The lurking electronic/rhythm punch that defines much of what
Longstone is up to -- this time around perhaps with more of a
Can-through-
Tortoise-tinged sense of exploring deep dub and funk -- shows up big time on
Auto://Genous. More than once it verges on complete collapse as well, sending the band from the
Seefeel extreme to the
Autechre one in one fell swoop (hilarious moment: a sampled voice saying, "Now sing along!," leading into an eardrum-shattering screech of amelodic hyperdistortion). The conceit of the album is that every song's title begins with the "auto://" phrase, and while there's no immediate sense of direct intent at play, the duo's often crisp, mechanistic, but still supple beats and bass do often suggest a machine getting down effortlessly. The opening track, "Auto://Rotation," is its own wonderful monster, everything from a searing but structured acid funk solo to loud-as-heck drums and bubbling bass resulting in a bit of fried glory. "Auto:Didact" breaks out a clipped, post-jungle beat to unsettled effect, while "Auto://Motive" starts out industrial disco before flowering into a beautifully trippy but no-less-propulsive surge. More than a couple of numbers really cut loose -- the opening to "Auto://Suggestion" consists of tweaked bursts of sound swirling around each other before the slow-crawl pulses and heavily reverbed melodies crawl up in the distance, while the increasingly dank and distorted "Auto://Trophic" could be arrested for tape abuse (if such a crime existed). Then there's "Auto://Erotic," which pushes the aggressive edge of the band to the maximum with its shifting white-noise conclusion, echo adding to the general chaos. The links to the dreamier (and dream-poppier) roots of the band aren't absent entirely -- the tripped-out, heavily treated vocals and guitar shimmer feeding into the steady stomp of "Auto://Repeat" and the calmly creepy zone of "Auto://Psy" are two winners. Early copies of the album include a limited-edition live disc that provides 18 minutes of suitably screwy work.