POLLhelic Triangle -- Autechre :: Confield :: LP6

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.

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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

so subjective

on the other hand - the top two winners are my two favs from this album so I finally became a part of an autechre majority here

Reniform POLLs -- Autechre :: Draft 7.30 :: LP7

yeah bine deserved more but it was never gonna get it. quite surprised at the vi scose poise love though.

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.

― The Great Cool Lulu who sleeps in Riley... (dog latin), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:49 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this ended up being a really fun thread: IDM in 2001

2001 was an interesting year for all this. The main thing going on the experimental front were the new sounds / structures being afforded by the new software. There are a lot of names I wish had come up more on this thread that were shoring up the abstract side of what software enabled from 98-01, every single Kit Clayton 12", Phoenecia, Phthalocyanine, OST. On the noisier front, Venetian Snares, Lesser. And minimal was moving out from BC to Vladislav Delay, Panasonic, Ryoji Ikeda, Sutekh. You could easily go on; it was a wide landscape. Those were the edges moving at the same time BOC was shoring up the nostalgic front and everyone else was going unashamedly conservative & emo tuneful.

if you'd been paying attention to those records, this felt less like the edge than a statement of affiliation. it was almost hard to tell if it was a good record, it followed so much in the footsteps of what a lot of other people had been working out, and what a lot of fans had already decided they didn't like. as it is an incredibly good record, I worry it's kind of paved over the narrative a bit -- it's not their fault the Kit Clayton 12"s are out of print, but I spent last week going back to at least as many records by those people that came out the three years before 'Confield' and they belong in the thread

Autechre 2001 show in Oakland: OST's noise set audible from the street and already making my guts turn over as I walk up the stairs, not even in front of the speakers yet; overhearing one person say 'as long as they play one song from Amber, I'm fine, that's all I ask'; watching everyone get the dancing out of their system to the DHS set; then watching the huge ballroom go from 800 people down to 100 over the course of 20 minutes, and the sound of the applause at the end of the night, half rabid, half confused.

it was a divider, the kind of spectacle you never see at a major venue that was written up in all the weeklies as 'must-see'. the buildup was huge and the stream of people was a physical experience, not just the motion but the way the echo audibly kept expanding as the bodies left the floor. and the way so many people were convinced, the only explanation was that this was being done as a joke, specifically to anger them. and the change in the mood of the room at the 30 minute point as the music, which was minimally staying in place, each 15 minute track using largely the same drum kit; the music really started doing its work, the people who stayed kept moving closer to the bins and to that ridiculous freefloating kick, it just kept getting more interesting

kinda hard not to like these guys

I saw them in 2001 at Brixton. I have no recollection ;_;

Got the mp3s tho, will see if they jog a memory.

Autechre 2001 show in Oakland

I was at this show! Really dug DHS (w/ Jack Danger!), stayed for the whole Autechre set and was, yes, befuddled. Interesting watching dude in dreadlocks dancing to Ae though.

listening to the brixton show. appears to have been recorded by someone standing at the bar.

"and they played voodoo ray by a guy called gerald"
"i can't get jack shit to work on my mac at the moment"
"and he never turned up to my birthday bash!"
"i had the best set up ever. but i never got to dj."

"when's mouse on mars?"
"WHAT?"
"when's mouse on mars?"
"the mean fiddler i think"
"... next month?"

sounds nothing like the oakland show for all i know, but track 2 is brilliant, over the inane bar chatter. starts off with a quite dancefloor friendly pulsating, driving beat, backing some confield-esque underground scraping and revving, which only takes over and dominates the track for the last terrifying 5 of its 17 minutes.

yeah that was the most user friendly track in the set.

just hearing this one for the first time today. it's making me really uncomfortable - like someone constantly flicking you in the ear. needless to say I've never heard music quite like this anywhere and I suspect I will really love this album in about a month's time.

LOVE this record, their best

Great record. Not as challenging as everyone makes it out to be, either.

