POLLhelic Triangle -- Autechre :: Confield :: LP6

Thanks for the link Leeeeee ... after the Autechre discussions on the ambient listening club thread, I realized I needed to revisit/reevaluate the post-2000 period ... once these polls started, I figured I'd better get it done before we finished polling the 90's.

Tough choice here. My gut says to vote for the most bonkers track, "Lentic Catachresis".

fwiw, from the chiastic poll:

"Hub" sounds like a dry run for "Confield" in retrospect ... again, when we do those polls, I'll really interested in hearing what you guys have to say about "Confield" and "Draft 7:30". Because if you can't come to grips with the likes of "Hub" ...

Hub isn't nearly as dense as Confield, and that off-kilter, pugilistic percussion is too dominant.

Nice posts everyone. This album seems to get the descriptive noodle working, and that's something.

Hub isn't nearly as dense as Confield, and that off-kilter, pugilistic percussion is too dominant.

― e.g. delegates at a set age (ledge), Monday, 22 November 2010 17:17 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Disagree to some extent. That irregular approach-retreat whomping sound on Hub is very similar to Confield. Also Chiastic is a much less of a "dance" album in my eyes (ears?) than LP5 or any other 90s Ae.

"very similar to Cfern" I meant.

ach, forget it, that post makes no sense. All I'm saying is Chiastic Slide sounds more like a precursor to Confield than LP5 of EP7.

One thing these polls are certainly confirming is that it's endlessly amazing how differently other people hear things. That 'x sounds more or less like y' can be a radical source of disagreement, even among confirmed fans of x and y, is still a wonder to me.

haha idk ledge, your big Confield travelogue is in many ways pretty similar to mine! We draw more or less the same narrative distinctions.

I'm generally don't appreciate the dancier/poppier ae tracks. It depends a lot on how weird the higher register "melodies" are though. Weirder is usually a bad sign. Wackadoodle doesn't sit well with house/pop

Hip/hoppy tracks are fine with me though

Nice posts everyone
^^

This thread is an excellent read! And it makes me feel kinda bad for picking Uviol because that seems to be the consensus pick for people that don't really like the rest of the album so much, but I love (almost) all of it.

this has become sim gishel vs lentic catachresis for me I think, bine still an outsider

Confield is great reviewer litmus, btw: http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/a/autechre-confield.shtml

Surprisingly enough, the NME kinda gets it: http://www.nme.com/reviews/autechre/4997

Long shot: but does anybody happen to have the fake version of this album which was floating around before it came out? It featured what was ostensibly a Bola remix of "VI Scose Pose"; I think all the tracks were other people mislabeled - Kit Clayton maybe? But I think the moment when I realized that I liked the fake better than the actual album - which I dutifully tried to care about - was when I got off of the Autechre pony.

Is this album the point at which IDM ran out of steam? That might have been part of my problem with this record; but listening to it a couple months ago, I still couldn't hear anything. I don't doubt that other people could, of course, but it stopped working for me.

I think IDM already started to lose its momentum around Drukqs, but Confield may have killed it for good.

I can't put my finger on Eidetic Casein. Apparently there's something to be gained from this track, but it's like listening to those cow-moo-box toys all droning away out of unison. People at the time were saying stuff like it was the most accessible track with the strongest melody.

Dog, listen to "Eidetic Casein" next to "Arch Carrier," and you'll hear why it gets upped as the easy song on Confield!!!

