn't be something I paid good money for. While we don't always realize it, its oftentimes hard to set aside preconceived notions of where noise ends and music begins, and I found myself not really liking this album at first because of this mainstreamed "sound backwash effect." The way the beat forms and the way the meter reads is odd and odd denotes fear, and that foreign element of sound sitting outside of my comfort zone threw me off at first.
In the beginning, I thought that there was only noise and the album experienced a time when the shelf was the only world it knew.
Later, however, I gave it another chance, it calling my name and begging me to listen because I love so many of Autechre's masterpieces, so I answered it and found myself actually "getting it" for the first time. In places where I heard nothing before, I could see the separation of the beats and the background, making out the melodies and the layers. And, god, was it ever good.

I'm not even going to begin trying to break the album apart as a whole, because a lot of interesting thoughts have been by other reviewers and they've done so with talent. Instead, I simply wanted to try and pick off a few songs and attempt to say that these pieces managed to catch my mind's eye and give a little on the "why" as well.
When I spun through it that second time, "Eidetic Casen" captured me in its almost eerily haunting sound right away. It has such a strange ambiance to it, both floating and constricting at the same time, and I found myself drawn to that. The images it evoked were interesting and then some, to be sure.
"Sim Gishel" also caught me slacking when I started looking back once more, with those sounds starting out like some type of early videogame and then leading into a bassline that is truly captivating. I loved the development of it, the way it rushed forward and stole the show, and it hooked me pretty quickly.
And then there's the totally bizarre "Lentic Catachresis." The best way to perhaps describe its sound is to capture something a friend of mine and I agreed on when first hearing it, citing it as "two machines angrily chatting over coffee." It has a alien sound to it, like machines actually speaking in a background of sound, only I'm not tuned into what they're saying. It's an interesting conversation at first, too, until it escalates and the caffeine from all that coffee kicks in. And then it's simply a lovely strain feeding from some chaotic spectrum.

If you're new to Autechre, perhaps this isn't the first place you should step in at and begin exploring. While I'd call this album remarkable, these are waters to slip into slowly, submerging yourself into the sights and sounds they evoke a little at a time before delving into the calms and the chaos. It is remarkable, though, perhaps taking some time to finally sink in but making a piece of architecture that will excite the epicenters of your waking mind when it finally tunes in.

After reading most of people's comments about this album as well as some reviews explaining the weirdness occuring in this album, I knew I had to check it out. I was a bit familiar with Autechre, having bought Tri Repetae++ some time ago, and it didn't leave me much of a impression at first. However, Confield completely changed my opinion about Autechre. It is really one of the most out-there albums I ever heard and I just keep wondering how they've managed to come up with such music. It's chaotic, dense yet incredibly beautiful noise at the same time. Melodies are sparse, as the album mostly focuses on abstract sound textures and complex drum programming, but the results are amazing nonetheless.

VI Scose Poise features a dislocated metallic sound playing around, settling the song's beat alongside some other glitch noises and 2 minutes later, a quiet melody arises from the mix. Pen Expers is one menacing hip-hop venture which is dominated by harsh, pounding drum beats in which a melody slowly forces it's way through, after which it ends through another whacked-out drum workout.

Parhelic Triangle, which has to be my favorite song of the whole album, features a throbbing bassline which shadows eerie synth melodies and cascading bells which echoes through the bassline. It acheives with the bassline twisting itself way beyond the pattern it had established with the song's debut. Truly beautiful song. Uviol, which has to be the album's most quiet song, uses it's percussion and synth pads to create an icy alien world.

The only reason the album loses a star would be for the last track, Lentic Catachresis. The song starts out in a pretty good way, with a sparse yet present melody in which dislocated, frentic drums play. However, near the 3:30 mark, the song truly loses it's focus and acheives itself into a unpenetrable glitch wall that lasts for 5 whole minutes with little variation. This is the only song that I don't understand at all on the album.

I guess I must be weird, considering that it's that album that made me an Autechre fan. After I listened to it, I've started liking Tri Repetae++ a lot more as I suddently was able to notice the subtle progressions within the tunes on it. An album that definitely deserves a listen, especially if you're a fan of abstract art and accept to have your views about what art is about being challenged. Great CD!

