read a few of the posts on old vs new autechre, and it got me thinking..
the argument of amber vs confield reminds me of robert pirsig's zen and the
art of motorcycle maintenance. he describes an idea of Quality (in the
absolute sense of the word) and how people tend to have 2 distinct views of
what it means. they are classical quality (seeing a motorcycle for its parts
and the system they make up) and romantic quality (seeing the motorcycle how
it looks as a whole). there is nothing intrinsically wrong with either of
these views, they are simply different perspectives.
it seems to me autechre has undergone a shift in the last decade from the
romantic side, to the classical side. amber is based on the beauty of
emotion, and the music as a whole body. confield is more an exploration into
the beauty of the composite parts, and how they can be re-arranged and broken
down. my hypothesis is that those who think romantically like amber, and
those who think classically like confield.
see the trick is to achieve pure quality by having art be a combination of
the two. this is sort of what all artists & musicians (and architects,
scientists, machinists, etc) aspire to throughout their career. very very few
people ever really achieve this, so its somewhat inevitable that not everyone
will all agree. but it may happen for ae (they are very bright), we'll just
have to wait and see...