Weird; I've always admired "Uviol" for being smooth, but having relistened this week, I'm actually particular to "VI Scose Poise" a lot now.

cool Leee

xpost
I've always seen 2001 as the "great glass ceiling" year for IDM. Lots of people had said it was dead already, but this wasn't true. Warp and Rephlex were at the peak of their powers: Druqks, Double Figure, Confield, Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, Go Plastic etc were all released around that time and all felt like momentous albums in their own ways. I'd venture the thing that killed IDM wasn't Confield, but rather Kid A.

but Bine is a journey at breathtaking speed, still underground, tunnel walls flashing by, brief glimpses of vast caverns and extraordinary formations, the earth still heaving and booming.

this is a great image. lots of them in this thread.

anyway, the percussive stuff on this album ("Pen Expers," "Bine," "Lentic Catachresis") is really quite intense. "Lentic" in particular edges towards harsh noise territory towards the end. it just builds up to this huge, dense, oppressive blast of sound. but an immaculately rendered blast of sound (of course) that is very much working in the lower registers. (no masonna skree here.) reminds me of some of some of kevin drumm's more digital work in that respect.

but that stuff is a little too unpleasant for me to vote for. went for "Parhelic Triangle". a dense, throbbing banger and I love the chimes that drift throughout the track.

and despite the queasy, uneasy sound on many of these tracks, I found confield immediately more palatable than draft 7.30. I've listened to that one many times throughout the years and have retained absolutely nothing.

Listening to Confield will no doubt remind one of the unbelievably annoying pseudo-intellectuals who frequent museums spending hours showcasing their impressive lexicons as they ponder over the meaning of the most elementary of works.

popmatters review is pretty dumb, huh?

Tried to sit down and listen to this again last night and just wasn't feeling it. I figured my time would be better spent listening to Draft, Untilted or Oversteps - if only because I still don't feel like I've discovered those fully yet (Draft was 2003?? Yikes!). Sim Gishel is the track I think was the one I've been overlooking the most, but really it sounds like a holdover from EP7.

Eidetic Casein still sucks - the melody just sounds random - not melodic or generative or amelodic, just a mess of noises. It's really unpleasant, and nothign like Arch Carrier. Sorry.

I would understand if you called it less interesting or emotive than Arch Carrier, but it's not random, there's definitely order in there. Both the string-like and ehrm soft glockenspiel-esque parts are basically repeated descending patterns, although the latter skips around more than the former.

Yeah, it's those out-of-tune harpsichord-y noises I don't like. They sound like a three-year old got hold of a cheap keyboard. Without those noises and the later bleating siren noises it would be a cool track. I like the quasi-disco strings and the rumbling sub-bass though.

Eidetic Casein is like a detuned Cardiacs - i.e. magnificent - and I'd consider voting for it if it wasn't parenthetical to the album

fairly sure it's on the album

strange thinking how old this album....seemed a pretty monumental release at the time when i'd barely begun thinking about music

tho i seldom play it, rather icy and obviously requires some attention, i'd still rate it near their best

lentic catachresis, probably

(Draft was 2003?? Yikes!)

signs that you are getting older

btw massive cheers to Leee for reviving my ae interest. Yesterday I spent the whole day with Oversteps/Quaristice/Chiastic Slide and had a wonderful time.

One more thing: My perpetual gauge of musical quality is what Geir thinks how many listens an album requires to hit its peak. Confield took about 40.

This was the first Autechre album I bought so I still have a lot of fondness for it even though pretty much all the others I've heard since surpass it in one way or another. I love the brittle prettiness of 'Bine' and 'Uviol' but in my heart I know I've got to vote for 'Pen Expers', such a striking track, it really did mess with my head (in a good way).

My first, too! Perhaps that's why I'm so fond of it.

damn! i didn't even have to ponder this. first track.

totally their best album, hands down.

after a couple of relistens, went with Pen Expers, though I love pretty much every track on this album

I think this remains to this day the album I worked the longest and hardest to really "get". I remember Draft 7.30 being released and thinking it was way too soon, like I'd just gotten my head around this album and they were already releasing another one.

I was pretty patient back then, I can't imagine spending that much time with an album waiting for it to click these days.

there hasn't really been an album quite like confield since.....something with that level of formal difficulty that a lot of people were prepared to persevere with

no matter how much avant/noise stuff i listen to, confield still seems pretty severe...

i mean, this was an album probably a fairly significant proportion of those who bought kid a also tried to like! and mostly failed, but i remember ppl discussing it on the teletext music pages

lol stuart braithwaite used to send messages to planet music, 'the ghetto internet', lol him

confield >>>>>>>>>>loads>>>>>>>>>> kid a obv

the only track i like is VI scose poise so that.

