Taking Sides: Autechre vs. Aphex Twin

oh fuck, it's on

valuable poll, frogbs

Aphex = first love, a huge influence on me at a young age, practically an obsession
Autechre = enduring appeal, seem to have risen in my estimation and never let up.

This is so tough. Definitely listen to Autechre more now, butAphex was such a big influence, almost religiously so in my younger days. This is like the Beatles vs the Beach boys.

the beach boys

sloop john b vs eutow

This is like the Beatles vs the Beach boys.

Essentially, yeah. I am kind of similar in that the RDJ album was one of those things that kind of changed my life in a way - will never forget listening to that for the first time and getting utterly freaked out. It hit a lot of weird nerves. But Ae seem to have the stronger catalogue right now.

10 years ago I would have hesitated but at this point this is a pretty easy vote for me: autechre

I will say that Autechre never annoys me the way Aphex sometimes can. But then, I never quite lose myself in Autechre the way I get lost in "SAWII." Listening to Autechre to me is kind of like, I don't know, doing math homework. Though of course I also own far more Autechre than Aphex.

It's a tough one.

I feel like I've played those aphex twin albums often enough for a lifetime, but I just never tire of autechre. I keep noticing new things.

Like this is even a competition!

Autechre are ugly as dogs! Aphex Twin is the most handsome man in Cornwall. Come on!

Ask me again in 20 years.

tough one, but it has to be aphex. love autechre, but they can be a bit overly intellectual. rdj's sense of humour makes him the easy choice for me here.

Autechre. Have consistently enjoyed them since I started listening years ago. Every album has its appeal.

autechre, duh

I was going to try to form an opinion but now I'm too busy pondering nakhchivan's q of "sloop john b vs eutow"

currently listen more to ae's 90s work to AFX's and rarely listen to either's 00s work, but since I preferred the Twin's 90s work in the 90s and his 00s work in the 00s, I... just... don't know

That's kind of what pushes it for me, I'm still waiting for him to rebound from druqks

Yeah if he'd never released druqks I wonder what my opinion of him might be today

It's not so much that album, it's his silence afterwards; I mean the Chems, Underworld, and Orbital all had questionable periods and bounced back, I just feel like he doesn't know what to do at this point or doesn't have the patience to write 100 acid tunes a year or whatever

i miss him too but he has no obligation to keep churning out LPs

also, silence, hm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2aws6EbfRk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QGFFIlRtTE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUjOs5jHZiI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dph-bkJL_wM

videos in which the differing qualities of the respective artists are perfectly reflected:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyJfHU4GoOQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAt6jpBmHHM

that's a useful bit of rhetorical compression, ledge

although i think autechre have more gantz grafs than aphex twin has windowlickers

i remember that gantz graf video BLOWING MY MIND at the time. nowadays I prob wouldn't blink. I hate that there's a chewing gum ad on tv at the moment that basically wholesale rips off the beginning of windowlicker.

Aphex, forever and always

ı doubt rdj wıll ever make another serıous LP agaın. hıs dıscontent wıth the scene ıs so tangıble. all hıs releases from druqks onwards are to me the sound of someone who resents themselves and theır scene. ı don't blame hım eıther. the people who go to hıs gıgs and the general attıtude of ıdm fans ıs ımo depressıng. he's always been the prankster, but now ıt feels lıke he's just gıven up all together.

*would love to be wrong though*

Gantz Graf vs Come To Daddy videos might be a harder call (never liked windowlicker, but GG would still win).

odd that both artists are under-represented in the video front.

they ain't exactly charting acts so it's not that surprising.

xp what kind of general attitude would that be? autechre and aphex gigs attract different kinds of people in my experience. or different kinds of behaviour at least.

Never really cared for either one, but at least in the early stages of his career Richard James some decent techno bangers, so that gives him a slight edge, I guess.

"Richard James released"

Not 'cooked' then?

On the other hand, you could say Aphex Twin's influence has been worse than Autechre's, since he was the figurehead (alongside µ-ziq and Squarepusher) of the horrible drill'n'bass sound that tainted a lot of electronic music in the latter half of the 90s – and you can still hear his crappy legacy in artists Skrillex.

"in artists like"

the people who go to hıs gıgs and the general attıtude of ıdm fans ıs ımo depressıng.

I'm rarely one to complain about acts because of their followers, but in some ways this is true. I remember the day I became disillusioned with the IDM scene, some time in 2003/4 at a night at Electrowerkz. I just remember feeling horrible and embarrassed to be there for some reason. On the other hand, when I ran an IDM community prior to that, I met some of the loveliest people imaginable, so maybe it was more a sign of the scene reaching saturation point.

i love them both, but jesus, aphex, easily

yeah the whole "this is so fucking advanced" attitude kills me

the only people that listen to this in America are pretty much Tool fans

what does that even mean, Whiney

via idm dude

"Contemporary electronic music is plagued by near-universal adherence to boundaries and rules: the 4/4 dictum, standard half-dozen effects, groove fascism, dumbed-down melody and harmony, limited sonic palette, and so on. Trembling before rules stifles compositional chance-taking, which causes the dreaded “same old, same old” effect. It’s too rare these days to listen to a new track and think, “I’ve never heard anything like this before.”

