Taking Sides: Autechre vs. Aphex Twin

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.

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

srsly surprised, kind of pleased kind of disappointed cuz u know ilm

After AE rolling the last several tronica polls, I'm not too surprised.

Frankly, I prefer "Perlence Subrange 6-36" to SAWII (though I probably only have the US version).

42 cloth eared fools

Can't believe I'm in the majority, what a disaster for anti-populism.

this is versus gd afx twin tho, leee

the same aphex twin who nearly won in this poll

who is your favourite among these celebrated ppl named on ilx site new answers?

vs godard, kelis, other ilx faves

shit i missed this :(

Aphex Twin classic or Dud?

;)

(oh the link disappeared, prolly better that way)

Eh, not an RDJ fan much to begin with.

Anyway, at this rate, we could poll Autechre vs. this kitten and AE would win.

i like both autechre and aphex a lot (meaning i have like ten releases from each that i never listen to) but autechre winning it seems rather wrong imo

kinda like picking a really fine quality knife over a whole drawer of good cutlery

Is that analogy suggesting that AE's discography is one big peak and then nothing? There's good cutlery in AE's drawer. Some of the most beautiful ambient stuff in early career, sure, but I think I've listened even more to the chaotic Drafts and especially my favorite, the (relatively speaking) underrated Untilted - so funky, so fun. Lots of different aspects to them. Sure Aphex has the ambient works and his drill and bass, but he's more of a one trick guy within those two categories. Autechre's tried out different ideas for each of their albums in their chaotic, 'difficult' phase. Which most people don't appreciate as much as their earlier stuff, but back then as well there was a sense of progression and innovation for each album.

Aphex's stuff has aged much worse than Autechre's - hate to say it but it's true. A lot of the values expressed in Aphex's music: extreme eclecticism, confrontational humour (paedo jokes and whatnot), DIY production, seem very much of their time.
Autechre lacked all these, which to many 90s listeners made them seem a little dry and faceless - the typical bedroom technobods getting a sallow tan from their computer screens etc.. Whereas Aphex was always the cheeky, pranksterish face of leftfield electronica - terrorising his poor ma and pa with music made in a a tank or a bank, dressed up as a teddy, screaming at pensioners whilst simultaneously being compared to Mozart in the broadsheet supplements.
People are more attuned to the idea of the "serious" techno producer these days I guess.
There's no social stigma surrounding computers and the internet like there was in the nineties (no longer simply the domain of geeks). And lyrics like "ooh you dirty little boy" or "tampax tampax tampax" aren't so much irreverent as embarrassing in today's landscape.
Aphex Twin was the most up to date musician of his time whereas Autechre's feet were planted firmly in the future, so much so that a lot of their sounds only make sense years after the fact (I'm still getting my head around Confield tbh).

http://media.soundonsound.com/sos/apr04/images/autechremax2.l.jpg

vs

http://www.analoguesolutions.org.uk/concussor/aspics/conc2.jpg

yes! and there must be a million knob-twiddlers out there, how many people are doing incomprehensible stuff with nasa-level control panels? i guess there's a bunch of ae copyists churning out identikit max/msp stuff but that's not what i mean. sean or rob once said that with all the software out there there's no reason for anyone to sound like anyone else. it's a beautiful dream.

I've never heard an Autchre melody that had anywhere near the affect on my that Flim has.

obv melodic beauty is in the ear of the beholder but for me ae have melodies coming out of the wazoo, e.g.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zix0nqrRrJ4

Sicko, Flim is lovely, but I'd say the middle section of Arch Carrier when the strings swell into the mix is as (if not more) affecting. Then there's the melody on Pir. What about the codas to GarbageMx, Piezo, Cichli etc? All big contenders in my book. I used to have one of those stereos with QSurround (remember that?) which somehow only ever worked with Autechre albums.

i dunno dog latin, autechre sound waaaaaaay more dated to my ears. nth generation dsp fuckery and all that pseduo random nonsense seems so early 00s and isn't something that i think will ever make a big comeback. compared to crusty old tape saturated analogue techno which is one of my favourite sounds and never gets old, infact in the current context of techno, those early AFX releases sound better than ever. cf lots of recent surgeon dj sets.

it almost seems like autechre spent all their time trying to make their music random and alive in a way that just naturally happens when you walk away from the computer and start having fun and plugging things in to things. i think aphex got on to that vibe earlier than everyone else.

There's a bit in this Steve Albini AMA on reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/td90c/i_am_steve_albini_ask_me_anything/) that almost veers close to this, Crackle Box:

"Digital recording systems engender a kind of production that is overly concerned with editing and manipulating the sound after recording, rather than concentrating on recording music in a flattering manner to begin with. I don't like the way this perspective tends to flatten out performance nuance. That's the aesthetic problem I have with it."

Obviously 'performance nuance' is v. different between Jesus Lizard and Aphex Twin, but I'd wager that AFX and JL are closer in those terms than AE and JL.

nasa level control panels? that's just a bunch of controllers. i don't hear anything particularly complex in autechre's music, processing wise. especially compared to the acedemics. but then again, why would they attempt that kind of complexity, they're making 'pop music' and those kind of max/msp projects take years.

i much prefer the complexity that arises with a fluctuating current running through wires and modules and your jamming around then your girlfriend puts the washing machine on everything drops a quarter tone for a second and then all your lfos and envelopes go a bit funny. ha. now that's randomness.

ledge, that idm dude i quoted upthread has this blog:

http://rachmiel.org/blog/

he's an instrument designer, very good software instruments, and he's quite passionate about all the software out there 'there's no reason for anyone to sound like anyone else. it's a beautiful dream' stuff.

xxpost Ae always insisted that there was nothing random about their music. Maybe the kind of bangin' analogue techno of Aphex's "Classics" R&S era is having a resurgence, but that's natural retromania at work. Who's to say drill'n'bass won't make a comeback at some point in the next 5-10 years?

If the DSP-fuckery thing sounds early-00's it's because so many IDM bandwagonjumpers were copping Ae's style at that point that the market became saturated and collapsed in on itself (it hurt Ae very badly during their Draft/Untilted days). But they'd been working on and honing that sound since as far back as Chiastic Slide in the mid-90s. I find something like Cichli or Rae have a greater a emotional impact today than, say, 4 or Girl/Boy Song, which I've always loved but offer diminishing returns on the whole. Of course your experience may differ. I certainly overplayed a lot of Twin back then, to the point I prob don't need to listen to much of his work again.

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