Autechre at Liquidroom, June 13th 2018

Yabai, やばい. That word in Japanese slang is used to express a reaction to something unique, unusual. It could be used for both positive or negative reactions. My Japanese is extremely limited, but I know I heard that word a lot at the end of this show.

I arrived to the venue a bit after the doors opened. It was a colorful crowd, haven’t seen that many piercings and tattoos at a concert in Japan since I saw Napalm Death a couple of years ago. The foyer was packed, the concert sold out fairly quick. My ticket was number 700 and since here they use a number system similar to the one at hospitals or banks, I knew it was going to be a while before I could get inside the venue.

Finally 700 got called and I stepped in. The place was dark already and the support act, DJ Andy Maddocks, was blasting some techno. I was able to get a second row spot right in front of Autechre’s deck, the place was a lot more comfortable than I expected.

About 10 minutes before Maddocks hit the one hour mark of his set, Sean Booth and Rob Brown walked unceremoniously on to the stage to set up their equipment. The crowd roared and for the following 10 minutes we were not sure whether we were listening to Maddocks or to Autechre. I even thought that there was going to be a seamless transition between the two acts but then the opening act stopped, closed his laptop and waved goodbye to the audience.  

At this point it couldn’t have gotten any clearer that we were at a different realm. The few dim reflectors that were behind and above Maddocks were shut down. Except for the lights coming from Booth’s and Brown’s laptops, the place was in pitch black darkness. The most obvious sign that we were now experiencing the main act set, though, was the music.

The music sounded like nature. It reminded me of the first track on the Confield album. They retained the metallic sound and added water, wind blowing through trees, space growing and expanding. They were either depicting microscopic or macroscopic life. There were no discernible rhythm patterns, just layers and layers of sounds building this organic flow. It’s inevitable to think about the irony of electronic music capturing life in a way that an acoustic instrument would never be able to. The experience is literally like seeing cells through a microscope.

I know deconstruction is a cliched word, but it’s a very appropriate one to describe Autechre’s process of making the audience aware of the artifice. We want things to be organized in certain patterns to enjoy them. Steady beats, beginnings, middles and ends are illusions of structure and order that Autechre put in question through their music. Nature is in the verge of chaos, that’s the overall theme we experienced on this setting, throughout the performance. After getting drums for the first time around the thirty minute mark, what followed was a study of skewed rhythm patterns that culminated in a drums-on-beat climax that got the crowd roaring in excitement.

The show ended after 75 minutes (CD length, hope it gets released) in what it felt at the time as an abrupt ending. In retrospective I guess it made sense to finish at that point, making a full circle to the beginning and closing on a whimper. The lights went back on and the curtains were drawn. I saw a kid completely passed out lying on the floor next to the stage, I thought it was a dead body for a minute, he didn’t know what hit him. Everyone’s faces, mine included, reflected the astonishment of experiencing a one of a kind performance. Yabai, indeed.

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