Autechre: Elseq

Go nuts:

Elseq 1
1. feed1 (11:37)
2. c16 deep tread (12:31)
3. 13×0 step (8:57)
4. pendulu hv moda (12:15)
5. curvcaten

Elseq 2
1. elyc6 0nset 27:09
2. chimer 1-5-1 5:03
3. c7b2 (13.22)

Elseq 3
1. eastre (22:15)
2. TBM2 (6:44)
3. mesh cinereaL (24:28)

Elseq 4
1. acdwn2 (11:52)
2. foldfree casual (9:49)
3. latentcall (14:31)
4. artov chain (4:04)
5. 7th slip (6:36)

Elseq 5
1. pendulu casual (9:01)
2. spTh (8:21)
3. spaces how V (9:57)
4. freulaeux (11:06)
5. oneum (11:01)

LAME ENCODED

20 minutes into elyc6 0nset: that familiar "I'm not sure I'm enjoying this - but am I supposed to?" feeling during a first autechre listen :-/

each track has separate art as well - all black circles and square patterns

https://autechre.bleepstores.com/

= Ned's "Go nuts" link up there, yes

(very dark blue, not underlined, just looked like text...)

eastre is like a totally different thing alltogether after the first hour and a half

http://exclaim.ca/music/article/autechre_announce_five-disc_elseq_lp

Double CD and four LP ? 4+ hours?

will it have been confirmed if this is amazing or not

This is a fake release, I can't find the 12 in this.

idk and wouldnt presume to decide yet but from interviews it seems that they work mostly independently and probably each track is heavily the work of one or the other; the first few tracks seem quite heterogeneous xp

c16 deep tread is tiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

will it ever have been revealed which of lennon and mccartney wrote each song

fold? latent? are they referencing their earlier work?

they are more canny than to say.....to extend the analogy, they might all be written by george harrison, the fictional songwriter credited when they didn't want to parse authorship xp

we must be grateful for sound alone

probably some connection between this release and the 'death' of george harrison at the end of last year

This site suggests a physical release is on the cards:

http://exclaim.ca/music/article/autechre_announce_five-disc_elseq_lp

Although how this would be reconfigured to fit on 2CDs / 4LPs is anyone's guess ... Quaristice style edits? Analord style 'best-of'?

The site might just be wrong, of course ...

while my freulaeux gently c7b2

elyc6 0nset is going to be 27 minutes and 9 seconds of XD for you
reminds of francois bayle

Running times of the five volumes:

52:19
45:34
53:27
46:52
49:26

That's 247:38 total. You need a minimum of four CDs to hold that.

xpost yeah maybe. sort of 'Grande Polyphonie' era Bayle hiding under the beats during the first half. I sure do love Bayle. no one ever posts to the Bayle thread.

really dislike the idea of buying a physical edition of this two to five disc album again later, but I was too impatient to wait.

the other two tracks of elseq 2 are also excellent, agitated and glitchy

first impression: they do feel like 5 distinct collections, probably should have split them up instead of just queueing all in one go

lol someone .5 star'd this within 30 minutes of it appearing on RYM

That's 247:38 total. You need a minimum of four CDs to hold that.

Ha whoa I was totally distracted by the high price point and missed how CRAZY LONG this album is. Really glad this isn't the 'repackaged live stuff' I was fearing

did a quick skim of all of it and it's exactly what I'm in the mood for this year

last year I broke down and bought the rest of the roland kayn CDs I didn't have, so all 29 of them have been in random shuffle -- another pioneer of an algorithmic approach to music, where the point is an unknowable flood of so much of it that you stop thinking of it in terms of 'pieces' or 'albums' or even physical media, you stop consciously thinking of it in terms of putting on a specific album. you just engage with it as sound without that record-geek side of your consciousness stepping in to track or map which one's your favorite or which album it is or which stage of his career it is you're dealing with and instead it is all continuum. which is pretty much where you want to be; I don't want to know which disc I'm listening to.

roland kayn isn't on spotify or apple music of course, and those discs were expensive, so there's still a good deal of record geekery going on in getting myself to that space. but as everyone else I know is basically cozying up to the stream, generative music pieces from the 70s-90s is exactly what is helping me deal with living in a world that's making that transition

they were doing something like that with quaristice versions

yeah I still think of Quaristice (Versions) as the quote-unquote "real" album. might have another go with those Quadrange EPs - dunno if I can stomach that 58 minute track again though

Current status

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mdvu5ubs2J1qznncz.jpg

yeah i forget which of the quaristice versions/ep/etc tracks are which, just the generative idea
eastre (22:15) = this feels like it might have been generated from 'altichyre'

Oh well I guess that's where I'll be starting then. When I get a chance.

arright then. let us know what happens

Sure thing kid, if I make it out alive.

Fuck it, I'm gonna splurge on this and then make it the soundtrack for my flight to Detroit

:)

http://cdn1.bigcommerce.com/server2600/szowplm/products/1415/images/5693/Motor_City_Cheer_iPhone_Case__95942.1438129438.500.750.jpg?c=2

ashley must hear this

c16 deep tread is tiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

5 albums. Okay what am I, a machine??

Has it really been 4 years since Exai? Needless to say I'm still just scratching the surface of that one.

Only 3 yrs since Exai

And I'm still finding new stuff in it!

I'm still finding new tracks in it.

Listened to 3 last night. mesh cinereaL sounds like this:

http://www.pocmtobs.com/-%20New%20Folder/Nasa/Dscn0034a.jpg

Also has two quality lol moments, I was grinning when it finished. I yearn for more! I did have a freaky scary dream afterwards but hopefully that wasn't related.

To gear myself up to this, I've been revisting Quaristice and Oversteps, one of the most underrated eras of Autechre for some reason.

Where can I hear whole versions of these tracks? They're cutting off at the 1 minute mark.

Generally involves purchase.

I remember when Exai came out I complained that this was too much autechre to take in at once.

If this trend continues, their next album is going to be 8 hours long

I should point out though, that 3 tracks in, I'm enjoying this very much

mesh cinereaL is primo stuff. have only heard parts of 4 and 5, but it sounded good on the surface.. some of the sounds recalling their late 90s ep7/lp5 tones and textures, and some weird, minimal dub-ish shit. lot of shuddering reverb/decay

End of c16 deep tread is straight outta the live sets.

nobody can shudder a reverb like sean and rob

you know, like the outro of bladelores. and that of nodezsh

Well, just getting around to listening to this... probably heard about ~60% now. Lots of tracks feel like they're missing something. Some are mind blowing and classic. Feels like the Quadrange EP in relation to Quaristice. Or like they decided to release the entire batch of tracks they were considering for an album in anticipation of said album.

While I really love a good chunk of what I've heard so far, my first instinct right now is editing this down to a 70-90 min version of epicness, because it's there.

Some track thoughts:
spaces how V - feels like a remix of an old Oversteps track. doesn't fit the aesthetic, but I do enjoy the overdriven reverb moments
(any of the songs >20 mins) - noodly, too long, and unnecessary
pendulu casual, TBM2 - fantastic ideas and soundscapes that work for 2 minutes or as a starting point, but just don't really go anywhere, alas
pendulu hv moda, foldfree casual - holy crap this is amazing. like career highlight amazing.
disc 4 is my favorite so far

is no one else just a little bit pissed off with this kind of bullshit?

Eh not really, I don't know. I'm happy they're releasing new tunes and I'm happy supporting them in their endeavors. If you assumed a five disc release wasn't going to contain huge swaths of filter, don't know what to tell you. My Autechre friend who I geek out with this is holding off until the physical release and I don't blame him.

Filler not filter. Plenty of filters in this release too though

xpost - according to warp there will be no physical edition

Xxxp - what bullshit? Are you just pissed off you can't stream them?

Yeah I know I've drunk the ae kool-aid but I'm not pissed off that my favourite band have released more material. Did people get pissed off by aphex's soundcloud dump? Ok that was free. Or the Beatles' 12 albums in 8 years?

Anyway, a previously unplanned solo 5 hour drive on tuesday will give me a chance to play the whole thing at decent volume, a rare chance with a baby in the house (10 weeks a bit young to start ae indoctrination).

:)

they're digital champions

haha i'd had a few beers and i was being facetious upthread. Just y'know, it takes time to digest an Autechre release. 5 Of them in one go is like trying to eat a whole pack of crackers in one sitting with no water.

more isn't always more.

and yeah that soundcloud dump was a bit ridiculous too. most of it was rubbish and i didn't have the patience to filter through all 130 tracks or whatever they were in the hope of recapturing what, the old Aphex magic? I dunno, at least with Syro he had the decency to whittle things down to a single album.

it's ok to get one of these at a time if you want

they should probably release another ep so dog latin can liken it to eating approximately one twelfth of a packet of crackers in one sitting

i.e. one cracker. unless it's one of those 'EPs' that's as long as an album plus a 40 minute ambient track tacked on the end.

my point is, is it all quality stuff? really? if so then go ahead and release 10 albums, I don't care, but I find it hard to believe there's a reason for doing this beyond having no filter.

your analogy is weakened because nobody yet knows how much you like crackers

in this case i like crackers a whole lot. especially if they're quality crackers. they can be quite dry though and i wouldn't want to eat a whole lot of them in one go, especially if they're not guaranteed to be great crackers.

i've eaten a whole packet of carr's water biscuits in a single sitting on a few occasions

just on their own like

Surely part of the reason is "why not", right? From a couple hours' listening it's not a random selection of files, this stuff feels of a piece. So why not try banging out four hours of stuff and giving it a go? Maybe going OCD on seventy-two minutes of music every few years isn't the best way to release quality shit.

though not since the factory that made them flooded, an experience likened by one traumatised carlisle councillor to the confiscation of a third of the autechre back catalogue

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/01/carrs-water-biscuits-carlisle-factory-flooding-united-biscuits

feel like the extreme length is part of the aesthetic project

re: Elseq, it's all interesting, at least. i wasn't really into the extended Quadrange stuff (Quaristice is the best of it, imo), but everything here is at least (sonically) marvelous in some way. some tracks sound perfect/fleshed out, while other tracks could be likened to waves crashing/lapping up against land... maintaining the same, repetitive structure, with small variations in color, timbre etc. i'm glad it's not a complete retread of the AE_LIVE material

dl you should read the milton parker post from two days ago where he suggests what they might be trying to do with this
a good post

feel like the extreme length is part of the aesthetic project

― Mordy, Saturday, 21 May 2016 17:02 (1 minute ago)

also with pan sonic / kesto (translates as both 'force' and 'duration' iirc)

THAT'S why I've not been able to find Carr's Table Water in months ffs

matzos are probably the next best thing though they are slightly drier

i'd've liked them to spread it out a bit more purely because £25 in one chunk is a bunch of money (especially for digital files, especially this far from payday, especially in the same month the last DSotMoog box is released). yes, i can buy them individually but it costs a tenner more that way (£7 each vs £25 for all).

