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Tiny Mix Tapes

With Untilted, it's apparent that Autechre are still on top of their game.

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Lost At Sea

Where inexperienced programmers might collapse under the weight of such complexity, Autechre utilize it with precision. As punishing as it is, it never sounds too cluttered.

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Urb

They still manage to inject their manic bursts of beats with gentle, even sweet melodies immersed deep in the cacophony. [May 2005, p.84]

Playlouder

However, despite all the smarty-pants ideas, let's be clear on one thing. You FEEL this on a GUT level, because 'Untilted' packs a punch that rips through your speakers.

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Uncut

Unlike their many imitators, Autechre's music refuses to relax, ensuring them a longer radioactive half-life. [May 2005, p.106]

Drowned In Sound

While in recent years the work of Autechre has widened to include bursts of melody alongside their cut-and-paste sonic structures, it’s here on 'Untilted' that Booth and Brown get the mixture right.

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PopMatters

There's not a lot here to grab onto unless you're willing to immerse yourself in a world of totally alien sensation. If you are willing to accept the challenge, there is a chance you will find yourself significantly changed by the experience.

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Dusted Magazine

Untilted’s sound is warmer and rounder, but at the expense of sonic and rhythmic scope, initially a disappointment. It’s nice to report, though, that repeated auditions expose a new tightness in composition.

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Filter

A more perfectly askew album will be hard to find this year. [#15, p.99]

Pitchfork

Despite their abstraction over the last few years, Autechre aren't an altogether different beast than when they started. In fact, they're smarter, more refined.

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ShakingThrough.net

Untilted lives up to its title, finding Booth and Brown unbowed in their belief that clinical repetition and street-smart hip-hop beats can coexist in the universe. But it’s a big universe, and there are times when locking onto the exact coordinates Autechre’s transmitting from can be a long, cold and lonely chore.

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All Music Guide

Autechre certainly aren't launching any new styles, and there's no innovative music to be heard here, but Untilted does represent the duo returning to the green fields of their youth after a few years sowing their wild oats.

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Billboard

Since barreling into parts unknown, the further advances made by Sean Booth and Rob Brown have been subtle at best, and the most intriguing sounding bits of their eighth album, "Untilted," usually arrive in the midst of something more familiar.

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The Wire

If anything, however, Autechre have pulled back the throttle on their excursions into the unknown. [#254, p.53]

Stylus Magazine

As mechanised as their rhythmic focus can be, there is flesh, bone, and brain beneath the near industrial barrage of beats.

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Junkmedia

The results are not for the faint of heart – beats stutter uncomfortably, disappear without warning, and practically scratch out the walls of your speakers from the inside.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

As a strategy, Untilted's severe deconstruction plays like a non-starter; as a working method settled on by an act from whom fans would expect nothing less, it sounds like Autechre reshuffling terms that are very much its own.

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The Guardian

It's likely to alienate all but their most ardent fans.

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Q Magazine

Most is all too predictable and finds Autechre stuck in an experimental rut. [May 2005, p.121]

New Musical Express

So listener-unfriendly that it's almost amusing. [16 Apr 2005, p.51]

What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 8.2 (out of 10) based on 15 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Terry S gave it a9:
From beginning to end, just the sort of album to blow away any doubts that the nonbelievers would have about autechre. Alot of people seem keen on bringing up Confield as comparison to anything that ae have done, when really Confield is only comparable to itself. Everything is ALWAYS new. Even when old ideas are reinterpreted, they can only come out more twisted than the original concept. This album just kicks an insane amount of ass without an apology.

zami gave it an8:
A wall of sound that ricochets off the insides of your mind leaving crater marks to marvel over. Untilted is unforgettable, unbelievable and simply unreal!!!

Tod D gave it a10:
As good as anything else they've done. It sounds good, its exciting, its funny, its sad. Music!

BMR gave it a9:
This album proves that its impossible to please everyone. I like it, but I'm not really concerned with Autechre's creative "forward" momentum. Perhaps this is Autechre's neo-classicist album. Ah whatever, just listen to the music and leave the commentary to the critics.

Aramis G gave it an8:
I don't use the word genius when describing pop (like it or not the IDM sub genre falls within the "pop" music genre). Having said that, what Autechre is now, is about as far away from typical pop music as you get while still having itself rooted in pop traditions (repetitive beats, melodies, etc.). Basically Untilted is a morass of layered fluctuating beats that usually give way to or mask a simple melody. Autechre's beats bind them and prevent them from ever really drifting into abstraction. Instead all of the songs tend to "morph" into something pretty different than what they were previously. Conceptually, this isn't anything new for Autechre given that they have been leaning in this direction since the early 90s. If you want to objectively be critical about Untilted (in terms of what Autechre has been doing), basically it is less drone-like than Confield and more cohesive than Draft 7.30. They seem to be honing their musical direction and it is allowing them to have more of a cohesive range with "their sound". Personally I find Untilted to be very enjoyable. LCC, Pro Radii and Sublimit are highlights for me. Pro Radii has an especially beautiful melody and sounds strangely like a hommage to Skinny Puppy. I don't know if I will ultimately like it as much as I did Confield. It really depends on how much personal time I will be able to allocate to focused listening.

Adam X gave it a10:
Stunning. Autechre back to form at last and not without rewriting the electronica rulebook as well. The perfect compromise between Confield and Tri Repetae...

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Untilted

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