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Zero 7
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
Draft 7.30
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 12 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 11 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Warp
Release Date: 08 April 2003
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Electronic
Summary
The experimental English electronic duo of Rob Brown and Sean Booth was able to find enough time while serving as curators of the 2003 UK version of All Tomorrow's Parties to record this, their seventh full-length as Autechre.
Also By This Artist: Confield Quaristice Untilted
Also On The Web: Autechre @ Warp Records
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Uncut
By the time we reach "Surripere" we could be listening to a toughened-up Aphex Twin, poignant harmonies battling against oblique but splintering beats. [May 2003, p.92]
Magnet
The opposition between sonic abstraction and more familiar pop elements like beats, riffs and grooves creates a welcome tension. [#58, p.83]
The Wire
A feast of buried treasure, a flickerframe parade which continually offers up magical fragments of sound, revelatory and transitory in equal measure. [#230, p.46]
All Music Guide
Most importantly, though, the duo has pulled away from the brink; no one ever doubted that Autechre was at the extreme of experimental techno for its own sake, but given a record like Draft 7.30, listeners might actually return for multiple listens.
Read Full Review >Stylus Magazine
It's a mixed bag, to be sure, but even Autechre's clichés are more interesting than nearly everything else you'll hear this year.
Read Full Review >Mojo
Mesmerising stuff. [Mar 2003, p.109]
Urb
Draft's second half will hold more sway over those pining for the minor-key melodiousness of works through Tri Repetae++. [Jun 2003, p.93]
Q Magazine
As complex and remarkable as everything that preceded it. [Jun 2003, p.92]
Junkmedia
Though it is at times a forbidding and daunting listen, piercing through the dense thicket of sounds reveals a wealth of melody and funk underlining Autechre's irregular electro rhythms.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club)
An album that applies Confield's ideas to less embarrassingly stunted ends.
Read Full Review >Pitchfork
An unfortunate combination of familiar methods, beats and timbres won't overshadow the ultimately uninspiring music.
Read Full Review >Playlouder
Whereas 2001's 'Confield' often felt like a thankless task 'Draft 7.30' is often, by Autechre standards at any rate, a much more welcoming beast.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 8.7 (out of 10) based on 11 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Morgan gave it a10:
Nothing special on first listen. However, after getting better acquainted, this has grown to be one of my favourite albums. Have been listening to it about once a week for nearly four years and still haven't tired of it's intricacies. Patience required, but highly recommended.
Andrew D. gave it a10:
Listening to this album felt as if I was being strangled by a robot, the only matter in which I could breath being digital binary, and I just continued to drown in robotic and metallic bliss. Draft 7.30 is probably one of the most experimental albums ever made in the history of music.
D. Talbot gave it a9:
Not as hard as Confield, but still as intense and branching as you'd expect from Booth and Brown.
Chris J S gave it a10:
A brilliant album which has grown on me to become my favorite release from Autechre so far, and one of my all time favorite albums as well. During the first many listen-throughs, Draft 7.30 was a "difficult" experience for me - in the sense that it's a quite complex album. But recently I've started to see/hear it as a very well-constructed whole with a distinct atmosphere that lives on in every track. It's noisy, but not in a "white noise" way - rather, the noisy parts seem extremely precise and deliberate, almost surgical. As other people have mentioned, it sounds almost non-human - like the sounds and rhythms one would expect from machines on a planet in another solar system - rhythms which sustain some kind of complex logic and doesn't surrender into random chaos. Draft 7.30 sounds cold and downright mean at some points, but it's extremely interesting to listen to.
R gave it an8:
This album fascinated me, being one of the first seriosuly experimental albums I heard, and I found it a rewarding experience when you finally learn to like the tracks. If anything, it just suffers from being a little dull, perhaps due to the fact that the synths and the few melodies that they are often lie in the background while the drums make most of the songs. This is not always a bad thing, but not much really jumps out at you here. Although not as ground-breaking as Confield, their previous album, this album 'let's you in' a bit more. Confield was conceptually clever and well made, but musically it is often alienating. Although on the initial listen this sounds just as cold, it is a little easier to warm to I feel. I strongly disagree with those that recommend LP5 above this - inconsistent and mostly rubbish
Paul B gave it an8:
I am not stunned that Confield gained a higher score; after all, it is a much less enjoyable, more abrasive mess than Draft 7.30. That's the point with Autechre fans, isn't it? The less enjoyable, the better you say it is? Well, if you are looking for fragments of melody & rhythm (remember those?) without losing the complex textures and landscapes, this album would be a better place to jump into latter-day Autechre. Very solid.
Christian C gave it a 7:
ae makes some strange ass sounds. you keep coming back for more listens due to the complexity and the challenge of it. if you are new to autechre, check out some of their earlier stuff before draft. much if this stuff disposes of even 4/4 meter