The First time I ever listened to this album, I had absolutely no clue what to expect from Sean Booth and Rob Brown, the duo known as Autechre. It had been a while since the absolutely horrible Ep7 and the second peel sessions album, which some of the ideas for this album were first laid out. But after listening to Confield, I was in complete shock. It was an absolutely brilliant album, and in my personal opinion, art in motion. It's definetely more abstract than alot of their previous releases, and with good notion. They completely raised the bar for many experimental electronic artists to follow, and even Autechre themselves couldn't even surpass themselves with their later releases (although Gantz Graf came very close). I will admit, this album is not for everyone, but those who have come to know Autechre know that this is the album that had to happen sometime or later. It's not just the methodology or lack of structure to the tracks, it's the intentional element and the devices used to put the album together as one cohesive whole.
"Pen Expers" is AE for the 21st century, with messed up elctro drums going through granular nonsense that finally connects with organs reminiscent of that of a church choir. "Bine" is singlehandedly the most distinctive and frenetic AE track ever produced, and "Lentic Catatecharsis" puts the album in perspective with with distorted computer voice and meandering synths in the distance. The last 5 minutes of this track are the most unsettling and spastic ever porduced by the duo, and then the album comes to a heart-pounding stop. This is not an album for everyone. This is deep psychological music at its best. buy this album and realize genius.

Perhaps one of the most inspiring albums Autechre has released, Confield expresses musicality in exclusively unique ways. Cfern was a gateway for me to understand just how important their music really was. Its melodic shapes and rhythmic variations are fascinating. The album is important and unlike anything they've produced.

I am a die-hard Autechre fan and completist, so it was only natural that I run out and buy this release the second it came out (and incidentally paid way too much for it in a Swiss specialty electronica shop). Yet when I first listened to Confield all the way through I was left with only one solid impression: WTF? Was this some cruel joke on Autechre's adoring fans? "How far can we push the envelope? Let's put out some erratic random noise and see if they'll swallow it." They'd been slip-sliding down the road to cacophony with each successive release, and I even found Peel Sessions 2 a bit of a challenge in spots, but this, this was sheer nonsense. I'm no newbie to experimental electronica, I listen to early Severed Heads and the noisiest Skinny Puppy audio collage with relish, but I could not for the life of me get my head around this stuff. I tried at least 10 listens in every setting possible, through headphones, through speakers, day, night, loud, low, stoned, straight...and just couldn't get it. I finally gave up.
Now, almost a year later, I decided to give it another shot, since I wasn't going to sell the thing back, as that would leave a hole in my collection. I haven't taken it out of my CD player since.
I'm not going to laud this to the stars as pure genius, but it takes some pretty way-out-left-field thinking to generate something this original. The patterns are there, but you need to be patient. Really patient. One day it will click into place. The noises are undeniably cool, so enjoy them for what they are till you get there.
Even now I'm still of two minds on this one. Part of me says open your mind, drop all expectations, let the sound wash over you and snatch what bits of it that make sense to you where you can. Like the very best modern art, this challenges the very concepts of art itself: what is art? What is music? And also like the very best modern art, it can also be a load of [insert favorite disparagement here]. As one reviewer so aptly said, you can find patterns in fax tones if you want, but can you really be bothered? Rest assured, this is far more carefully sculpted and intricately crafted than fax tones, but it will take a number of listens to convince yourself.
So, one star from the first mind, four from the other, mash'm together and I'll give it two, but rating this album (let alone reviewing it), like the music itself, can be nonsense.
By the way, none of this applies to the first track, which is beautiful and is worth the price alone, just so, upon first listen, you don't totally kick yourself for buying this.
If you are new to Autechre, just to add my voice to the choir, DO NOT DO NOT DO NOT START WITH THIS ALBUM.
For those die-hards who are looking for a challenge, Autechre has served it up on a 6-dimensional-fractally-self-reiterating trapezoidal platter. Now are they laughing at us as we eat it, or not?

Actually, my grandmother overheard me tell a friend that "Confield" sounds like aural Braque. She fundamentally misunderstood and supposed that I was "talking dirty". Anyway, it doesn't matter. She's in prison now with her Neil Sedaka albums.

But I will say that there was mileage in my inter-artistic analogy. I saw a Braque exhibition at the Tate Gallery in London several years ago and Autechre's post "LP5" material certainly resonates with the painter's strain of analytical abstraction.

Or perhaps not, eh? Frankly, I haven't listened to "LP5" since my grandmother threw it on a bonfire back in '99.