Pen Expers is an audible representation of rape in my opinion. The way the high pitched noises get silenced by the lower register noises which get more and more violent. It is a piece of art and I enjoy listening to it (2nd fav track).

I think this remains to this day the album I worked the longest and hardest to really "get". [...]

I was pretty patient back then, I can't imagine spending that much time with an album waiting for it to click these days.

My experience exactly.

btw massive cheers to Leee for reviving my ae interest

Also, the chance to make stupid puns.

Pen Expers is an audible representation of rape in my opinion.

wtf? sounds like a fuckin jam to me. ecstatic even.

i dunno how to pick here but might have to do parahelic. i like the underwater carousel image upthread but i always thought it sounded like something digging and digging

Does anyone know from where the drum sound in Pen Expers is sampled? For some reason I think it's an early hip hop track but icbw.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

forgot to vote :(

would have probably given lentic the win although sim gishel was certainly in consideration

I ws the lone "Sim Gishel" vote I guess.

Can never remember if I'd voted for something at the start tho, which wd perhaps have been "Lentic"

the two songs with 0 are both pretty good - bine especially deserves more

Voting for individual tracks is a bit pointless for most of their albums,

yeah

DL is OTM in describing this as "organic". I love how they sampled rubber bands wrapped around a shoe box for Parhelic Triangle, and the use of sampled bell sounds on that same track and Cfern. Some of the sounds and textures are never used again in their later work.

Also agree with frogbs describing this in the context of each track being its own room in a museum exhibit. Their music definitely began to sound "sculptural" starting here. Sometimes I feel like this album is their actual debut, and everything prior was under a different band name.

BTW - back in 2001 I'd have picked Uviol or Pen Expers. Now, I'd probably go for Parhelic Triangle or Eidetic Casein. The former is one of the most compelling and unique tracks they've ever composed.

yeah Parhelic is top 5 Ae for sure. If forced, I would probably choose this as *the* Autechre album, although I love their recent work too. It's the first album where they discarded dance rhythms altogether. Altho I love their bangers and boom-bap workouts, this is the emergence of their own unique and untouchable thing.

Huh, did they really sample those things, octobeard? I can definitely hear the rubber bands. Super interesting as I rarely think of Autechre as being sample-driven

Their music definitely began to sound "sculptural" starting here.

what does this mean?

xp yes, it was mentioned in the WATMM AMA years ago. I don't have a link to the comment.

They've used samples a lot. Decco loc's beats are apparently wood and rubber sounds recorded. I believe Rob mentioned some field recordings of NYC were samples used in M39 Diffain. A tissue was draped over a microphone for the static textures of Rettic AC. Clearly some wood creak samples in M4 Lema

Much of Draft 7.30 uses samples of wooden blocks - "xylin room" being a direct reference to this.

yeah I don't know for sure, but I'd bet the marble bounce sounds in Krib are also samples rather than DSP per se too.

BTW that song is seriously gorgeous.

Listening to that track now, and it’s gorgeous and uniquely weird.

It’s been ages and ages since I last listened to Draft, which was the first AE I reviewed professionally. At the time it wasn’t thrilling me … but in retrospect, yeah, there was definitely a wood on wood vibe.

It’s a little arid for my taste, but “surripere” is immense if you crank it up

I love Krib

Maybe that's why I'm not so hot on Vi Scose Poise - I feel they perfected a similar idea with Krib a few years before

Draft and Untilted have massively massively grown on me since they first came out. I really didn't think much of them at all and for a long time figured Ae had lost the plot.
They're among my favourites now

How have I never seen this before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tiVmPXNzdM

Watching this, it dawned on me that Cfern is conceptually very similar to Miles Davis' Nefertiti, a modern jazz tune which is notable for the melodic instruments (the horns) staying anchored to a similarly-repeating cycle without any solos while the rhythm section (bass, drums, piano) improvise around them