(unless the website applies the saving for subsequent purchases like it did with the live stuff. anybody know?)

that too. but alright alright I shouldn't dismiss it before I've heard it and if the idea is that it's an epic as opposed to 'let's just jam around for hours and release it all regardless of quality control' the it probably I'd justified.

i would totally buy something like Kesto for 20 bucks.

the afx soundcloud wasn't "mostly rubbish"... it's not hard to find the good stuff

> i would totally buy something like Kesto for 20 bucks.

was £10 for the mp3s last time i looked. yep - https://boomkat.com/products/kesto-234-48-4

actually, £8 on google play music - https://play.google.com/music/preview/B6ngrii4nbthqvgp3ppsg2gl3be

no i mean i would buy a new autechre set of 3 or 4 CDs. i would never buy a download. but that's just me.

i still have my kesto cd box.

i guess i should say: maybe most of the AFX soundcloud dump IS rubbish.. but there are at least 20 songs of prime AFX magic and that's more than enough for me. it helps if you sort the tracks by "date uploaded"

ty for the matzos heads-up

wait i already knew about matzos

teaching at my jewish regulars' house on pesach got me a free matzo on leaving. i nibbled on it pensively as i walked to the tube. good snack

'such good music...and such large portions'

great. now when I listen to half the songs on this, I'm going to hear distorted, cut-up sounds of crackers breaking apart

that's not a bad thing. i like the theory that this is the excess that didn't make the cut for an upcoming, single-disc album (42 minutes, or 74 min) of ultra psychedelic, super concise tracks that completely fuck with the air/stereo field/whatever. they've been playing with these synesthetic, Klangfarbenmelodic (2/2) sound phenomena for a while now.. the opening part of their Denver set was unspeakably awesome. i hope they documented it somehow

home and finally downloading, nobody making music in 2016 deserves my attention and money more than Autechre tbh

yeah I bought this too

okay two tracks in this is peerless magic fuiud

i mean "c16 deep tread" it's like the swagger of Oasis with like actual music

4 in yeah this is sombre, pendulous, walking in my big black boots heavy stepping stuff, steeped in dub i think

20 minutes of noodly unnecessary excellence

I have only skimmed this so far but elyc6 0nset sounds glorious. Not listened to these for years tbh and it is going down very well.

Judging by DL's comments upthread - I won't bother recommending the Merzbox to him!

there's a quite extreme level of obtuseness in simultaneously loving their music, which would credit them with having some sort of intelligence/tact/aesthetic integrity, and imagining that they could have no possible reason to release this other than having 'no filter' and just flytipping a load of random shit out into the world in one go

not that i would enjoy autechre thread's without dl's obtuseness :)

I'm not really into biscuits

I'm not really into eating at all - I just digest food:p

freulaeux is really nice.. pulse/kick reminiscent of the 90101 variations (Quadrange) and Gas, but with a bevy of crystalline bits woven into the body of the track. that clean synth is gorgeous, and the textures! overall price is a bit steep, but this stuff is worth it. i think all of the mp3s can fit on one cd-r

be nice to have a Chosen Lords-style best of, like Quaristice reversed.. a single cd of 20 vignettes. in addition to the bundle, something material to *hold*

i really relished oversteps/move of ten and then found exai to be often overbearing and tedious. interesting to me so far that elseq seems to aim at similar scopes, durations, ways of working through sounds without a lot of the succor of enjoyable synthy textures, 'melodies', etc., but it is much less anxious about it - i've been playing 1-5 fairly non-stop (so uh 4 times thru) this past several days and it works fairly easily into the territory of a running sonic stream that manages not to become oppressive or annoying. even though some parts of it are really quite annoying-sounding taken out of context.

there are places on the longer quaristice remix/ep material where i can feel like they free themselves of some of the tics and reflexes of their style, and sound more like the impersonalist mood that can often strike one in moments of e.g. pan sonic (though they have their own stylizations), but often i feel like autechre's styles are soooo set in and personalized now that it is hard to hear the music for what it is. maybe some of the lengthier excursions here get away from that in novel ways.

I have a notion about "melodies" that they are patterns of hearing that almost always impose themselves when you listen to the same sound artefact enough times, would definitely argue that ae are exemplars of this

sure, sure

something i like about the new material is how bass- and beat/pulse-heavy it is so there's often something to keep pulling you along even if you aren't feeling something else for the time being - but i tend to get fixated on that and then have trouble hearing the broken-up sound-patterning that's supposed to be melodizing elsewhere

like most of their last several/many years' worth of stuff it all sounds very monochrome to me, probably for related reasons.

enjoyed listening to this release today :-) very groovy

I found myself tearing up at one point, not sure what that was about

no there are definitely some moving sequences imo

Juxtaposition of moods, moments when apparent chaos resolves into something human

elyc6 0nset is going to be 27 minutes and 9 seconds of XD for you

― “bad” mothers, rebel mamas, and other radical/transgressive moms (nakhchivan), Thursday, May 19, 2016 6:42 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this was very astute of you

purchased in LAME format

re: monochrome -- agree in that i think they've been converging on a vocabulary since oversteps or maybe quaristice. their hurtling 90s trajectory was at least in part tied to changes in available production technology, but you can push software about as far as you can imagine now. ditch constraints of physical media at the same time and these freely flowing recordings become viable.

there are places on the longer quaristice remix/ep material where i can feel like they free themselves of some of the tics and reflexes of their style, and sound more like the impersonalist mood that can often strike one in moments of e.g. pan sonic

Is there really such a thing as an 'impersonalist mood' or is it just a style that you don't notice because it fits with your sensibilities as opposed to jarring up against them?

Maybe I should give pan sonic a go though. I gave up on them when I was among roughly half of the audience who walked out during their set at the queen elizabeth hall on the south bank some time in the early 2000s, the punishing son et lumiere, including someone on the stage attacking a large piece of sheet metal with a giant hammer and various power tools, proving too much to handle.

(Subsequent research tells me it was in 2000, they were supporting Scanner (whose set I don't recall), the maniac with the metal was FM Einheit, and it was maybe 30% of the audience who couldn't tolerate it)

xp dunno, could be. i hear a lot of their characteristic style in the rhythms, so i tend to hear their music as more unmarked (not as 'sounding like them') when it is more sparse, slow.

i do like a lot of the characteristically autechreish sounds as well, i'm just saying, they seem to be at a point where occasionally freeing themselves of those, agreeable or not, is notable.

Got round to listening to the opening two tracks on my way into work today. Lovely textures. There's a great vibe to these so far. Not sure whether these compositions needed to be quite so long though as they seem to be riffing on the same idea all the way through but ultimately enjoyable.

I've been going back to Quaristice and Oversteps lately. Especially Quarisitice which I simply didn't spend a lot of time with originally stands out from all the other Ae albums in that it seems to do a LOT with itself in the allocated track length. Simmm, for example is like a whole sci-fi disaster movie unfolding over the course of 5 minutes. Exai, and even more-so Elseq appears to be more about jamming around textures, at least that's my impression so far.

Having been recently enthralled by Eno's The Ship, I'm kind of wondering what extent Ae use binaural/3D sound in their tracks.

my god the eastre false ending

the bass on some of these tracks is really nice and punchy. even with my little earbuds, I'm sure I felt a bit of a 'kick' as though I were wearing decent headphones.

7th slip is the bladerunner soundtrack of our dreams

ditch constraints of physical media at the same time and these freely flowing recordings become viable.

Interesting, though, that they've stayed within the limits of physical media in some (perhaps symbolic) ways - each of these EPs is 45-53 minutes long, meaning they could fairly easily be released on CD or even vinyl (with some judicious pruning/track order reshuffling).

I'm only 2/3 of the way through these so far, but I'm hearing lots of snippets of AE_LIVE in this. 'C16 deep tread' most obviously and I'm sure I've heard an edit of 'acdwn2' in them. The opening 6 mins or so of 'elyc6 0nset' appear in various forms at around the 50 min mark of most of the sets.

been wondering if "Elseq" comes from "Live Sequence" or something of that nature

have they given up on naming their albums after numbers now?

ppl seem to think 'eleven sequel' is a thing

xp

the EPs have number titles, loosely, not the albums

getting some nice Rashad Becker vibes off elyc6 0nset right now

xp eh what, incunabula, amber, tri repetae all refer to sequential numbers?

yeah sorry it goes back and forth, "EP7", "Move of Ten" etc

haha okay this track (elyc6) is off its tits

xp eh what, incunabula, amber, tri repetae all refer to sequential numbers?

that's been the theory since whenever but some of these connections are reaaally tenuous (Amber = color of the second traffic light, Untilted = 8 letters) - I think naming no. 11 Exai was just screwing with those people in a way

chiastic slide refers to a chiasmus, which has four components, lp5 is called lp5, draft 7.30 is obvious, basically until quaristice confield is the only one i can't work out

The opening of TBM2 = We Will Rock You

I know it was a long time ago but I was just thinking about how different this sounds to an album like Confield, which has always sounded 'next level' to my ears. Even compared to Exai there's a noticeable leap in texture and modelling here.