Incidentally, a mate told me recently that "Confield" captures the "essence of Sheffield". What an attractive idea! A city associated with bleak industrialism being reprocessed and redefined through the contemporary musical avant-garde!

So I drove down there and stood around for a bit.

He was talking nonsense.

90% of it is perfect... the only track I begrudge Booth and Brown for including on here is track two, cfern. This track is utterly intolerable. It almost seems like a parody of the rest of the album. eidetic casein is sketchy, but it fits adequately, and it is at least tolerable.

cfern aside, Confield is a masterpiece. I resent the opinion of people who think abstract art is only for those trying to look intelligent. I listen to music for all sorts of reasons. I listen to Kings of Convenience while driving on Summer roads in my head, I listen to Aphex Twin's SAW II to think of childhood memories, bad and good, and I listen to Sigur Rós just to witness beautiful humanity. Autechre also has its visualizations for me, and they include layers of silicon and robotic insects trying to hatch from artificial eggs. Not an album for all seasons, but it definitely has its place.

One more point to make: The layers of this album really are not that complicated. It seems to be mostly a study in diatonics, where you have two layers of mix dealing with each other. Mostly it is synths or surface noise, and then percussion. Booth and Brown have said that most of their music on any given album is a solo piece by either of them. You can tell the more percussion driven tracks have been programmed by one person, and the ambients are maybe done by the other. It's intensely interesting to try to figure out what was going through their heads as they made this album. Why did they do it? Maybe because they just wanted to.

I downloaded this album at first, loved it too much, and bought it. It is well worth your money.

There's a line from the Meshuggah song "Spasm" (which vividly describes a photosensitive epileptic seizure) that says, "A wordless thing, a thingless word." Somehow that line feels very appropriate in describing _Confield_, which sounds like the work of robots flipping out on LSD. Or...something. This is...VERY abstract stuff. A standard 4/4 measure is practically nonexistent; splintered beats pulse and burst seemingly at random. Razor fragments of static slice through unexpectedly. Sauntering melodies are minimalist and lazy, sounding lost amid the paroxysm of beats. The slightest hint of a steady rhythm can discorporate into a broken neo-cubist episode without warning -- and indeed, that seems to be an inevitable feature of this album's songs.

On the one hand, it sounds rather incoherent and aimless. From a superficial observation, _Confield_ is not necessarily unlike the avant-garde noise assaults of Merzbow -- although they sound different, both possess the same mechanical harshness and austerity. The key difference is that while I find Merzbow frightening and painful (but I sorta like it still), Autechre achieves something like a rapport with me through with these songs. There is a soft glow that hides in every track (except the last one, which would probably make me run for my life were it not such a paralyzing attack), an invitation to those who seek it. _Confield_ is too definitely unpredictable to be soothing and too jarring to be calm, and yet...there is a peculiar, alien beauty to it. It's affirmatively in the avant-garde realm of electronic music, and most will reject it. But to make it "easier" in any way would violate its purpose and value.

"Pen Expers" is really quite beautiful, a gorgeous melody trying to breaching the turbulence of the electronic blizzard -- "an egg hatching in a hurricane." "Parhelic Triangle" suspends time itself with a throbbing, stuttering bass quake. "Eidetic Casein" has a melody that is most easily discernible, but it is also deceptively inimical to the listener. Trying to latch onto the melody is beguiling, as it subtly shifts like an underwater blur. The details are fuzzy, washed out. "Lentic Catachresis" is heart-stopping, an orgy of mechanical blasts, seeming to be the dialogue -- no, an argument -- between two alien supercomputers. Pretty darn incredible. "Uviol" sounds like new age composed by H.R. Giger, an antipodal tug-of-war between high-ranged screeches and low-end pulsation.

This _is_ music. Beautiful, unusual, tense music. Not for everyone, but definitely for me.

