Autechre

Having finally emerged from the dark days of Lent, i thought it would be fitting to have a new mixtape, with an upbeat theme. As i’ve mentioned on previous occasions, dance music has always been a parallel love of mine alongside the avant-garde, and this mixtape will, i hope, prove …

HAPPY NEW YEAR! It’s 1 January, which means it’s 5:4‘s birthday, and today we’re three years old. Having spent several days looking back on last year’s most outstanding releases, what better way could there be to start the new year than with a new mixtape, featuring one track from each …

* Please note this list has how been superseded by the one on the Best Albums of the Years page * Continuing the 5:4 retrospective, and after probably far too much deliberation, here are the first twenty of my forty Best Albums of 2010 (to be concluded tomorrow): 40 | …

It’s been a while since the last mixtape, and i’ve decided to return to the theme of the the first two mixes, music particularly suitable for late night listening. Steve Peters‘ work is always fascinating, and his field recording project Here-ings is a masterpiece. i wrote about it at length …

Back, not so much with a vengeance as a new mixtape; the theme this time is simply electronics. Many of the pieces are rather long, so this mix, more than the others, features excerpts rather than complete works. The mix opens with one of the most exciting electronic works by …

Today 5:4 is one year old, and to celebrate that—and continue the celebration of the best albums of last year, here’s a new mixtape, featuring tracks from each of those albums. Not surprisingly, it’s the most eclectic mix so far, and also the longest, just a few seconds shy of …

* Please note this list has how been superseded by the one on the Best Albums of the Years page * It’s been difficult deciding what i feel are the best albums of 2008. Partly, because i’ve listened to so many (of the 667 albums i’ve listened to this year, …

Early yesterday morning, after a number of the wrong kind of glitches at Bleep.com, the final tracks of Autechre‘s Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae became available. Versions, versions everywhere: and with this – after 44 tracks, totalling almost 5 hours – i think one can assume that the Quaristice project is at an end. …

If music was my first love, then my fascination with rhythm was the first part of that attraction; beat-driven music—particularly early hip-hop and electro—dominated my earliest teenage years. My taste in beats has evolved since that time, of course, and the selection represented here (which may well come as little …

Prior to the launch of Quaristice, Autechre‘s Sean Booth said the following, in an interview with Clash Magazine, concerning the issue of whether to buy the digital download or the physical CD: It makes no odds to me. Actually, it does; I’d prefer (people) to download it than buy it …

While it’s not my intention to create a series of mixtape each intended to be listened to late at night, this new mix again has that in mind. Perhaps i’m just drawn to nocturnal kinds of music; or perhaps it is i that is nocturnal and not the music. Either …

The closest i’ve come to a solitary road trip was last year, when i drove from the cosy shelter of the Cotswolds to the exposed shelf of the east coast. Knowing that, even if i treated the speed limit with my usual agnosticism, the drive would still take at least …

IDM is to dance music as Stravinsky is to instrumental music; discuss. Well, not exactly, but it strikes me there’s something of a similarity, particularly in the way that the underlying pulse is fragmented into irregular metres. This is probably why i love IDM (and Stravinsky) so much, although i’m …