After their most challenging triumvirate - Confield, Draft 7.30, Untilted - Autechre ('Ae') delivered something relatively accessible yet structurally fractured in the form of Quaristice in 2008. Oversteps continues their return from the extreme outer reaches of sound, while paradoxically representing their most interstellar tapestry to date. Yet you'll never feel like you've just been thrown from the airlock and into deep space. Ae haven't produced a record this warm since Amber.
Don't get me wrong, there are still the scattershot beats, trickling half-melodies, and distant explosions of eerie ambient sound. But there are also very few juxtapositions that'll make feel you've been struck with a blackjack from behind; and never are Brown and Booth tempted to let a track play out in a morass of conflicting sounds. 14 tracks, none over seven minutes, and all cut from the same cosmic cloth.
Standout pieces include the vast 'ilanders'; 'qplay', which sounds like a grumpy robot waking up and remembering how to use his limbs; 'Treale' (so good it deserves the capitalisation); and the amusingly argumentative 'redfall'.
When a band has innovated to the extent that Ae have, it's hard to conclude whether they're still doing so, or whether they're simply refining the sound they defined. But perhaps we should simply be glad that with each new Ae release, we're still hearing something we never thought our ears would hear - and so another hidden corner of our mind is mapped.