That’s because e-musical creators have become too proper and boundary-kowtowing. Don’t fall into the well-behaved composer trap! You and your listeners deserve better. Cultivate, instead, a healthy disrespect for boundaries."

Hahaha! I'd say "the 4/4 dictum, standard half-dozen effects, groove fascism, dumbed-down melody and harmony, limited sonic palette, and so on" produced 10 times more good music than IDM ever did.

I'd agree with that, but "healthy disrepect for boundries" is the key here. Sometimes I feel guys like Venetian Snares and Squarepusher do these things just to do them. At least when Autechre breaks boundries they do so with some internal logic.

I do hate that reasoning because it's so easy to say "maybe seek out some better music, fuckhead?" I mean people extolling the virtues of their favorite music maybe shouldn't be comparing it to Lady Gaga or the Black Eyed Peas, which is the type of music they seem to reference above.

As someone who came to electronic music via IDM, I remember thinking that the (misappropriated) "4/4" styles of house and techno were a bit boring (I would even have gone so far as to say "dumb" at the time). My attitude back then was akin to that of a prog fan sneering at contemporary 70s rock - that it lacked refinement, imagination, musicianship etc... But that wasn't what originally appealed to me about things like Aphex Twin and Autechre - it was the sheer shock of the new, and I soon realised that IDM was starting to ossify into about 3-4 clear categories defined by the major Warp acts. So while Autechre, Aphex, BoC and Plaid WERE making exciting, original music, there were umpteen snooty little bedroom producers making carbon copies of those sounds whilst looking down on an entire universe of electronic music for being "samey". The reason Aphex and Autechre are great is because they sounded like nothing else and that there was method to their madness.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

KitevsPill, what happened to the i's in your second post?

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/0131/index.htm

You've got to be careful with your 'i's in Turkey: http://gizmodo.com/382026/a-cellphones-missing-dot-kills-two-people-puts-three-more-in-jail
(sorry for depressing off-topic link)

autechre have nothing as overwhelming (for me) as 'saw II', but in the long run ('amber', 'tri repetae' or even 'confield') they win. besides, they're also better remixers.

how do people listen to SAWII? all at once or in chunks? i've always found it overwhelming in a bad way.

passively? How do people listen to Perlence Subrange 6-36?

i want twelve eps of autechre's take on analord acid.

I mean, I loved it! And it was better than listening to Autechre goof around in the dark, for sure. But I guess I've always liked their mathtronica more than much Aphex.

"Flutter" is kind of a musical joke and I'd think some other tracks too

what is great about afx is that he can "take the piss" and still end up w a sick track (windowlicker and flow coma remix come to mind)

flutter is the non repetitive beats one?

is that a joek or a *serious artist statement*?

bit of both imo

'it was advised that DJs "have a lawyer and a musicologist present at all times to confirm the non repetitive nature of the music in the event of police harassment.'

I always took it as a joke, and it's a great track besides...

Agreed that Aphex clowns around better than anyone. In fact after the first few years it's the stuff he doesn't clown around on that's lackluster (outside "Flim", obv)

give drukqs another shot, esp the acoustic stuff

Yes, but Aphex Twin is often truly taking the piss! The one time I saw him on live, lying with a laptop on the couch while three giant dayglo bears stumbled around the stage .... ?

― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 9 May 2012 15:36 (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah that's what I mean. I was used to Aphex and his pranks, but when I heard Ae for the first time my reaction to the music was totally, "You've got to be kidding me!". I think it was Fold4, Wrap5 that provoked that reaction actually.

Druqks was okay, but it was the first time RDJ's limits as a creative strength first came into view. It's like listening to 3 different albums on shuffle.

lol @ aphex not having released anything of significance in 15 years. i'm still working my way through all the released/freebie analord tracks. that music is really rewarding on repeated listens. kind of odd how overlooked it all is especially while people are wetting themselves over youtube clips of him playing pretty much the same stuff.

It's like listening to 3 different albums on shuffle.

wasn't there a story that he lost an ipod on a plane full of his music so he released a bunch of it as drukqs

also worth noting steinvord which, depending on who you ask, is either rdj, rdj+squarepusher, skrillex, or some 18 year old from spain

xp ^ lol yea

aphex twin mythos vs. autechre mythos, rdj wins hands down

The Analord stuff is okay, but it's not breaking ground in the same way that nearly all his work up until Windowlicker did. Not that that's a problem - good music is good music - but it seems RDJ is now more at ease with expanding on and deconstructing old acid and rave tropes than pioneering new ideas like he used to.

the analord tracks are really good, the best of them are as good as anything else he's done really

maybe releasing it all the Analord stuff on expensive, limited vinyl wasn't a smart move? because I would agree, that stuff is plenty good

"Chosen Lords", in my opinion, doesn't really capture the best stuff, from what I've heard. The thing is that it's really the same stuff he's always done as AFX, neat acid junk that really has the mark of a man who composes like 250 tracks a year and doesn't have much time to work on them, but I prefer the Analords to the Analogue Bubblebaths (which have awesome tracks but as a whole are kinda...eh)

Autechre's image makes people ignore the fact they do jam around a whole lot. How they physically do it in the studio I don't know but Untilted is basically a jam session, there's funk and sweat and freak-outs and it sounds pretty free-form (even if it was planned to sound free). This should've been a more natural critical approach to their music, considering hip-hop roots and all, than it has been. They're fun guys, they just don't look it.

