Confield - Autechre
  • Band Name: Autechre
  • Record Label: Warp
  • Release Date: May 15, 2001
Confield Image
Metascore

Universal acclaim - based on 10 Critics What's this?

User Score

Universal acclaim- based on 16 Ratings

  • Summary: One of the preeminent practitioners of the style of electronica labeled "Intelligent Dance Music," Autechre (consisting of Sean Booth and Rob Brown) returns with its first album in three years.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 9 out of 10
  2. Negative: 0 out of 10
  1. 90
    The mind-boggling intricacies and moody, broody sound-sculpting on tracks like Pen Expers find Autechre zooming off, leaving their followers eating cosmic dust. [May 2001, p.110]
  2. Essentially more surgical sonic detritus, it is Autechre nuanced, minutely reprocessed and at the top of their game.
  3. Confield presents one of the purest approximations of "machine music" we've heard yet. It's profoundly unsettling, but that's half its beauty; it's a sonic Frankenstein that refuses to let its plug be pulled.
  4. 60
    They've all but abandoned 4/4 grooves, discarded bass as an inefficient distraction and fractured their beats into splintery beatlets that detonate in flurries. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.105]

See all 10 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 12
  3. Negative: 0 out of 12
  1. Vodkajihad
    10
    Incredible. Pen Expers is the culmination of a promise made by electronic music at its inception.
  2. I listened to this while i was having a vacation in Manzanillo, Mexico. It was 2:00 a.m...one of the most beautiful moments of my life, inspiring, complex, I was astonished, hypnotized. Confield is one of the best albums in the history of humankind. No exaggeration. Collapse
  3. AndrewD.
    10
    The absence of music to create illusions of sounds not there is what Confield (note the field i.e. the music and the con which is the deception) tries to and so magnificently succeeds in doing as an album. This is probably one of the greatest albums of all time, definitely listen. 10/10. Expand
  4. JohnM.
    7
    Autechre has always pushed the limits of musical definition on their albums, and even now, with the uncategorizable Confield, Autechre has instead decomposed their sound, instead of elevating it, and it sounds remarkably interesting. The entire thing is minimalist in every sense, creating a serene mood on nearly every track by painting soundscapes through the overlapping of the most solemn and quiet melodies in history. Yet although Confield remains interesting in an artistic sense, it certainly does not yield multiple listens. It's sound is often tiring and sometimes disturbing after the second listen and the mood, although fascinating when observed like a foreign substance under a microscope, is not as interesting as the electro-funk days of Tri-Repetae++, one of the greatest electronic albums in music history. So, Confield, although quite an artistic achievement on the basis that - Autechre can always come up with something new - is almost too mellow and quiet to fill the desperate need for another action-packed Autechre album. Expand

See all 12 User Reviews