Would have voted for 'Pen Expers'

The beats on 'Lentic Catachresis' are fucking sublime.

i read a review once by a listener who heard confield as a particularly difficult post-rock / math-rock album, performed with software rather than instruments. they compared the end of lentic catachresis to the extended feedback squeals / hums at the end of certain post-rock albums. since reading that review i've had a hard time *not* hearing it that way.

I listen to this album when I have one of my frequent debilitating headaches and I swear to God it helps. It's gotta be on headphones though

Autechre geniuses: Is there an EP or album that's more in the style of "VI Scose Poise?" I mean of course I like the harddrive crash-breakbeat stuff, but that's also mostly what I know of Autechre (superficially speaking). I just really, really love that one, and "Lentic Catachresis," and stuff that's less schizophrenic / conspicuously noisy

Also, how the hell do you people pronounce Autechre track titles in real life? Serious question. I have very few friends in the real world I can talk with about Autechre, but in that group, we all end up sorta doing our best to pronounce titles phonetically (see also Aphex), which results in me adding "or whatever" at the end of every title (or just saying "you know, the third track on disc 2...")

Same problem I have with titles in foreign languages, of course, but since this is ostensibly english, err...just wondering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuPNwLYrMm0

just after 3'30 on this video Sean and Rob offer some tips on the titles

Whoa, that was cool. lol at "Party Zone." And look at those pants!

> Is there an EP or album that's more in the style of "VI Scose Poise?"

which bit of VI S P? the rattly bit or the nice bit?

rattly bit makes me think of Gantz Graf, the video of which is amazeballs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1RrVa_axRY

For me, this is probably their best work and I really don't understand the "beginning of the end" sentiment in the OP.

This will always be the greatest Autechre video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO9ZY5V461c

Dropp (from ep7) also seems quite similar to VI S P

i read a review once by a listener who heard confield as a particularly difficult post-rock / math-rock album

I've always heard it as their Jazz album myself! That interview video is great. Makes me feel old ...

that washing machine video is great. I know it's random but it's weird how often it seems to sync up (parts flying off in time with the music)

confield isn't the beginning of the end but it's the beginning and end of something. definitely not the end

I'm nowhere near an Autechre completist or anything (the 5xCD box set of EPs usually does the trick when I need a fix) but Confield is an album I return to a lot. I wish there was more music like it.

And thanks for reminding me about "Dropp!" It's buried in the middle of EP7 (and iirc the last song on one of the CDs on the box set) so I'd totally forgotten about it.

Also, it sounds like I need to hear Oversteps. I know the reaction to it was mixed to say the least, but the way it's been described by both haters and fans alike makes me think I'd love it

oversteps is lovely. maybe the most melodic of their more recent output

ehh, gimme Exai over Oversteps. But then the two winners on this poll are my least favourite Confield tracks, the one-two punch of the first two does it for me every time, and Parhelic is really just beyond this physical universe for me.

Every time a thread like this gets bumped I start to think I should just spend my whole time listening to autechre - which is psychotic obviously, but the quality & quantity are there to justify it, plus the feeling that maybe even e.g. Draft 7.30 will eventually click for me. I should certainly spend *more* of my time listening to autechre.

Surripere and 6IE.CR are the key Draft tracks for me. I found the album a bit "eh" until one day I played Surripere at shattering volume, it's suffocating. Also cool to know lots of the album sounds are from samples throwing pieces of wood around in the yard (hence "xylin room").

Also my two favourite Ae videos - the first is official, the second should be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikM9U3St540

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHo6qWxoDOQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEJo2XEACrE

another good one :)

Also, it sounds like I need to hear Oversteps. I know the reaction to it was mixed to say the least, but the way it's been described by both haters and fans alike makes me think I'd love it

doesn't every new Ae album get treated this way? elseq was the only time where people didn't immediately come out of the woodwork to say "I liked 'em better when...", though obviously the sheer length has a lot to do with that. these dudes definitely walk a fine line sometimes. and yes, get Oversteps.