Amber

The dense, mathematical music Autechre pioneered on their debut album Incunabula is given a new twist on their follow-up, Amber. While percussion took center stage on their previous works, highly evolved melodies and textures dominate here. The spirit of electro still lives in the muted beats, rhythmically complex and strangely funky. But they don't merely provide a background; they meld seamlessly into dense layers of strings, wandering synth hooks, and massive shards of white noise. It's highly intellectual, but by no means is it unemotional. While tracks like "Glitch" and "Peizo" are dense and impenetrable, most of Amber covers emotional territory from quirky and upbeat ("Slip") to melancholic ("Nine"). This highly emotional "machine music," continued to great effect on their later albums Tri Repetae++ and LP5, makes Autechre one of the few genuinely memorable artists of modern electronic music. --Matthew Corwine