the Manchester duo’s sound remains singular in the canon—not just of cutting-edge electronic music, but in a section of outer space that few other artists ever venture towards, much less wholly inhabit.
While Philip Sherburne talks about how the album catches the ‘light’:
Even the softest material on SIGN isn’t all that different from the most austere or amelodic material on NTS Sessions; it’s just been smoothed into a form that catches the light differently,
It is interesting to compare this with the idea of music and space. When I listen to Autechre’s abstract music there is nothing that says ‘Manchester’ to me, let alone out of space. It is a reminder of the idea of space as metaphor.