Band: Autoclav 1.1

Album: Visitor Attractions

Album Year: 2006

Label: Crunch Pod

Genre(s): IDM / Breakcore / Ambient

Band Website: http://sentrymusic.com/autoclav.htm

Rating: 9/10

Tracklist:

Visitor Attractions is another wonderful and dynamic release from the UK’s Autoclav 1.1. Visitor Attractions takes what was started on You Are My All And More and amplifies just about every aspect.

Visitor Attractions is, to be blunt, a fucking amazing collection of music. It is not what I expected from a Crunch Pod release, but that turns out to be a great thing. It’s not stompy power noise, but instead is full of mellow, emotional piano layered with beautiful and atmospheric pads and its rhythmic element comes in the form of slow & dynamic broken beats. Every track is crafted in such a way as to nearly drip with pieces of the human soul. The album opens with “Small Days” which is probably my favorite track on the album. “Small Days” is a really good starting place, and a perfect introduction to the rest of the album. It manages to sound both futuristic and organic…minimal yet complex. It has wonderful huge pads and is full of emotion and purpose. The rest of the album follows suit. Lots of broken beats and melodic sections. It’s not all piano and pads though, there are some uptempo tracks like “this is untitled” that go for a more drum and bass / breakcore sound. Every track on the album is worth listening to, and on a full listen I don’t feel the need to skip any of them. Every track to put together well, and the production is fantastic. Every instrument and sound is fully audible and has successfully found its niche amongst the other sounds in its respective piece.

One of the things I enjoy most about this album is that even though the beats are abstract, there is always a catchy melody for the ear to latch onto, and so the songs remain cohesive at all times. Sometimes with IDM it can be easy to get lost in a sea of glitches and clicks, but I find that it is always easy to follow the relaxed current of Visitor Attractions. Each piece in itself flows well, and I feel that each track flows successfully into the next so that a set of global emotions is carried throughout the album…there are no abrupt changes, say from, a minimal atmospheric piece right to a harsh noise track. The album has its peaks and valleys, but all are gotten to in due time. If you are a fan of downtempo IDM-influenced breakcore-type stuff, than this album is absolutely a must have.

The only real downside to the album is that once you get to tracks like “Dead Sea Tears” and “We All Have A Window”, you kind of feel like you’ve heard it before. It’s sort of like ‘oh, another track with piano and a breakbeat’. Those tracks are still good, but I don’t feel like they have as much impact after you’ve heard the rest of the album up to that point. The other thing is that most of the tracks are rather short (less than 5 minutes), and I feel like I would have liked to see some of them drawn out a bit more and taken in different directions.

I’m not a huge fan of remixes right now, and I was sort of let down to see that the last four tracks on the album are remixes, but of course Autoclav 1.1 doesn’t let us down and the remixes are all actually pretty amazing. I really enjoy the Unter Null remix; it captures the essence of the original while adding in plenty of original material. The only remix I really enjoyed was the Detritus mix. In my opinion, it is exactly what a remix should be…a combination of the sound of both artists. It sounds exactly like Detritus + Autoclav 1.1…I guess it helps that I’m a pretty big fan of Detritus haha.

Anyway, this is a fucking amazing album that will not disappoint. After seeing the evolution from You Are My All And More to this album, I cannot wait to hear the next Autoclav release.

-[.d4n b4rr3tt.]

august 2007