Music Millennium

Sign is Autechre's first new album-album proper since Elseq and contains some of their most emosh compositions in eons, perhaps since Tri Repetae. Practically pocket-sized in comparison to their sprawling torrent of live material and radio recordings in recent years, Sign is a return to the sort of concision found circa Exai and their earlier albums. Effectively they've gotten better to grips with their live set-up, and the hyper ideas found in their work-in-progress demonstrations on the five volume Elseq and 8hrs of NTS Sessions have been refined into moments of crystalline ambient baroque beauty and liquid-limbed swag on Sign.