Okay so I'm thinking with this album:

Unlike other Ae albums, this is less a 'music to be dissected and re-listened to time and again until you get it' record and more of an 'enjoy the wild ride' type of trip. I don't know how much I'd want to go back and listen to elyc6 0nset but I do know it's a hell of a lot of fun. This is consistent with the length of the album - pick a track and groove out to it for 20 minutes etc. Also with the supposition that this is based on their live show. It's also consistent with something I was told in an interview about them knowing that it 'wasn't fair' on listeners and especially critics who were expected to form an opinion on their music only weeks or even days after they'd heard it. In making this massive album and surprise-releasing it, they kind of get round that problem.

It's the kind of thing I just want to hire out a massive soundproofed room so I can listen to it really really loud just once all the way through. The whole thing's immense in every possible way.

all that does also tie in with Milton Parker's OTM post upthread.

the point is an unknowable flood of so much of it that you stop thinking of it in terms of 'pieces' or 'albums' or even physical media, you stop consciously thinking of it in terms of putting on a specific album. you just engage with it as sound without that record-geek side of your consciousness stepping in to track or map which one's your favorite or which album it is or which stage of his career it is you're dealing with and instead it is all continuum. which is pretty much where you want to be; I don't want to know which disc I'm listening to.

Chimer 1-5-1 sounds VERY reminiscent of Oversteps.

"you just engage with it as sound without that record-geek side of your consciousness stepping in to track or map which one's your favorite or which album it is or which stage of his career it is you're dealing with and instead it is all continuum."

isn't this how a lot of people listen now via spotify/online/phone/playlist/soundcloud mix?

reminds me of when jad fair put out a CD that included like 200 bonus tracks as MP3s. he was ahead of his time. he certainly didn't mean for people to treat it like a regular album.

chiastic slide refers to a chiasmus, which has four components

Well in their words it refers to 'the mercurial properties of the crossfader', obviously evinced in the first (I think) track.

https://media1.giphy.com/media/fatMB8ScpQrDO/200_s.gif

and I'd always read it more along the lines of Imago's definition - a chiastic device has four points. The 'mercurial properties of the crossfader' though? What exactly does that mean?

I'm sure most of the time they do more than push a simple slider to get unpredictable effects but that sounds like what they're doing on cipater from about 2:45 to 3:15.

13x0 step is really *popping*, some peculiar spatial things going on. hearing icy, recycled elements from the cloudline (Exai) in the latter half, as well as that sweet, squelchy synth from tuinorizn. Exai definitely has a grey-ish monochrome quality, but i feel like they softened the edges with the AE_LIVE sets and brought in fresh colors and timbres, more 'organic' elements. there's a general lushness and warmth to the live sets that's lacking on Exai

>isn't this how a lot of people listen now via spotify/online/phone/playlist/soundcloud mix?

it's always been a dangerous pleasure to be have the ability to listen to a piece of music more than once. it's warped our entire perception of what music even is -- technically every time you press play it's a new performance with many different variables.

not like I'm doing anything but guessing but Untilted / Quaristice seemed to be the point where their max patches became sophisticated enough to produce the bulk of a track out through improvisation, with the aux Quartistice releases being the public documentation of the new process. as much as I like the studio albums since Draft, all the original non-album music in their live sets since 2005 have been the most interesting & listenable because it seems like the bulk of where their attention / work is going is on gaining the ability to play complex music in real time. between a 'live album' that is the same piece of music 9 different ways and a studio album that feels more like their live sets, they are finally calling it

the history of live performance in electronic music has always been a bit obscured by the fact that so much of the pioneers work in extended formats that don't lend themselves to easy releases. it's interesting watching this come up in the 'I dream of wires' doc where everyone interviewed mention how they've developed an allergy to recording, but it's an issue with form going back to the 60s & it's only recently through streaming & CD boxes that we've been uncovering the live history, off the top of my head

https://www.discogs.com/Pauline-Oliveros-Reverberations-Tape-Electronic-Music-1961-1970/release/3653950
https://www.discogs.com/David-Tudor-The-Art-Of-David-Tudor-19631992-/release/4590517
https://www.discogs.com/Kluster-Klusterstrasse-69-72/release/3687689
https://www.discogs.com/League-of-Automatic-Music-Composers-Archive-1978-1981/release/1980483

and of course this guy

http://www.kayn.nl/musiccatalogus.pdf

latentcall is proper

i have a friend who performs under the name noise nomads and he will often do electronic sets live. i asked him after a set once if he was doing any recording or putting anything out for release and he said: "wasn't that enough?" referring to his set. he is a rarity in noiseland. sometimes i wish more people had his attitude.

It's cool that electronic music is now heading in a direction that can be fully improvised. I guess there's always been a streak of that with people playing around with drum machines and 303s even as far back as the mid-80s but this is free-jazz levels of improv that hasn't really been seen before.

eastre is almost incomprehensibly brilliant

yeah it's sick

You folks that can talk about specific Autechre tracks by name are my heroes, hats off.

that snare sound on hats0fff is cavern-like right?

it is a matter of listening to songs by the band and then writing comments about the songs

It is a matter of the band naming songs things like 88* d,lm;lm_.

a semi-colon would lie entirely without their aesthetic, as would most if not all punctuation really

can't put punctuation in a filename see

See, I can't win. I think of Autechre albums by name, but that's about the best I can do.

I have a mental lookup table of metaphors - spl9 = that one which sounds like aliens being fought off by a broken 303; tewe = that one which sounds like organising your collection of springs during an earthquake; under BOAC = bridge being attacked by hammers; zeiss contarex = giant slabs of methane ice drifting past a woman speaking French. And so on.

http://p.autechre.ws/proxy?lnk=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.discogs.com%2Fartist%2F41-Autechre

who says they don't have a sense of humor ;)

and here I thought you were talking about 'Fartist'

My 3 year old daughter doesn't like autechre. This is extremely disappointing.

play her this. my kids loved it when they were little.

https://www.discogs.com/Florian-Hecker-Acid-In-The-Style-Of-David-Tudor/release/1723190

My 3 year old daughter doesn't like autechre. This is extremely disappointing.

Even the early era stuff? I'd think a number of tracks off of Incunabula and Amber would be sweet lullaby material. Doubt many three year olds are going to jam to Gantz Graf or feed1.

holy shit, latentcall is an idm track.

also: artov chain, lol. i wonder if it really is.

http://www.factmag.com/2016/05/24/autechre-elseq-review/

autechre fans are patting themselves on the back. i'm still fixed on 13x0, wondering if it was made along with the rest of Exai and left off because it's too straight ahead dope? or too many shared characteristics with cloudline. wtf

this thing (elseq) is just too good.

Finally managed to listen to all of this. This is the most enjoyment I've ever gotten out of an initial listen to an autechre album. It's unclear at this point if this is because this is a more accessible autechre album than most or if I've just gotten better at listening to autechre. Possibly both.

the living room just received a proper routing by c7b2. top track, very chiseling

yeah, I had the same thought about it being accessible but maybe that's just because I've been trying to digest the live sets. i should go back and listen to Exai.

also, for some reason my assumption is that these tracks were more played live than pre-composed, although obviously they put quite a bit of work into the ... hulking musical exoskeleton / landscape in my imagination. maybe off-base.

It's too early for me to single out tracks/"discs" but overall this set is like...spatially/physically AE are flinging about larger objects whereas on the studio/previous albums it was a shit ton of fireworks, ball bearings, jacks. (not the best analogy, I know, will work on it)

yeah i'm fairly sure the four longest tracks on this release are my four favourites [/vmic]

It's too early for me to single out tracks/"discs" but overall this set is like...spatially/physically AE are flinging about larger objects whereas on the studio/previous albums it was a shit ton of fireworks, ball bearings, jacks. (not the best analogy, I know, will work on it)

― Crazy Eddie & Jesus the Kid (Raymond Cummings)

something changed with Oversteps, production-wise.. u can recognize it on ilanderst, the sound is noticeably 'larger' and more elegant, there's a polished stone-like sheen to it. the various atonal slurry/debris (for lack of better words) of their previous albums seemed less magnified somehow, whereas with Oversteps and Exai especially, the sounds have monolithic, macro-detailed qualities, like the bassline/riff on cloudline, fizzy textures of Treale, pixelated patter of Yuop and nodezsh, etc.

nice choice of the small object names, i like it

Quaristice and Oversteps are good examples of the contrast. the production, and the content/activity sound vastly different to me... where there's a lot of micro-detailed activity on Quaristice, Oversteps has these big swathes of reverb and color. the percussive elements of Oversteps are less frequent and they seem to carry more weight.. but that's how I hear it, I imagine it could sound different to diff. people

I'll need to revisit the last few albums/releases, Lowell - I dug Exai a lot at first but a good deal of what they've done post-Confield (which is a totem for me) has left me a little cold, with exceptions. (Never to the point where I don't follow them or get excited when new material is announced. In the back of my mind I always think "I don't totally get this now, but years from now I will, just gotta keep at it.) Elseq is nicely scratching itches.

There are many things that I don't 'get' about their music, but there are a lot of sounds, patterns, and parts that are stimulating/awesome, my interest is maintained. And the WTF-ness of it is part of the appeal. I love LCC, especially the second half. But the first half, while there's that dope, super dry kick/hi hat pattern (nice, aggressive attack), there's still the snare break, that 'KA KA KA' that totally disrupts/retards the flow of it. I don't understand why they did it, I suppose it works somehow? Maybe there's something to it, it just doesn't really flow as I'd like it to. And there's shit like Tess xi, where the beat is just straight up retarded. Maybe there was one time that I heard it and it kind of made sense.

Love the KA KA KA! It doesn't flow I'll give you that, but being sharply checked with three hits to the face every bar is invigorating. Don't have a problem with T ess xi either, seems quite conventional on the surface, maybe that's what you mean by errrrr the 'r' word.

LCC is amazing fuiud

Have any major online publications tried reviewing this yet? I know springing albums out of nowhere fucks with their "release day or bust" strategy but I don't know how anyone can write a coherent review at this point

elseq 3 aka "Autechre and chill"

I'm kinda happy that reviews aren't appearing yet, this can't be absorbed in a day or five

If I've noticed any shift in Autechre it's that they at some point lightened up a little. Maybe that's not the right phrase, but at some point the compositions seemed to get a little more fun, a little looser, a little more ... hip-hop in their production? Less ball bearings spilling out on the counter, more club-y (relatively speaking), which may or may not have had something to do with their live-performance programs, whatever they may be.