Where can I start? This album is quite simply the best thing Autechre have ever done. Many people say that Tri repitae is autechre's best work. I disagree. It is good for introducing people to the duo, but to me is sounds like a bit of a sampler, and not quite sure where it's headed. Not so confield. This album isn't heading anywhere. It's already there. It just exists. Autechre have come up with an album that to my knowledge exists in an absract realm that no other producer has even tried to explore. It is both chaotic and beautiful. Random yet ordered. Subtle yet obvious. Dark, brooding and thoughtful. To try to make too much sense of the beats, however, is a pointless exercise. This is music you just sit and listen to, letting it wash over you, taking you in the direction it wants to take you. Every song on here is beautiful, and transports you to a different place, a place that only exists in the deepest recesses of your mind. I'm not to sure if this was the desired effect by sean and rob, but it seems to be the effect on most people who hear the album and actually *listen* to it. The highlight for me would have to be uviol. This track is just beyond words. The rolling bassline, tripped out synth noises, crazy time signatures - they all go together to produce perhaps the best track i've ever heard from Ae.
In short, I personally believe that this is Ae's best album to date. It is an incredibly tight production. Whether you like it or not comes down to the question of why you listen to autechre. If it is because of the synth melodies and more conservatively structured beats of their earlier work, you may not be able to appreciate this album. However, if you love all of autechres work to date, and listen to them because they take you on an aural journey like no other group can, then I thoroughly believe that you too will be impressed by this fantastic album. A Classic.

An excellent album. Some of Autechre's best. Very, very strange, not for the weak minded. It takes a while to get into, but it's very rewarding. Pen Expers has drum sequences unlike anything I've ever heard. Bine is just pure genius. All very good tracks.

Should be 4 and a half. This record is Autechre taking chances and moving into more "uneven" ground. The record is not a soothing type like Amber, but is effectively taking the listener beyond where they think they are going. This is not rowdy like Squarepusher or Aphex Twin. Autechre wrote the book with this style of electronic! Bine, Eidetic Casein, Uviol, and Lentic Catachresis are real good examples on the inventiveness of this duo.
A good spin!

While it is possible to analyse this work as a sum of parts: dissected and re-arranged rhythms, not-quite-harmonious melodies, and a structure obviously inspired by twentieth century minimalism, such an analysis would do Confield an injustice. To my knowledge, Autechre don't pretend to be paragons of musical form - they write pop music. It is designed to induce an emotional response in the listener, and at a holistic level, Confield succeeds admirably in this endeavour.

To enjoy Confield, one need only play this disc with high-quality reproduction equipment, settle down and drift away. The icy detachment of the introductory track sets the mood nicely, and the remainder of the record guides the listener through an abstract and yet strangely organic world. Perhaps the best advice I can give is that in order to enjoy Confield, it must be approached without any expectations. Don't try to understand it, as there is almost certainly nothing to be understood, and don't attempt to dig for meaning or carefully hidden musical devices. Appreciate it for what it is.

Four stars.

Despite every cd on this site being rated between 4 and 5 stars, i have learned(to the detriment of my bank account) that this simply is not the case. Of course people may genuinly appreciate this album, and good for them, but be careful! This album has no melody, no charm...in fact, there are no redeamable features what
so ever. The 2 stars accounts for my determination to believe that i got some kind of value for my money.

sorry guys, but this album is atrocious. as an autechre completist I purchased this as an import and realized quickly I had made a huge error. i understand an artist's need to develop and change their sound, but to what territory are these two heading? this is just gross noise and my CD sits on my shelf collecting dust. i havent even purchesed their latest EP because i'm afraid it will resemble this mess. what a shame.
P.S. to correct a previous reviewer, their record label is "Warp," not "Warped," and autechre's first LP is "Incunabula," not "Amber."

I think autechre are geniuses and they have done wonderfully exciting, experimental and cutting edge music. However, just because someone is a genius doesn't neccessarily mean that everything they do is genuis. Case in point: CONFIELD

Confield is just plain awful PERIOD. I think most of the fans out there are suffering from the emperor's new clothes syndrome and are afraid to say: "Hey, Sean ... hey Rob you guys really missed the mark here." Well, I'm not.

As a long time fan I find confield the only release from autechre that I cannot stomach and if I wasn't such a completist I would trash it. Harsh, annnoying, irritating and just plain awful. Essentially this is disc full of nothing. There isn't single sound throughout that is remotely interesting and this is my third review I've written for confield.

Hot on the heels of listening to 'gantz graf', their saving grace latest release, I thought perhaps I missed something and attempted to listen to confield again. It's even worse now than it was before. My parting words guys, fans and whatnot. This is a pretty bad release and if we, as fans, don't voice our opinions and adverse reactions to junk like confield, then we're just encouraging these guys to keep making more.

Fortunately 'gantz graf' is prety good.

