Incunabula

Incunabula Artist Autechre Released 29 November 1993 Label Warp Records (WARP17)

Cavity Job (1991) Incunabula Basscad,EP (1994)

Incunabula is the first studio album by Autechre released on Warp Records. It was originally released on November 29th, 1993, as part of the Artificial Intelligence series. It was later repressed on vinyl in 2016, alongside Amber, and Tri Repetae.

History

The material on Incunabula took about 2 years to compile. Sean Booth has later recounted in interviews that Incunabula was “more of a compilation of old material” than an album. Gear known to have been used in Incunabula creation includes the Casio SK-1, the Roland R8 and the Roland TR-606.

The title is a real word, which comes from Latin's "incunabel" to mean a book's first pressing.

Cover

The design of Incunabula consists of manipulated photos of Sean and Rob taken by Daniel 72 and edited by The Designers Republic. The original photos are from taking photographs of a video being played through an out of tune TV (the photos are on the cover [top left] and design for Incunabula). The Designers Republic noted that the designs took days to make due to the slow speeds and clunky nature of pre-layer Photoshop, and that Autechre refered to the finalised designs as "moonscapes".

Tracks

Kalpol Introl

• "Kalpol Introl" is featured in the 1998 film Pi by Darren Aronofsky, but is incorrectly titled "Kalpol Intro" on the film's soundtrack.
• The original version of version of "Kalpol Introl" was much longer before being edited down into the 3 minute version on Incunabula. However, the 15-minute original version appeared in their 1993/1994 live shows (example).

Autriche

• Sean mentioned that a Ensoniq sampling a 606 appeared on "Autriche".

Bronchus 2

• "Bronchus 2" also had alternate versions, namely "Bronchusevenmx24" and "Bronchus One.1".

Basscadet

• The vocal sample is from a live version of Jean-Michel Jarre's "Les Chants Magnetiques 1".
• A bunch of remixes of "Basscadet" were released for Basscad,EP.

Eggshell

• "Eggshell" is an remixed version of their previously released song “The Egg”, which was included on the first Artificial Intelligence compilation in 1992.
• Sean noted that this track was the only track to use the Ensoniq ASR-10 as they were only able to get it near the end of production.

Maetl

• In an early interview on MTV, Autechre mentioned the track title was chosen to poke fun at Australians who call each other "mate". The original working title was "Dudl", after Americans who call each other "dude". In another FAQ, they mentioned that a random day in the studio they just came up with it by pronouncing mate "with an odd sottish accent".

Windwind

• "Windwind" was possibly named because the word "wind" has two pronunciations. Autechre would follow this convention again on Amber with the track "Teartear".

Lowride

• The two major samples on "Lowride" are of Gang Starr's "DJ Premier in Deep Concentration" and Holy Noise's 'The Noise (Extreme Sounds!)"

Tracklist

#	Title	Length
1	Kalpol Introl	3:19
2	Bike	8:00
3	Autriche	6:56
4	Bronchus 2	3:33
5	Basscadet	5:34
6	Eggshell	9:02
7	Doctrine	7:49
8	Maetl	6:33
9	Windwind	11:17
10	Lowride	7:16
11	444	8:55
Total		1:18:03

Links

• AE_STORE
• Apple Music
• Bandcamp
• Bleep
• Discogs
• Soundcloud
• Spotify

Credits

• Rob Brown (producer, writer)
• Sean Booth (producer, writer)
• Geoff Pesche (mastering engineer)
• Adrian Harrow (engineer)
• Darrell Fitton (engineer)
• Richard Brown (engineer)
• The Designers Republic (design)
• Daniel 72 (design)