I'm a few listens in now and I definitely like parts 1, 4 & 5 the best. That said, 'mesh cinereaL' is an astonishing 25 mins of sound ...

if i had to save two of these parts from a fire it'd be parts 2 and 3 lol

Still trying to figure out 2 but 3 is so so great. Mesh cinereaL sounds better every time - when it comes crashing back after the fakeout ending is a lol for sure. Astonishing how something so dense and convoluted can work so well.

Really feeling the inadequacy of crappy earbuds though. Just blasted it on proper headphones while washing up, great but also terrifying with my back to the kitchen door and my partner supposedly in bed. Aforementioned density means there isn't a single gap through which to hear the squeak of a door or a footstep in a corridor.

Josh in Chicago - I was gonna say, for all their granular complexity, these are still very breaksy compositions and yeah they are surprisingly fun! there's a wicked sense of humour I haven't really heard since LP5 in this one.

I decide to treat this as five separate albums and started at 3. I'm not convinced that Eastre really has enough going on to justify the length, and the second track is really not what I go to Autechre for, but Mesh Cinereal is amazing and that bit 15mins in is about as close to a hands in the air moment as I expected from this record.

Where to go next? Which of the five is most frenetic?

Maybe 2? They all have their moments except for 5 which is mostly ambient dubscapes.

I'm not convinced that Eastre really has enough going on to justify the length

You're periously close to being an old fogey raging against repetitive dance music here. If you like what it's doing why shouldn't it do it forever? If you don't like what it's doing then too bad.

Eastre is juuuuuussssst right thanks.

There are lots of things I like that I wouldn't want to listen to for 22mins. May it'll reveal itself with further listens.

I'd imagine anything veering towards improv will be anathema to you though, not having a pop at you like - just impressions from your music posts.

Nah I don't really have an issue with improv - although I hadn't even thought of this as improv. I just found the track... uneventful after a while and maybe that's the point. I tend to go to Autechre for what they do with texture and rhythm and Eastre struck me as relatively uninteresting from that point of view.

Maybe I made a mistake beginning at that point, I didn't have an actively unpleasant time listening to it, in fact it's quite nice, and yeah maybe it'll reveal more with repeated listens.

it's pretty much a magic-eye poster

realised my player has been jumbling the tracks up a lot and since i'm listening on shuffle I've not been treating it as 5 releases. Is there that much of a theme between each one.

4 is most frenetic

12mins into elyc6 0nset :D

c7b2 is the one I've gone back to a bunch of times so far

more like Lolsuq

ill prob get this, like what i've heard so far

just had a microsleep to oneum and imagined watching an enormous flat starship coming in to dock

Might rustle some jimmies here - but after listening to this album probably wayyyyy too much the last week, I've resequenced it and cut it down to my tastes. Split it into three hourish long "albums" loaded with tracks I like and ordered how I would think they'd be ordered if they were their own respective releases. Honestly, I love that Ae put out this much material so that I could do this. Last day or two I've been choosing one of the three below and listening to it as if they were released as such, and frankly I'm finding elseq so much more satisfying for it. Blasphemy or no.

ALBUM1 ~60 minutes:
feed1
chimer 1-5-1
pendulu hv moda
acdwn2
13x0 step
foldfree casual

This one feels like it could be a self contained progression from Exai, slightly less experimental and more epic in scope song to song. Pendulu and Foldfree are just simply epic high points that peak and close this album perfectly for me. Really satisfying listen start to finish. Feels like the most "traditional" Autechre album of the three, whatever that means.

ALBUM2 ~74 minutes:
mesh cinereaL
eastre
elyc6 0nset

These 20+ minute epics feel like they should live together as one album. I did NOT like them sequenced separately, disrupting the flow of the 1-5 discs for me. The first time I listened to them in this context, I appreciated them that much more. Mesh is the highlight, and opens up and sustains like it should in the context of this arrangement. I really felt the outtro of elyc6 0nset deserved to close out this album, with the beautifully tonal and ambient eastre sandwiched between, a respite from the crazed experimental rush of the other tracks.

ALBUM3 ~58 minutes:
latentcall
artov chain
7th slip
spaces how V
freulaeux
oneum

Pure melodic/rhythmic Autechre ear candy. latentcall might be one of the catchiest and dance floor friendly Ae tracks I've heard in decades. A fantastic energy and flow is established with its breakbeat pace and the epic grandeur of the melodic progression that builds in the latter half is pure bliss. artov and 7th slip build up some tension that gets immediately released with the disc 5 tracks that follow. Didn't change their sequencing here; these three tracks are perfect as is. Freulaeux is a masterpiece and centerpiece of this sequence with oneum being a perfect outtro. I originally had spTh in the latter half either before or after spaces. Felt it disrupted the flow.

That's really well judged imo

The only omission ppl will really carp at is c7b2, if there's an outcry consider it for disc 1

c7b2 just doesn't grab me relative to the rest of the songs above. It's kind of borderline, like spTh. Both feel like B-sides/outtakes.

with you on that rly

The arbitrary grouping/ordering of tracks really rubs me the wrong way. I don't think they're meant to be categorized by 'tastes' or whatever. The tracks have already been sequenced in a definitive order, I wouldn't listen to an alternate sequence unless given a green light by Ae, themselves. Sorry, not seeing the logic there. Also, I find the hard limiting (what is the term for that?) on the tail end of "spaces how V" harsh/irritating, the way the sounds cut out abruptly.. otherwise it's a nicely meditative take on the themes introduced in runrepik.

i think peeps can listen how they want to but obv i trust Ae's aesthetic judgement way more than their critics'

Was just listening on headphones with a Paul McCartney interview on Radio 4 filtering through the gaps in c16 deep tread, took the track to a whole new level \m/

"pendulu casual" giving me major ASMR vibes today

This thread is really inspiring.

i got eastre stuck in my head and it was driving me crazy

Well, pitchfork have failed to recognise this as the landmark release it so obviously is.

well that's certainly taken a shine off it

What are they supposed to do? It isn't some form of indie Americana type shit for starters.

nah pfork's all about the pop narrative

in a really boring way

and that's enough mention of that weak irrelevant shite on this thread

c7b2 is a schaffel tune! The evolving granularity of the downbeat is endlessly enjoyable - the way it scratches and bubbles and scrapes.

and that's enough mention of that weak irrelevant shite on this thread

― Noodle Vague, Sunday, May 29, 2016 12:24 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

seriously, let's focus on what's important here. How's it doing on RYM?

hey at least with RYM you can Have Your Say

anyway yeah

wonder if any consensus trax will emerge from this album

look here I don't want to hear the words "eoy" out of you

surprisingly autechre haven't called a track "eoy" yet

I liked octobeard's post, and agree it's a well argued, err, culling. I may stop short of actually condensing / sequencing the 5 discs this way, but I am very intrigued by his disc 2, which I think, in theory, works especially well

13x0 step/pendulu hv moda/curvcaten is a sweet little run, best autechre since AE_LIVE in Dublin/Utrecht/Denver.. haven't listened through enough yet to determine if the sequence needs a fix, but whatever floats the boat. for comparison, i think the sequence of Drukqs works fine, never thought it problematic and thought it silly to scramble the order. this is an entirely different beast, tho, prob not the best comparison. it's nice everything fits (mp3) on one disc, so i'll just let it run and tune in and out for diff parts. still kinda can't stand that irregular tremolo or whatever it is that causes the sounds to 'short out'/flicker/drop out etc.. same issue with the live material.

I think I'm falling in love.

there's definite harshness/tinniness to mesh cinereaL that makes it a tough listen, though its beautiful in its churning form.. like it's perpetually shedding or mutating. bit harsh, though, yeah

still kinda can't stand that irregular tremolo or whatever it is that causes the sounds to 'short out'/flicker/drop out etc.. same issue with the live material.

― braunld (Lowell N. Behold'n), Sunday, May 29, 2016 4:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can you give an example of what you mean? I assume you mean the "sampler with the wrong voltage adaptor" type sound all over, for example, "pendulu casual?" If this is what you're referring to, I love how this sounds on headphones but I will concede that on speakers it always sounds like something is shorting out. But maybe that's part of the fun!

Count me among those who finds "Eastre" sorta boring (and I hate using that word as much as you hate reading it). It's not the stasis I mind (it's actually not really static at all), it's the fact that the sounds / textures are just completely uninteresting.

Well I find pendulu casual a bit boring (for now). Consider us enemies (for now).

I don't think there's a single track on this that I find boring (admittedly after only 1.5 listens so far), which is I think the first time I can say this about an autechre album since Confield.

As much as I like autechre, I would never have expected this from a 4 hour album. I am very impressed.

I still need to spend more time with 1 and 2 but I'm moving in that direction myself. 4 just blew me away the other night. I get a very Confield-esque feeling from a lot of these, in that they seem less like pieces of music made by humans and more like elemental forces in action - but then there are the superb beats in latentcall and the teasing way they disappear for a good long portion before slamming back, very human and very appealing.

I'm on a coach ride from London to Bristol. Gonna listen to as much of this as I can and document here.

feed didn't move me too much but I was eating my sandwiches. however I'm getting some seriously chilling 'Kill List' vibes off of those high-pitched tinnitus screeches on c16 deep tread. love how these get offset by the deeper resonances of the tuned drums.

13x0 step is giving me some serious c2009 popstep vibes. I almost expect LaRoux to start singing. Luckily she doesn't. Love how the track nearly overloads itself at the start and keeps sounding like the speakers are going to conk out.

pendulu hv mova - the beginning makes me think of trying to discern a distant danchall tune while desperately trying to cling to flotsam after a shipwreck. there's that feeling of being tugged under and then coming up briefly for air, and that constant 'thunk' all the way through like a lifeboat banging up against the ship's hull. see nice intercommy sounds, like a distorted emergency radio transmission coming through nearer the end.

not really feeling anything special about curvcaten right now.

elyc6 0nset - okay I'm going in again on this one. last time I heard it I was walking around a busy shopping centre in the sunshine and ended up feeling really rather peculiar. The beginning is quite Confieldy but IIRC it switches mode at some point into something really rather different

kind of drifted off a bit for a few tracks. Eastre is okay in its droney, Bachian way but doesn't do anything close to enough to justify the length.
mesh cinereaL just came on though and it's picking up the slack again.

in bed.