Yes, this album is experimental and definitely more daring than, say, anything by the Basement Jaxx (using them as an example since they are probably one of the least liked bands among the autechre faithful). And perhaps this album will mark a shining point in electonic music when people look back 20 years from now and realize how much it has influenced, but I would rather listen to my copy of Rooty many times, corny club vocals and all, than sit through this album on my own with no distractions.

Simply put this album is alienating and ardous to finish. It doesn't make you happy, doesn't really evoke sadness or any other emotions, just mainly makes you feel uneasy.

Also, its undanceable -though that's not a problem- there are very few beats for you to latch onto and enjoy when listening, track 8 has a very annoying high pitch sound like a cricket chirp, etc. It could be better if I were able to latch on to a stand out song, but they all blend together -I'm sure it was planned that way- making it even tougher to like since it takes an hour of your time for appreciation.

What's very frustrating is that there is experimental, original sounding music out there that is also fun and usually inviting to listen to. Drukqs by Aphex Twin has some very off kilter beats but they're encapulated in songs that continually flow and keep your attention, or set apart in little piano interludes. Anything by Squarepusher is usually good and along the same lines of Aphex's style, but with a bit more frentic beats.

Getting away from electronic stuff, Tortoise makes some very good jazz music unlike most stuff I've heard today, same goes for John Zorn, and early 70s Miles Davis is real interesting stuff. Then there's Coltrane, Heribe Handcock, and a massive list of other groundbreaking artists.

Getting into rock music there's Primal Scream, Wilco, the Boredoms, My Bloody Valentine, and many more who've all made good albums that push some boundaries but are still fun to play, old Radiohead is cool too, and there's tons of indie rock out there if you look a little bit that is worth a listen.

Finally there are tons of classic rock albums by Hendrix, Bowie, Zepplin, the Beatles, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello (the staples of namechecked classic rock basically, and many more if your adventurous) that deserve some attention.

Sorry to go on a long, name dropping list of bands, but it was to make a point that there is a lot of original music out there that doesn't go out of its way to alienate you. In fact most of the stuff mentioned is very accessible at first, and then more and more is revealed after each listen ... basically the opposite of Confield. I suggest buying an album by any of those artists instead of Confield if you are just looking for great, interesting tunes that you can enjoy.

If, however, you want ambient, uneasy music that you can take very seriously as a high water work of art and electronic experimetalism, go ahead with Autechre. It does have its merits, but its only for a select crowd.

Confield is probably Autechre's most experimental offering to date, a work too far sighted for many of the witless morons in the music press, but which seems to have garnered some proper appreciation from fans. The experiments on this record are largely studies on the relationship between percussion and atmospherics, with two major trends in evidence: 1)the record begins with tracks consisting almost entirley of percussion, synths and other electronic effects occur more often in the later tracks, until tracks 7 and 8, which are almost entirely atmospheres. 2)Often on this album, the percussion just doesn't agree with the synths, it sounds as if the percussion section of one track has merged with the keyboard section of another, unrelated track. The album kicks off with "VI Scose Poise", a seven-minute experiment in frenzied oddball percussion with only minimal synthesizer tones. Next comes "Cfern" a track sure to discombobulate those ravers who think all electronic music should match the 4/4 tempo and 130-140bpm speed of commercial techno. Autechre varies both tempo and drum speed throughout the piece. While it's a nice track, I felt it went on a little longer than necessary. "Pen Expers" gets my vote as the best selection from this album, featuring an electronically treated violin melody trying (largely in vain) to escape a suffocating cloud of static energy. Truly one of Ae's finest moments. The following track, "Sim Gishel" is the closest approximation to a dance track on this album, featuring percussion with a constant rythm. "Parhelic Triangle" and "Bine" return to the frentic percussion of the earlier tracks, if on a lower key, and match them with electronic effects that would sound more at home on a record of ambient drones. "Eidetic Casein" and "Uviol" are essentially atmospheric tracks with only traces of the madcap percussion found elsewhere on the record(the percussion often sounds as if it is trying to emerge from behind the electronics, particularly on "Casein"). The program is rounded out with "Lentic Catachresis", a return to the pattern laid down earlier on the record, with the percussive elements dominant, and sounds reminiscent of the ghost of a synthesizer melody floating aimlessly in the background.

