Autechre - Amber (2LP)

Amber sits in that fascinating early stretch of Autechre’s catalogue where they were nudging out of club logic and into something more oblique. Released on Warp Records in 1994, just a year after Incunabula and a year before Tri Repetae, it captures Rob Brown and Sean Booth still enamoured with melody and reverb, yet already pulling threads that would later knot into their more severe experiments. It’s a record I keep filing under “cold comfort”, both lush and distant, like hearing a shoreline through fog.

“Foil” sets the tone with slow, tidal pulses and glassy harmonics. No rush to get anywhere, just a patient rolling of motifs. The title nod to My Bloody Valentine’s palette feels accidental yet apt, not because there are guitars here, but because the density does that shoegaze trick of covering everything in a single hue. Then “Montreal” drifts in, a shivering cityscape of pads and clipped percussion. It’s not soundtrack music, though people tried to stick the ambient tag on it back then. The shape-shifting sub-bass and little rhythmic hiccups keep you alert, like stepping carefully across black ice.

The centre of Amber for me has always been “Silverside” into “Slip.” The former is pure suspension, chords folding in on themselves while little metallic flecks arc across the stereo field. “Slip” answers with a fragile lattice of melody, almost lullaby sweet, yet offset by a dry tick of drums that stop short of a groove. You can hear Brown and Booth exploring how little is needed to suggest motion. That restraint is a big part of why this album endures; they trust the listener to lean in.

“Glitch” arrives with crunchier programming, but there’s no cheap noise-for-noise sake. The beat scrapes forward while synth tones bend in queasy intervals, like a cassette that’s been magnetised one too many times. “Piezo” pushes that brittle quality further, named after a type of crystal microphone, and very much sounding like it has one pressed against a radiator. Autechre were being lumped into IDM at the time, and sure, you can hear the laboratory mindset, but the heart of Amber beats warmer than that tag suggests. It’s more like industrial archaeology, sifting through rusted textures to find a melody still glowing underneath.

“Nine” is the track even non-fans recognise, and for good reason. It’s a slow bloom, pads breathing in long phrases while a simple motif circles back on itself. Put it on late at night and your room gets bigger. “Further” and “Yulquen” deepen the mood rather than spike it, both built on drifting harmony and small percussive taps that feel more like punctuation than meter. By the time “Nil” and “Teartear” close things out, the album has thinned to a kind of elegant hush. No grand climax, just a gentle fade from cold light to dusk.

This was still the era of The Designers Republic shaping Warp’s visual language, and Amber’s sleeve fits that lineage, austere but evocative, which suits the music perfectly. The duo kept production credits close to the chest, as usual, but the record’s character is unmistakable Autechre, all about negative space, carefully placed frequencies, and a refusal to spoon-feed the beat. Critics at the time clocked the shift toward atmosphere, and in hindsight it reads like a signpost, pointing to the abstraction that would fully bloom on Tri Repetae and beyond.

Spin Amber on a good system and it rewards the effort. The low end is tactile, the mids carry plenty of detail, and the stereo placement is quietly adventurous. If you’re hunting a clean copy of Amber vinyl, you’ll find it’s one of those Autechre albums that seems to live in the shelves of every serious electronic section, which is about right. It belongs next to Selected Ambient Works 85–92, Polygon Window, and other Warp pieces that taught a generation how to listen differently.

If you’re building out a shelf of Autechre vinyl, Amber is a crucial early chapter, the place where their melodic instinct still sits up front. It’s also a smart entry point if you plan to buy Autechre records online, since it bridges the gap between their approachable beginnings and their later, wilder logic. Plenty of Melbourne record store buyers will point newcomers here before sending them into the deeper labyrinths of the discography. And if you’re trawling vinyl records Australia listings or looking through the A section for Autechre albums on vinyl, don’t sleep on this one. It’s not just a time capsule from 1994, it’s a mood you’ll want to return to, the sound of two artists learning that quiet can be radical.