I think that elyc6 0nset would be a fine choice for the last thing a human being could hear

lol now you're doing this on purpose

those digital death-squeals, petering out into an infinity of silent bliss...

hahahahaha

so far I think c16 deep tread is my favourite but we got where we were going by the end of elseq 3

shame... esleq 4 is my favorite of the bunch. you're in for a treat with what's left.

lol Whiney at it again: post in 'elseq' thread most like something a serial killer would type

mods really on their game today

one of my favourite things to do is to paste rap and funk tracks over autechre jams. witness 'no type' over 'nodezsh'.

right now I'm thinking missy's 'work it' would sound pretty sweet over c16 deep tread

is murdering people another one of your favorite things? jw

ask the maester column is back on an actual web site:

https://theringer.com/ask-the-maester-game-of-thrones-blood-of-my-blood-bran-samwell-benjen-mad-king-c2f4aeb058ee#.syf5bdi9y

In the article, wildfire is briefly mentioned and it made me wonder whether wildfire could be used against the white walkers

whoops, wrong thread

or was it?

Touring.

love a good murder

this album is killing it

Xxp hooray! Even if they come on at 4am I'm going. Right, off to do some murders.

"oneum" is conjuring up images of some massive metal/stone stylus with several pointed contact points, moving over a stone surface and touching down intermittently, chiseling/scraping the surface, creating those sharp, combed chords and lines of sharp tonal color. lot of heavy friction and sharp, laser-thin vibrations. like nails on a chalkboard, but the abrasiveness is super clean and brilliant. but it's like they spread out all of the good tracks through the five eps, so it's hard to favor one over another (can't pick just one).. though #1 is pretty solid throughout.

ftr the title is pronounced "el seek"

Elseq = LCC

L-Event as well?

Autechre remix of a Giorgio Moroder track : https://bleep.com/release/73267-giorgio-moroder-and-raney-shockne-tron-runr-original-soundtrack

I loved it when they remixed Earth by basically tidying up the sound quality

idk if i ever played the whole of kesto in its entirety but i played the entirety of this the other evening while drinking a nice bottle of burgundy and it was a viable use of a cold shit evening in november (or june as it mendaciously claims to be)

and probably read about some serial killers too, though one scarcely needs herr von weingarten's encouragement in order to do that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Death

I get a very Confield-esque feeling from a lot of these, in that they seem less like pieces of music made by humans and more like elemental forces in action - but then there are the superb beats in latentcall and the teasing way they disappear for a good long portion before slamming back, very human and very appealing.

― I've had Eno, ugh (ledge)

Confield is a good reference point, there's a strong sense of interdependency between the elements within each track, moreso than on Exai where some of the tracks felt somewhat edited, layered, even pieced together in some instances. with elseq there is a stronger feeling of process-based events occurring, as in nature (mold, ecological cause-effect etc.)

just noticed this re tour

PLEASE NOTE THIS EVENT WILL BE PERFORMED IN COMPLETE DARKNESS

oh nm apparently that's a thing they do

in the weingartenian imagination all autechre titles are in caps lock but surprisingly few irl autechre tracks are

sort of like dj martian posts in that respect

mesh cinereal is reminiscent of tri repetae

Mesh reminds me of a stretched out version of Untilted 's Fermium, too

If anyone notices when they announce the london venue can they bump this thread? I don't visit twitter frequently enough to see it there.

got to let's for the Bristol show in November

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/90819-new-source-for-ab-domino-2010/

scroll through for a link to a well-recorded (audience) set in 2010

marked progression from 'beat'-driven/propulsive material to the more ______ sort of sound art of their recent phase (last couple of years).. set is banging, regardless

Yeah I checked that set yesterday. The banging bits are great, sounds like a party.

Ah,RFH for the London show? For ledge who was asking. Might not be such a party ;)/ Come to Brighton, but watch out for crumbling Victorian terraces overhead.

i kinda like the idea of a nice sit-down autechre gig over, say, a freezing 4am car park. #iamold

a matinee would be better still

Where did you hear that? Nothing in warp or RFH sites!

But yep my days of freezing 4am car parks are over and I am ok with that.

Typical ae gig = 2 techno crusties going mental, 200 bald men standing calmly scratching their chins.

Target demographic all about the comfy seats at this point apparently ;-)

Well the seafront in late November isn't a carpark but it is likely to be somewhat bracing. 7pm is kind of a matinee, though

Typical ae gig = 2 techno crusties going mental, 200 bald men standing calmly scratching their chins.

― I've had Eno, ugh (ledge), Monday, June 6, 2016 1:21 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.cielodrive.com/archive/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/manson-03-04-71.jpg

http://www.thewire.co.uk/img/scale/460/561/images/artists/autechre/originals/COVER230.jpg

I've finally come round to the ludicrous fecundity of elyc6 0nset. c7b2 is still an obstacle, so abrasive, actually scary in places. Not recommended as the last thing before going to bed.

elcy6 strikes me as the kind of thing you'd want to hear once, like certain films where the plot twist is what matters most.

Nah it is endlessly fascinating, a self-contained ecosystem, the complex interdependency of flora and fauna, predators and prey, parasitism, symbiosis, decay and regrowth.

it's probably just an algorithm

A sonic realisation of a highly complex and beautiful algorithm <3

RFH in London indeed, good inside knowledge. Early tickets for mailing list subscribers only: s.warp.net/ae-list

that implies 72 hour advance sales on 10th june

the southbank centre website implies tickets are on sale NOW for its members:
http://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/support-us/membership/priority-booking/autechre

oh well, lucky for some.

can't see rfh members snapping up all the ticket tbh

i am tempted by this, but not enough to sign up to a mailing list.

but i don't quite fit the demographic.

i suppose i could shave my head before november.

When I die, bury me with a vintage ipod with "c16 deep tread" playing on a loop

Huge interview with them here:

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2756

Could he (Kanye) be Autechre's MC for the fabled hip-hop album? Or if you got the call would you contribute to one of his records?

Sean Booth: Oh fuck no! [cracks up laughing, then pauses to think] But you know what? If he did call, I think I'd do it, just to get into the studio with him and see his process. I think he's an interesting guy. Psychologically interesting. I want to nail it, find out what strain of narcissism he's got, or how much he's taking the piss.

But no, there is a list of MCs I'd work with. I don't want to start on it because then it's insulting to name one and not all the others. It's a fair old list. There's at least five or six that we'd 100% work with if they approached us, and a bunch of other interesting ones. Just lately I've been listening to a lot of Westside Gunn. He's from Buffalo NY, and it's really thugged out but really brainy at the same time. It's quite Ghostface, he's obviously really into Wu-Tang, but it's a lot slower, and stylised and weird and amazing to me. I'd work with him in a heartbeat, but I don't think he'd go near us—he's just from another world, and I think his music probably sounds a lot better without my input anyway. Roc Marciano—he's another one, he's fucking amazing but I'd probably ruin it. Ahhh, see I'm doing it already, see what I mean? I'd work with Jean Grae in an instant, too. She's incredible, she's a little bit hipster now—just in terms of her audience, not as a person—but her flow is the best in the world, she doesn't get nearly enough credit. There's a few others.

you missed out the young thug bit, lol

great interview. nice to learn that they use each other's software, making each track a collaboration

Great interview.

someone dumped a load of Max Martin tracks on me to try and explain what he was about, and it seemed really, really alien to me, like Nazi youth music or something. I think everyone has a different idea of what weird is

<3

Great interview. They seem like v good guys.

"With this kind of algorithmic music"

see!

"gospel, and rhythm and blues, and jazz, and algorithms. All those are just labels. We know that music is music”

it does appear to be a seated gig...

https://tickets.southbankcentre.co.uk/booking/production/syos/98366?performance=

i like the shout out to James Blake's Untold remix, that track still sounds as fresh and massive as anything.

Love interviews with these dudes. Just seem like regular guys happy to explain how they do the thing they do, vs. piss-takers like RDJ. Though even Aphex has been a lot more forthcoming lately.

If this isn't Autechre's best album, it's close to it. Maybe the highs aren't as high as their best 90's stuff, but there's four hours of it, and nearly all of it is unmissable.

I feel like we're missing 2/3 of what their releases are about since the construction/programming seems to be at least as important as the audio result.

maybe they should include screenshots of their Max patches with each release, along with detailed explanations of each process. honestly though, that's always been part of the appeal with their music.. barely understanding how it was created, as if it was some sort of alien speech or prefabricated construction. Like Pirsig's romantic idea of the thing vs. the classic, or logical idea of it. though it's rad to think about a wildly convoluted series of homemade, interconnected patches, and all of the fiddling, experimentation, and streamlining involved. it def sounds way more fun than playing GTA

"Clapping music" uses an algorithm, which is of course way cool and sick bro, but knowing that doesn't make it sound any better.

oh, totes, bro. toooaaaats

fuck this is great stuff

I went back and checked out the Ae ballot poll results thread again (probably one of my all time favorite ILM discussions), looked at my song and album ballots and want to make significant changes as a result of this record. At least 2 or 3 songs from this release would be in my top 20. I have a feeling a couple others would feel similarly given some of the comments above.

saw a poster for this in shoreditch, lol.

"if it doesn't seem beautiful, perhaps you're living in the past", says the wire. yeah, grandad.

if they play anything like latentcall at the rfh, how will I ever be able to stay in my seat stroking my beard?

I was listening back to LP5 the other day with my o/h (she's coming with me to the gig in November), it's funny because now LP5 just sounds like fairly accessible electronic music. It's fully composed and structured with strong melodic and rhythmic features. Compared to Elseq, which sounds improvised and dense, it's a pop record - maybe even a bit dated? But that's not how I first heard it. Listening to LP5 when I first got it was more of a shock-of-the-new feeling than listening to Elseq for the first time. So I wonder what someone coming to Autechre with fresh ears would make of their pre-Draft stuff today?