I will be the first to admit that this is not Autechre's best album. I will say that I have listened to this album more than any other Autechre album though. I am not quite sure why. The first time I popped it in the player, I sat, with a great feeling of confusion. I couldn't really understand how an album like this could possibly be made, or, for that matter, why an album like this would be made. After the initial listen I tossed it aside. One day, as I was sitting watching television, I suddenly had an insationable craving for this album. After putting it back in the player, it began to make much more sense. The rythms and melodies and effects seem to be presented in different time signatures where they constantly bleed in and out of each other, which makes the album seem much more complex than it actually is.

This album is an album of extreme minalism. So much so in fact, that I am not sure what draws me to it, but something does. Other people that I have talked to have felt the same way about this album. It isn't classic Autechre, it isn't the best Autechre, but this is the Autechre album that seems to be filled with a highly addictive substance that keeps you coming back for more even when you wish to leave it be. Of course, other people's body chemistry might be equipped to dislike and totally disregard and hate this album. Those are the lucky ones. Other than that, I can't really even begin to describe this album. Autechre have definately made something very unique that is beyond comprehension. Even after reading the reviews here, the only option you really have with this album is to just listen to it to see if you will like it.

I think that an ape playing an electric keyboard in a steel works factory amongst all the machinery might sound pretty far out, actually.

I have explored many of the artists on the Warped Records label like Autechre, The Aphex Twin, Nightmares on Wax and Boards of Canada, and this is by far the worst Warped Record that i've heard. With the Aphex Twin records and other Autechre albums like Amber, you'll find a very diverse but compelling sound that is completely unique and at the same time deeply listenable. I don't really know what happened here, 1 or 2 of the songs are interesting for about 2 minutes but after that you start to question your taste in music and think "What the hell was I thinking?!?". The best way to imagine what this album sounds like would be to listen to an ape play an electric keyboard in a steel works factory amongst all the machinery. I can understand that some people may be able to get into this album, but i'd really have to listen to this 200 times to be able to understand it, and then it would still bore the hell out of me. This album is definately one to avoid, or at least try before you buy. A much better purchase would be Autechre's first album Amber which is quite a beautiful album, or if you prefer the Aphex Twin's style, then just buy yourself another Aphex album.

In a few years Autechre might be more widely appreciated for having created the greatest music of the 90's; Confield shows that the zeitgeist is with them still.

Someone once described the sound of Scarlatti's harpsichord pieces as "skeletons copulating on a tin roof," and some might find that description not far removed from the metallic ripples that open the first track, "VI scose poise." Viscose is a rayon-like fabric, but what that has to do with this music is open to interpretation. Steel drums, Geiger counters, a haunted pachinko parlor melody.

Track 3, "Pen Expers," revisits the now-familiar Ae formula of abrupt beats and static noise gradually layering with a lush, almost classical melody. It's a great formula, almost the aural equivalent of a Gerhard Richter abstraction.

Track 7, "Eidetic Casein," is possibly the most dancable track here, though that's not saying much. Played loud thorugh a high-end system, there's something almost evil about those giant spiky sea urchins of pulsating sickness oozing out of the speakers.

This is some of the most progressive music I have ever heard. Autechre has a completely unique and innovative approach to songs. They do away with traditional song structures of bass/drums/melody, and create songs that remind me of an electronic organizm warping and pulsating. The songs are so complex that you cannot comprehend everything. You are just immersed in the total composition like a hurricane or some other meteorological anomoly. One of my favorite songs on Confeild is track 3. It starts off with fractured rhythm patterns, and a beautiful melody gradually sneaks in, slowly bringing the song to an amazing climax. The first time I listened to many of the songs, I got a bewildered feeling that I seldom get from music. Don't buy it if you're closed minded about music. Confeild isn't full of hooks you'll be singing the rest of the day. Like Charles Ives once said, "Stand up and use your ears like a man!"

Oooh, two guys doing difficult things with drummachines and keyboards; only the extremely naive buy this just because they think it'll make them look intelligent. This has nothing to do with music. I listen to virtually every kind of music (...) and artists like Autechre, Aphex Twin and Mu-Ziq made stuff I really think is good; the otherworldy feel it sometimes has can be great. But Confield is just a big joke.
Take the first track; it's absolutely unlistenable trash which sounds the same as a couple of wine glasses on top of a spinning washing machine. I bet Confield took a lot of work, programming the beats in the most difficult way possible, but Sean and Rob really wasted their time. It's as uninteresting as it is bad. Avoid it bigtime.