PARISH, SHANE - AUTECHRE GUITAR (2LP)

This record shouldn't, strictly speaking, be possible at all. It's not just that Autechre's music is electronic and Shane Parish's is acoustic. It's not just that Autechre come from electro and techno, while Shane's solo guitar music is rooted in jazz, folk, and the blues. Those borders, between mediums and genres, are as porous as you want them to be. But Autechre are synonymous with difficulty, opacity, inscrutability-known for unparseable rhythms, cryptic riffs, and shapeshifting timbres. Even on their early records, before they'd begun building out the mind-bending software systems that have defined the past quarter-century of their music, the duo of Sean Booth and Rob Brown were working at the very limits of their machines: eking melodies out of drum sounds, programming intricate polyrhythms of superhuman complexity, and writing sequences that defy attempts to decipher them. I've been listening to "Yulquen" for 31 years, and I still couldn't tell you just what is happening between the melody and the beat; try as I might, I simply can't count out the steps. The material on Autechre Guitar is drawn entirely from the 1990s-specifically, from the albums Incunabula ("Maetl," "Eggshell," "Bike," "Lowride"), Amber ("Slip," "Nine," "Yulquen"), Tri Repetae ("Eutow," "Clipper"), and LP5 ("Corc"). The reason is simple: That's the melodic golden age of Autechre, when Booth and Brown were writing hooks that would go down as some of the most enduring, and emotionally satisfying, in the past three decades of electronic music. Shane has done a remarkable job of capturing those melodies and translating them for the steel strings of his Taylor 214E-G. Anyone who knows Autechre's "Bike," a dreamy highlight of their debut album, will instantly recognize the melody Shane has pulled out of it, high notes drizzling down like raindrops on the windshield while octaves in the bass swish back and forth, steady as wipers.