And that's another thing: When Draft came out, I found it unremarkable. In retrospect it was DRAFT, not Confield that seemed to kick off the most recent phase of Autechre. Confield ended the Tri Repetae onward phase. So really this is how I've come to think about them:

Incunabula -> Amber - initial ambient phase
Tr Repetae -> Confield - griddy '2D' phase
Draft7.30 -> Elseq - '3D' phase

That said, the developments are often so incremental, it's only until you look back at an album from three releases before that you notice the difference.

Actually, I'm going to double-back on this a bit because I'm listening to Tri Repetae now, an album which on the whole I always had trouble with. Always saw it as a transitional album, one that relied on gritty, grainy mechanised rhythms in order to work. Listening to it now for the first time, this is clearly true. The beats are definitely looking more towards the future, but the underlying melodies (which I'd never truly appreciated till now) are straight out the Amber book. So I'd be tempted to stick Tri Rep in the primary Autechre phase and start phase two around Chiastic Slide.

Chiastic Slide definitely feels like a huge leap forward in retrospect. Not sure what people thought of it at the time (I myself only started listening to autechre after LP5 was released).

is Confield griddy? i remember it being mostly pulseless, with lots of granular synthesis type sounds.

when it came out, confield felt like a hugely different proposition to what had come before. in retrospect, I'd say that it's Draft that sounds the most unlike the previous albums. I dunno. I do need to listen to those albums again.

hah I had the same experience with LP5 - I remember the first time I played it, it felt like the most inhuman, mutated electronic music I'd ever heard.

I think of Confield as the start of the '3rd phase' of Autechre mainly because it's their first release that lacks any 'accessible' tracks.

LP5 was also my entry-point and I found it very challenging (compared with the Orbital / Underworld stuff I was listening to at the time) but it still had tracks like 'Rae' & 'Corc' that I could cling on to. Confield was just start-to-finish horrible the first time I heard it ... love it now though!

LP5 was somewhat challenging, but I still remember the first time I heard it and it grabbed me almost immediately. I was playing games on my computer while listening to LP5 (which I had mostly randomly downloaded because I'd seen their name associated with Aphex Twin, not really knowing anything about them), I was only sort of half paying attention to the music and suddenly archcarrier starts and here was this very accessible track that somehow sounded unlike anything I'd ever heard before. It felt like pop music from some alien civilization.

Yeah I loved it at first listen too. It is indeed very off-putting but in ways that I think are easy to parse - it's easy to describe what's happening at any given moment, at least in comparison to the albums that would follow. Kinda like the RDJ Album, they're just a deviation or two away from being relatively normal electro tunes. Confield was where they started to fuck with literally everything.

ep7 through untilted is imperial phase, everything since is ethereal phase

EP7 was my entry point, and soon afterwards i caught wind of Mego stuff, like the first Fenn o'berg cd, Get Out by Pita, and Fennesz' album on Touch (Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08"). Going 'back' to LP5, it seemed reasonable, or not entirely out-of-left field for them, though it sounded overly metallic, synthetic. I grew to appreciate it much later on. Draft still feels more accessible and slick, compared to Confield.

I was well versed in Aphex Twin but when I heard Ae for the first time on LP5, I thought they were taking the piss

in all, I think Confield is the last album they did where it can tell you or recall what each individual track sounds like. after that, I'm a bit lost despite having listened to all the albums a lot of times.

I dunno, the tracks on Quaristice and Oversteps are pretty distinct to me

yeah that is a big speak for yourself moment, dl

wolf greek

sure there are tracks like d sho qub and simmm and irlite get (0) off the later albums which I particularly enjoy, but I couldn't tell you what each track sounds like- especially if you factor in the accompanying EPs which act a bit like expansion sets.
Like, I can describe pretty much any track from Confield and before, but after that it gets a but murky. Especially since I found Draft and Untilted very challenging when they first came out.

suddenly archcarrier starts and here was this very accessible track that somehow sounded unlike anything I'd ever heard before. It felt like pop music from some alien civilization.

you know what's a really great release, Move of Ten.

pce freeze 2.8i will sometimes just randomly pop up in my head. One of very few latter era autechre tracks catchy enough for this to happen.

It's one of the few Ae releases that doesn't wear me out by the end. I always want to play it twice. M62 is such a corker.

like, it could easily have been one of the better tracks on Analord

Etchogon-S is a dope little track.. took a minute to adjust to its 'attitude', thought it was kind of shit at first. freuleax, though. it's like m62's older cousin, smoldering, broke down on an F-Zero motorway.. bass line sounds like a petrified esophagus

ely6 0nset 'clicking' lately... not sure if that's a good thing or what

came up with my scores on the doors a while ago and they haven't really shifted since - not listening a tenth as obsessively as i was though:

feed1 3
c16 deep tread 4
13xo step 3
pendulu hv moda 5
curvcaten 4

ely6 0nset 5
chimer 1-5-1 3
c7b2 3

eastre 4
tbm2 3
mesh cinereal 5

acdwn2 3
foldfree casual 4
latentcall 11
artov chain 4
7th slip 3

pendulu casual 3
spth 3.5
spaces how v 3
freulaeux 4
oneum 4

lol

ikr

latentcall is properly amazing true

yeah ely6 0nset was really peeling back the old cerebral membrane for me the other day, top track

i'm not sure i like what it turns into, too quiet for one!, but those first ten minutes my god.

yeah i'm finally digging into this. it's pretty fucking wild. mesh cinereaL is one of the best things they've ever done.

Mesh cinereaL sounds better every time - when it comes crashing back after the fakeout ending is a lol for sure.

autechre is kind of still dance music and this is a breakdown imo

or what matt in dc said

Mesh Cinereal is amazing and that bit 15mins in is about as close to a hands in the air moment as I expected from this record.

i think they've really made like an encyclopedia of digital music generation with this. there are big final frontiers, like ely6 0nset, which superficially reminds me of a perverted xenakis, and then these moments of repose / calling back. i like how minimal and low-key tbm2 and pendulu casual are. they just float along like good-natured dub. freulaeux has a chiastic slide feel to it but with all the digital spatial stuff they've gotten so good at lately included.

the thing that gets me about mesh cinereal is how the harmonics evolve out of feedback in this gnarled and endless progression that never really resolves, just keeps suggesting and dodging. it's really emotional to me in the same way that garbagemx is. the baroque never-ending question.

feed1 is still one of my favorites too. it's so thick and black and totally blunted.

I find I like this album more on headphones than on speakers. Not unusual for an Autechre album, at least not for me, but this one even more so

I still need to make a whittled-down version

elyc6 & mesh would make a good tape / LP.

eastre, latentcall and idk something off elseq 5 as the other LP

I still don't quite "get" "Eastre" and I wish I did

there's something very 'fizzy' about this album. reminds me of getting my ears washed out at the doctors.

Yeah I'm not sure about Eastre. Oneum is the ambient track of choice on this album.

Still very much scratching the surface of this album, although I listen to it at least twice a week. Think C16 Deep Tread needs another mention - those gliding, whinnying high frequencies are really eerie.

The intro to 13x0 Step is pure apocalyptic '92 raveaggedon

Think the most perplexing ones are Curvcaten, Eastre and TBM2 - just not sure what I'm supposed to be getting from these.

The intro to 13x0 Step is pure apocalyptic '92 raveaggedon

Shame it really falters after this.

Curvcaten starts off all kids birthday party at laser quest, then (after a bit of meandering) actual terminators with phased plasma rifles in the 40 megawatt range show up.

Wonder if they got this mastered. Do they normally?

7th slip is a motherfucker, it took a minute to realize that.. dig the kinda dub groove that it settles into. Pendulu casual is a nice relief, played in succession. Eastre is good for meditation/shutting your brain down for a half hour

good DESTROY ALL HUMANS vibe from this tonite

Wonder if they got this mastered. Do they normally?

Yes, and they've mentioned it in past as in this interview: http://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/autechre

I am curious about this too. elseq IS quite loud, and it does seem to have been EQ'd and limited, but maybe Ae took care of that this time in order to get it out sooner? This release sounds a bit rougher than their last few in terms of the mastering. Bass is a bit muddier and the mids/highs feel flatter, more digital. Compare this one to Oversteps (my favorite recent album of theirs in terms of mastering) and you'll see what I mean. It sounds like that record was at least fed through some analog processing. I'm no audio engineer professional though

Oversteps has a real balmy, soft-edged quality (imo, thru headphones) - slight, enveloping reverb (humidity) to tracks like "r ess", "pt2ph8", the background pads (or tonal ambience) of "qplay", "os veix3", and a couple others. especially compared to Exai, which generally feels harder, more brittle.

I'm curious what people think of the AE_LIVE material (mastering/sound quality), as it's really easy on my ears, definitely less fatiguing than Exai. I've read some remarks on WATMM saying that it's heavily compressed, but I guess I don't understand compression all that much because it sounds great (at loud volume) on the stereo setup. maybe it's not so dynamic, as the 'smaller', more wispy sounds have a comparable weight to the larger/heavier sounds.

The track to listen to on Oversteps for mastering is d-sho qub, I think. It's as percussively engaging as much of their recent stuff, contains interesting dynamics, and has deep bass extension to go along with a wide variety of timbers.

I just think there's this really nice warm sheen to Oversteps, a gooey analog texture to the record I don't get with elseq at all.

Need to revisit the live stuff, there's so much good stuff to listen to by these guys right now wtf

My impression is that what comes out of their system is quite unruly in terms of mix and dynamics, so it's probably reined in with fairly heavy compression & limiting as a matter of course. A trade-off perhaps that allows for more spontaneity. With Elseq this arguably becomes part of the aesthetic, although it is kind of harsh at times. The tendency to expect certain production values likely applies more to the tracks that bear more formal relationship to techno or hip hop.

Acdwn2 is one of my favourites at the moment. A bit of a sleeper? c7b2 as well. Both nice workouts with particularly unmemorable titles. And largely free of that tedious 'melody' stuff.

