Autechre - LP5

Officially untitled, universally called LP5, the 1998 album sits at the exact hinge point of the Autechre catalogue. Behind it lies the corroded funk of Tri Repetae and Chiastic Slide. Ahead lies the generative, structure-dissolving work of Confield and everything after. This record is the last time Sean Booth and Rob Brown wrote music that still walks.

"Acroyear2" opens with a beat you could nod to, which by this stage in their career counted as a concession. "777" and "Rae" build intricate lattices out of percussion that keeps almost resolving into a groove before thinking better of it. "Fold4, Wrap5" and "Drane2" point toward the abstraction that was coming, all shifting time signatures and melodies assembled from parts that should not fit. It is dense music that never feels airless, largely because the duo were still leaving space in the low end.

People argue about which Autechre album is the peak. LP5 wins more of those arguments than any other, precisely because it gives you both versions of the band at once.

Official Warp Records repress across two LPs. One of the essential documents of late-nineties electronic music.