There's no lack of great, emotional melodies in either career, by the way.

About 8 or 9 years ago I read an interview with Aphex where he said he'd thrown out a whole bunch of four-on-the-floor records saying they were useless (or somesuch). Two years ago I saw him play a set of straight-up techno bangers. Guy's pretty inconsistent in interviews, but that made me laugh a bit.

i think your definition of breaking ground is different to mine. i mean he's always taken an older style and put his spin on it. the analord stuff takes established dance forms but beefs everything up with fat analogue synths, and it's not like he's just got a 303 or a pro-1 and a few drum machines, the sound design is pretty unique to him. he's also pushing the boundaries of the form in typical aphex style. hyper dense, challenging music. the same as he's always done. and on top of all that, it bangs like a daddy.

IIRC he claimed he made RDJ album short because he thought long albums were boring, despite having already released SAWII, pretty much the epitome of "long and tedious" (as brilliant as it is!)

maybe releasing it all the Analord stuff on expensive, limited vinyl wasn't a smart move? because I would agree, that stuff is plenty good

"Chosen Lords", in my opinion, doesn't really capture the best stuff, from what I've heard. The thing is that it's really the same stuff he's always done as AFX, neat acid junk that really has the mark of a man who composes like 250 tracks a year and doesn't have much time to work on them, but I prefer the Analords to the Analogue Bubblebaths (which have awesome tracks but as a whole are kinda...eh)

― frogbs, Wednesday, 9 May 2012 16:09 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This. I lost patience with the series as I haven't had a record player (or storage for records) until recently. Plus it's a mammoth collection to sift through. Think the series was good for obsessives, but a terrible commercial mis-step. I'm sure he doesn't give a hoot, but it completely wrongsided fans like me who'd been disappointed by Druqks and would have preferred an approach like ICBYD.

I'm not sure how much he cares about commercial success, but is he really still just living off money from his 1996-1998 heyday? It's not like he tours much.

probably.

radiohead fans

He must make a fair amount of dosh each time there's a TV documentary about the paranormal.

plus I guess pretty much everything from SAWII was licensed out

IIRC they used "4" in some kind of anti-drug advert which struck me as really odd

Orange (?) probably paid a fair few for To Cure A Weakling Child too.

didn't that series "Jam" use a ton of Aphex music

aphex still plays too and probably makes mad $$$ every time he does

afaict lots of retired or semi-retired electronica dudes make a lot of scratch hush-hush on the side doing uncredited sound design for tv, commercials, movies, video games, etc

not sure if aphex is doing that or not but i know a lot of other people are

like who

i know richard devine's stuff is everywhere but he's hardly retired or anything

xxpost I know a handful of local producers who do this - it's very common and good money. Wouldn't be surprised if that's how a lot of ex-popular musicians get their beer money.

i encounter loads of people that say they do this, but in reality they sit around smoking spliffs and maybe do a job or two a year for like an iphone game that never gets released. and there are libraries and companies that specialise in this stuff now.

That's probably what I'd be doing too if I was a washed up bedroom producer. Sounds great.

good autechre article for the geeks

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/articles/autechre.htm

<3

"The worst things are the timeline sequencers where you can see on the screen what's coming up. That really f**ks with your head when you're listening."

one prominent example would be photek - that's basically what he was doing from 2000 to 2010

another two i know about by name are neil landstrumm, who did sound for playstation games iirc, and gold chains, who basically quit recording to do sound design for mtv promo spots

http://oi45.tinypic.com/289m0e8.jpg

ae PWND AGANE by afx

http://www.synthgear.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/aphex_face.png

tlg PWND AGANE by SYNTHGEAR

worth a click through though

http://www.bastwood.com/?page_id=10

i remember that. the venetian snares one cracked me up

yeah i remember hearing about that and thinking it was photoshopped, but sure enough

that face is great. and it sounds otherworldly.

the live face recognition / remapping thing also fantastic.

but i still voted ae.

Is it just me, or is "Clipper" (and I guess other bits of "Tri Repetae") the closes Autechre came to sounding a lot like Aphex, or at least not dissimilar?

Not to me. I always thought that Amber was their most Aphexy album.

In fact, I still think that "Nil" sounds an awful lot like "Schottkey 7th Path."

Keynell

... is awesome

really like the lego feet EPs, probably more than any gescom except the immortal detroit techno masterpiece that is TWO OF

Hah, listened to Confield for the first time in ages, and sure, I can see why folks might think that one is taking the piss.

oi mates some granular synthesis is all over me bloody techno lp im going to make me an orrible post about it to me ilxor chums