Acdwn2 has become a late favorite, where it feels overly rigid/stringent at first, i like how it starts coming apart in the latter third (after the 2nd part/bridge).. I had to check my speakers cuz there's a short in my receiver and one of the channels usually cuts out, though it was the track that seemed to be breaking apart/diffusing -- a welcome progression from the exacting first part.

re: octobeard/Oversteps - d-sho qub is a definite highlight.. i'll have to listen again for the bass, don't always detect subtler lower freq's right away

chenc9 (Quaristice) and Acdwn2 share a similar, sort of flush/tight melodic vibe.. not entirely devoid of tonality, it's just sort of built into the dry/percussive body of the track.

i've got a nice little hour-long condensed playlist of these for runs and such that i'm really attached to:

chimer 1-5-1
pendulu hv moda
latentcall
freulaeux
mesh cinereaL

d sho qub is indeed one of their very finest tracks.

just noticed that elseq 1 is on spotify now

https://archive.org/details/AutechreOneSixTour-BudapestHU-07-11-16

"All new 2016 Autechre live set debuted at their "OneSix" European tour -- Oct/Nov 2016. The live set was performed in complete darkness, on 7th of November, inside the amazingly resonant venue of the Akvarium Klub. Budapest was the 10th out of 28 cities in total for the entire OneSix tour. The event was hosted by Selected Sounds, HU."

shit is sounding fairly crisp. these guys

No spoilers! Seeing them on Fri, can't wait.

Maybe I should listen to it, after all you normally know in advance what a band is going to play, and their stuff always takes time to sink in.

The venue will be low lit for the support acts. Once Autechre go on stage, the auditorium will be in complete darkness. Hosts with night vision goggles will be on hand to help anyone who may need to leave. You can identify yourself to one of our hosts by holding your ticket in the air. Pieces of white paper will be handed to those with print at home tickets.

Who is supporting?

Andy Maddocks & Russell Haswell.

I'm going on Fri. The last time I saw them was at an oudoor festival in Japan a few years ago. They were chatting to a friend before the gig about the acoustic qualities of the forest surrounding the stage which we found quite amusing. It was an intense experience (and bloody cold!).

http://imgur.com/gU0YEfN
"Saw" them yesterday, it was great. No spoilers, other than that it was quite different from the '15 sets. Russell Haswell's hardware set was amaaazing do make sure you're there on time.

> Andy Maddocks & Russell Haswell

i am none the wiser (gescom dudes apparently)

googling the above found a bunch of other gig bootlegs from this month already on youtube.

Ghent 2016.10.30
Turin 2016.11.04
Budapest 2016.11.07
Tallin 2016.11.13
Helsinki 2016.11.14

Got a long plane flight coming up in about two weeks, gonna try to make it all the way through this.

OMG OMG OMG SEEING (well, hearing) THEM TOMORROW! OMG!!!

Are these seated venues they're doing this at? I should certainly hope so...

Concorde 2 in Brighton definitely not seated. I wonder if they'll black out the big windows.

i definitely hope it's not seated. that would be depressing

Do you just stand still in the complete dark? Or move around and try not to bump into people?

Elseq 1 is on streaming services now btw!

I've never seen Ae before but I don't like the idea of sitting still in the dark listening to weird noises. Dark or not, it should still be a party. Plastic People had a pitch-black dancefloor and that was a riot.

I'm at this tonight & am also curious - I like the idea but wonder how it'll come off, whether people will be smartphone-torch-guiding themselves to the bar or what

i'd imagine most clubs have sufficient lighting to see the proper channels for walking. last year in Denver it was perfect, with ample room for dancing in your own little space. the sound was fucking incredible, 3D wraparound, super plastic air sculptures. it was a bit overwhelming for some people

I believe in Holland the bar was closed for the hour long set as per the bands request. If you needed help or wanted to leave you'd hold up a white piece of paper staff would spot with special goggles or something. But Willem knows best, I unfortunately couldn't make it.

That bootleg linked above sounded great on the tube earlier.

d/l'd the "package" (flac/mp3/etc) from that site -- the flac sounds freakin fantastic, the music is radically different from the sets of last year.. haven't really wrapped my head around the new material yet

Re sets in the dark, I "saw" them in Melbourne in 2010 and part way into the set, opened my eyes to realise I was standing with my face about 10cm behind a stranger's head. Pretty odd. Sound was INCREDIBLE, fully spatial and kind of hallucinatory (almost-saw sheets of texture rising in front of me, wasn't on anything either).

Are these seated venues they're doing this at? I should certainly hope so...

They're playing the Royal Festival Hall tonight and that's all-seated. Then again I saw Booka Shade there earlier this week and everyone was standing up and dancing within seconds of them coming onstage.

So, has everyone been stunned into silence?

Well. My expectations were unrealistically high after the triumph of elseq, and there were some awesome moments, but I struggled to get into most of the last third or so. Partly my fault getting annoyed by distractions. The darkness was far from total, especially as I was sat right behind the mixing desk, and maybe there were staff with night vision goggles hiding somewhere but there were also a lot of blue torches being waved around every time some dick who'd had too much beer needed the loo, which seemed to happen about every minute.

There were some great breakbeats,  a kind of spooky choir section which sounded quite unusual for them, and a sudden silence rapidly punctuated by a thunderous metallic horn sound blasting out like a train in the night - like a train in the night! Afterwards I thought it was probably lifted from mesh cinereal but at the time it sounded like the most fantastic and original new discovery in the world of noise.

That was the highlight and after that it really did seem to deaden down, the volume dropped and I couldn't really discern any compelling structure. Still I am looking forward to hearing a bootleg of it or another set from the same tour.

Russell Haswell musically not really my cup of tea but an entertaining stage presence, typical deadpan northerner, swigging from a bottle of bubbly, long gaps between tracks with largely inaudible chat. I caught "there is so much music that I don't like, and "this one's called 'I hate those things that you see every day all the time'" - followed by a five second burst of loud static noise. Possibly drunk, possibly phoning it in because the auditorium was 90% empty.

Andy Maddocks brought the old skool idm.

https://youtu.be/rX8NMaGEs6g

Autechre @ Tavastia, Helsinki FIN, 14.11.2016

https://youtu.be/tHrodaXLEUk

Autechre - Parkteateret Oslo 17.11.2016

as crisp/detailed as these recordings are, i'd imagine they're a very flat/poor approximation of actually being in the room. i was absolutely floored by their set in Denver last year--though the speaker setup/volume/mix was ideal.

"there is so much music that I don't like end quote. xp to self.

the auditorium was 90% empty.

that is depressing to me, these guys continue to challenge themselves and I want them to be playing to full houses

wait, was it that empty for the entire gig or just haswell's support slot?

Oh yeah it was totally full for ae, everyone just stayed in the bar for the support, apart from a handful of enthusiastically vocal Haswell fans.

The bit like a train in the night - like a train in the night! - is at 44:20 in the Oslo set. Turn up to 11 for the full effect of course. Not a direct lift from mesh cinereal but similar - see also 0:57 here:
https://youtu.be/jzYzVMcgWhg

no one in for the opener, how rude

haven't seen russell haswell live but definitely in for his recorded work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJmvkXm2D4

re: like a train in the night!

Got a long plane flight coming up in about two weeks, gonna try to make it all the way through this.

― Don Van Gorp, midwest regional VP, marketing (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, 23 November 2016 13:15 (six days ago) Permalink

It's perfect for long plane rides.

Can't see a London bootleg anywhere yet (there are a couple of videos that link to a dodgy looking streaming site). But I guess they could put all 29 nights up for sale on their newish website eventually.

Bristol one was standing. We laughed all the way through Russell Haswell's set, mostly cos it was ridiculous and partly because we kept looking around at all the chinstrokers trying to take it seriously. Autechre were out of this world. Spent most of the set with my eyes closed. Hallucinatory and meditative. About 35 mins of the usual abstract sounds and then they bust-out the catchiest (for Ae) riff ever before it gets buried back under the noise. The pipe organ section was extremely effective too.

but yeah

CD 1

eastre
mesh cinereaL

CD 2

latentcall
elyc6 0nset

^_________^

― illbient microtonal poetry Surbiton (imago), Tuesday, December 27, 2016 3:32 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've got a nice little hour-long condensed playlist of these for runs and such that i'm really attached to:

chimer 1-5-1
pendulu hv moda
latentcall
freulaeux
mesh cinereaL

― map, Monday, August 29, 2016 1:48 AM (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

add to these pls. realistic cd album edits, with or without explanations

such a huge journey, this record, so worth the effort

c16 deep thread is the one I keep coming back to

I could make an unimaginative cd length best of but I just don't listen to it like that, would rather just hear one or more in their entirety. Fwiw though, I think I might be more grateful to them for the robot gargling in the back half of pendula hv moda than for anything else in their catalogue.

is there anywhere you can stream all of elseq 1-5 online? Bleep is giving me a playback error.

Just came back to this after a couple of months off, what a huge record in every sense.

not sure what TBM2 is all about. Anyone going to vouch for this one?

slow day at the drum circle. a soft shoe shuffle in diving boots. an amble down a quiet country lane swinging at nettles with a stick.

that's the one where they riff on the we will rock you beat isn't it

yeah. it's pretty repetitive although i like ledge's description more than the track itself

Finally started listening to these. Only 2 tracks into the first one and I must say this is the best ae in over a decade. I had pretty much given up on these guys.

I'd give Exai another spin if I were you!

Yeah they never really dropped off. They could be accused of over-releasing though. Only the most diehard fans would have listened to all those Quaristice and Oversteps spin-offs, but they've always been all over it.

Impressed that Exai was their highest-charting UK album since Amber

Oversteps spin-offs?

'move of ten'

(oh, the webcast. that's hardly canon though, is it? (or is it?))

No I meant Move of Ten really. I love Autechre's album/EP strategy but by the late 00s they were releasing so much material it was hard to keep up; especially since the music was getting ever-more complex. I like Elseq because, even though it's extremely long, the individual tracks seem easier to digest in their extended format. Exai is great but it's a lot of Autechre to take in in one go.

