Wow. Even the vinyl's label pays homage. So these guys were never on either label? Edit: Year = 2006. I think that answers my question :)
2006-2008 was the high water mark for this third-wave dub techno sound. It's really fallen out of favor of late, though some of the guys doing it early on (Andy Stott and bvdub to name two) have moved on to do some really interesting stuff in the past couple years.
I find the sound rather timeless. When I hear it, I feel like I could be content with that level and kind of output from the artist in perpetuity it's so good. But no artist can stand to stand still like that, and I won't get to enjoy high quality output combined with innovation if they do. How many times have I been blown away by somebody like Hawtin or James and then found myself even more taken by new output of theirs years later that was completely divorced from their previous work? I still say Autechre's first album was the best one though :)
Agree that it's a timeless sound, and I think despite the critical backlash against it (just search 'dub' on the mnml ssgs twitter account) there's still a place for it, and DJs prove that out time and again when they trot out the classics (example being Optimo's recent set for boilerroom.tv - haven't heard it just yet myself but people seem to have freaked out over the fact that they dropped "Quadrant"). Dunno about Autechre, myself, only really got into one song - "Pen Expers" - but they never caught on for me, despite the fact that I've got friends who are obsessed. Seems like that might be the problem, there's only two modes for Autechre - ignorant (such as myself) or obsessed :)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the term 'dub' was basically never used to describe BC/CR the first go-round. I always referred to it as 'minimal', as did everybody I know. I may have just been out of the loop (I'm not a DJ). But that's the funny thing about electronica. It evolves so quickly that subgenres and tags are thrown around in a flurry, and I feel like subgenres can be born and die before they even have earned the right to be referred to sometimes.