I think you can point directly to one specific release, the 2 1/2 hour Quadrange "EP" with the 58-minute ambient track, especially given that there was already a totally different version of the album out there already. Not to mention that their track titles were getting increasingly obtuse and hard to remember.

yeah, the move of ten ep was nothing like the chore that the quadrangle ep was. and was half (4/7ths) the length of the original rather than twice as long.

plus it was relatively straightforward and beat driven, with the sort of bangers they hadn't done since like, LP5

Meantime, enjoy a month-long residency on NTS

https://www.nts.live/projects/autechre-nts-residency/

I finally bought my copy of Elseq recently, been enjoying it greatly. Pondering if i need the live ones too.

guys

been listening off and on for the last hour, it's really kicking in right now

you should have taken it at least half an hour before the set

Jamming to acdwn2 right now, it's good, that is all

banger

I remember when Exai came out I complained that this was too much autechre to take in at once.

If this trend continues, their next album is going to be 8 hours long

― silverfish, Friday, May 20, 2016 1:16 PM (two years ago)

it'll just be an endless generative stream that plays forever

i do wonder if they can go back to making normal-length albums again

an album of lots of tiny tracks would be interesting

https://img.discogs.com/YJ-eY9jmklNUK_Pyz2Lrt6A9Gs4=/fit-in/600x745/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-43153-1485307171-6839.jpeg.jpg

ah well click on it yerself

The only pre recorded minidisc I own...

me too, and almost certainly for more people than any other pre-recorded monodisc.

monodosc, sorry i have a cold.

Folks, I think NTS 3 may be the best of the batch.

Although I haven't nearly digested either, my gut feeling is that NTS is quite a bit more enjoyable than Elseq. The tracks feel more varied, more melodic, a little less pure abstraction.

Absolutely - I know NTS pretty thoroughly now, and tracks by name even, whereas despite spending similar time with Elseq I still skate off the surface of most tracks (notable exceptions being "c16 deep tread", "eastre", "curvcaten", "mesh cinereaL", "pendulu hv moda" et al.).

I don't think I ever made it all the way to the end of elseq. Having NTS come out once a week really helped - it felt like extremely pleasurable homework to listen to each one before the next one showed up. (The metal band Beastmaker recently released eight four-song EPs in three batches - 3, 3, and 2 - I'm still wading through them, and I kinda wish they'd chosen to put out one a week, too.)

the last few tracks on elseq 5 are some of the best tracks on the whole thing.

i immersed myself in elseq and it feels hugely texturally varied, a landscape with peaks and lakes, forests and blasted heaths. nts feels much more homogeneous to me right now but i'm sure that will change in time.

NTS 2 > NTS 1 > NTS 4 > NTS 3

There should probably be a poll

NTS 4 >>>>>>>>> NTS 3 > NTS 2 > NTS 1

(there should probably be a poll)

can it wait till a while after physical versions arrive

Find it pointless to even consider ranking NTS 1-4, but "all end" is beyond compare when I need that kind of thing. Each has at least 2 uniquely brilliant tracks. I haven't yet listened to the whole thing in a block but I am looking forward to it.

voilvoic is kind of my secret favorite on this whole thing.

i tried listening to a pared down version of this but i ended up missing every track i left off.

even t1a1 which eventually finds its zone.

my favorite ambient-ish track might just be "carefree counter dronal" - bright and beautiful.

still transported to different planets by "13 ctrl" "four of seven" and "column thirteen"

and the madness of "north spiral".

I love the LOL Autechre of calling the first track "t1a1".

Seeing as there are so many tracks how would you all feel about a mini ballot poll for the NTS Sessions? I'm not necessarily volunteering but I think it might be fun.

Say, top 8 tracks ranked or unranked, and a sessions 1-4 ranked side poll. Wouldn't need a big production results thread or anything.

Not before the boxes are out there anyway.

*Not quite sure how the points are supposed to be weighted but haven't given it much thought.

a mini ballot poll

A shimriPOLL casual, if you will.

I like this idea

pendulu hv moda is so magnificent

so much of what they do is so dark that when they decide to go sunny it's like a vitamin d overdose

It's certainly magnificent, maybe my favourite of all their recent releases. And I guess it is quite sunny, yeah, until the grey clouds roll in and the alien mutant thunder rumbles low over the hills.

Returning to this release my first thought these days is how poorly mastered it is. Compared to NTS (excellent return to form mastering wise), Exai and especially Oversteps, this is overly compressed, narrow sounding and in your face. Shame, since this is some their best work.

otm

Definitely one of their harsher sounding collections.

Not sure of the authenticity of this but seems to be 400+(!) 1-2 minute pieces with accompanying slit-screen animations.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5ow3ZyXAhopA4NUdSIuAfTCvWTemihut

^^ ugh my bad. didn't see the other thread.

My God I never even considered the possibility of needing to shell out for Ae remasters some day

It's kind of nuts that they need to be mastered (but I recall Frank Arkwright's name on many of their best releases). I'd imagined it might be possible to run the files through some kind of mastering algorithm as a final step, but on reflection that would mean it was possible for any digitally recorded music, and there are clearly people who are very good at mastering.

I've thought the same about elseq. The harshness and compression might be baked in, but perhaps not.

Noel Summerville did NTS and I marvel at how nice it sounds. Creamy smooth 'texture' but plenty of detail and impact.

What crosses my mind in terms of practicalities is that there's obvs a significant cost to getting that much material mastered. NTS was put out by Warp so presumably they will have paid mastering and production costs upfront but elseq was essentially self-released Maybe they could put a few quid back and get it redone. Wishful thinking.

Noel Summerville has mastered all their main releases since Draft 7.30, apparently, with the possible exception of elseq.

Further confirmation that I don't have 'golden ears'. Exai is the only one that's consistently given me audio fatigue.

Exai is quite dense and mid-rangey, perhaps. But that's more just a function of the music itself.

audio aural fatigue, of course. Listening to elseq 5 now, maybe it's just the power of suggestion but it does sound slightly harsh and thin. You fuckers!

I'm listening to this now for the first time in a while and am liking the harshness.

eastre (which I'm listening to right now) wouldn't be as good with NTS-style mastering I think. Having all these tiny bits exposed are what make this track, if this track was on NTS it would probably be more hidden beneath the main up and down melody

pendulu hv moda definitely reminds me of Eidetic Casein from Confield in that it's based off a fun and perhaps even catchy melody that gets garbled to the point of no return. but I think it's a better track b/c it demonstrates just how far they've progressed. maybe it's b/c this is the only way my dumb millennial brain works but to me they've sort of paralleled the evolution of video games, during the same time frame too - early stuff like Amber & Tri Rep like the SNES, tangible, limited but very artfully done...Confield/Draft/Untilted being the forays into 3-D worlds that were closed off...now this & the NTS records being like these huge open-world games where everything seems possible. each era being classic in its own way, but man - there's such a vastness to their recent work that's hard to explain. like...that gurgling pinball bass thump never quite goes away in this track does it? it's always lurking somewhere.

here's a track that I don't see people talking about much here: "foldfree casual". there's such a heartbreaking melody in there. it's as gorgeous as anything on Oversteps if you ask me. I don't think there's a bad track on here. Besides "TBM2" I guess, which strikes me as something that probably wouldn't have gone on any of their other albums. The 4 hours just breeze by ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's very much in the style of Drane2 (a good thing).

Elseq 5 is 'lost in the vast underground caverns, afraid of the monsters' par excellence.

"feed1" is the best thing that's ever happened to me

I love how Autechre's music has slipped free of easy reference points, from instrumentation to titles.

Though, that plus release velocity makes finding a tune you half-remember quite a task.

(pendulu hv moda, this time)

if you just play them all the time then you don't have to remember anything

c16 deep tread and eastre are the alpha and the omega here for me

Has their been a trend piece on big-name electronic musicians from the 90s (Autechre, Aphex Twin, Underworld) turning to a strategy of releasing massive amounts of material? Underworld's Drift seemed a little more structured than Aphex Twin's big Soundcloud drop, though maybe if you graphed Autechre's release history over time there would be a pattern.

everyone releases massive amounts of material now

of course since Oversteps their releases have roughly gone 1, 2, 4, 8 hours in duration - awaiting the next with interest

In a time when the internet can quash any initial mystique about a piece of pop culture in just a few clicks, Autechre's music still feels enigmatic and mysterious to me.

don't forget the 28 hours of live performances.

and those weird colour-noise videos

indeed, they are restless spirits

you could also maybe add FSOL's endless stream of archival releases & Moby's very long ambient albums, though this along with the Aphex dump all seem like very different things than what Autechre & Underworld are doing. both those groups have always produced a ton of music & I think the 'trend' is just to go, "what if we didn't have to cut this to an hour?". to me there isn't a huge difference in what Ae is doing now and say, the Tri Rep/Garbage/Anvil Vapre period, or say LP5/EP7, just that those releases were edited to fit the CD and these aren't. which in turn affects the sort of things they choose to pursue. in Underworld's case, they've always had endless B-sides and non-album tracks for people to obsess over, most of which just never got released

to me this definitely feels like artists not having the constraint of physical media as the main distribution method anymore and adjusting accordingly + having a solid enough fan base so that they can release really long and possibly difficult material and know that enough people are willing to put in the required time to listen to that material

Also more releases probably = more streaming revenue, right?

Well, since streaming revenue is per track listened rather than time listened, then autechre are possibly making bad business decisions.

of course since Oversteps their releases have roughly gone 1, 2, 4, 8 hours in duration - awaiting the next with interest

Two more and they'll be up there with Terre Thaemlitz's Soulnessless (16GB microSD card, 32 hours). I never bought that, but I did get that Farmers Manual DVD-ROM back in the day. About 93 hours of material on that. Of which I think I've heard about 2%. Still, time off over Xmas, eh?

if you just play them all the time then you don't have to remember anything

― j., Tuesday, December 3, 2019 1:26 AM (eleven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is pretty much my philosophy

fretting about remembering track titles is for boomers

to me this definitely feels like artists not having the constraint of physical media as the main distribution method anymore and adjusting accordingly + having a solid enough fan base so that they can release really long and possibly difficult material and know that enough people are willing to put in the required time to listen to that material

― silverfish, Tuesday, December 3, 2019 10:44 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink