New Autechre album - April 2005

If they're going to recycle their old work, I'd prefer a return to the raw beats and repetition of "Chiastic Slide". But who knows what they've got up their sleeve.

Amber = overrated
Incunabula = underrated.

Continuing:

Tri Repetae -- overrated
Chiastic Slide -- ridiculously underrated
LP5 -- overrated
Confield -- underrated

so is the cover artwork!!

i am so excited that they are touring!!

Peel Sessions 1 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Peel Sessions 2

Yea. Anyone here who speaks autechrian fluently? You know just write a little note with "more ambient please" and then i'll gladly sign it *Omaer Voltec>

Sigh. I'm always waiting for LP5 to go midprice, and somehow it's always the one that doesn't. Baestards.

LP5 still my favorite album but my favorite single is probably Grantz Graf.

Vubwal866, cosinchange od vorbatine elf. Cerliper ransex blid3.

Record prices can be good indicators of worth sometimes. I love LP5, find Tri Repetae interesting but boring and haven't got much further in my investigations so far.

Their mid-90's work was more fractured than transitional, as they leaped from style to style literally every six months -- From the lush "Amber" to the harsh "Anvil Vapre" to the hip-hop and electro-laden "Tri Repetae" to the ambient "Garbage", etc.

Back when Warp's msg board was up, Chiastic seemed the overwhelming favorite, and, I think, on a.m.autechre as well.

I'm not too big on PS2 either.

I was under the impression that "Tri Repetae" has been considered their best for years. If opinions are shifting toward "Chiastic Slide" then I couldn't be happier.

p.s. fuck all you 'more melody' whiners.

I agree with the Chiastic lovers, it's amazing. Cichli is genius.

(I was thinking about nominating it, but other Ae albums were already nominated. There were so many props for "Tri Repetae" and "LP5" floating around, and I think I may have been the only one to comment about the "Chiastic Slide" injustice on those threads.)

I just reviewed some older threads about Autechre ... it's mostly the same handful of people giving props to the same albums (i.e. opinions haven't changed much over the years). "Chiastic Slide" gets respect from this core group, but very little from "ILM at large". Sure, that's a fairly small sample, but that does fit with my perceptions about Autechre over the last ten years.

My favourite Ae sort of changes from day tot day between Amber - Tri - Chiastic. Today I'm in a Chiastic mood.

Tri Repetae was nice - a very different vibe to any of the other albums in that it had comparatively linear beats and stuff. Definitely not my favourite though.

I'm going to put on Amber again in a mo as I've neglected it for ages.

LP5 is truly gorgeous - melodic, rhythmic, inventive all at the same time. I was never a big fan of the first two tracks which just sound like erratic drill'n'bass rip offs but the rest is so so good!

EP7 is really really good too. Kind of an extension of LP5, the second half is particularly great. Maphive6.1 invoking the sound of battling hoardes and then something that sounds like a cross between a piano and guitar comes in.

Confield? I really don't know. It's my least favourite. Some of the sounds are just too harsh for me to accept. The bass drum beats on Cfern are genuinely horrible and sound like a four year old hitting a touch sensitive keyboard at random. When this came out everyone was saying the stand out tracks were "Pen Expers" and "Eidetic Casein" - the former sounding like someone hoovering up iron nails, and the latter like a bunch of toy keyrings all going off at the same time. I only really like the ambient "Uviol" on this one.

Draft7.30 is actually a really clever album. I always felt that with Confield there was no reference at all - it was just alien music, whereas you could really hear Autechre's influences on this record, so much so I once layered Funkadelic's "Who says funk bands can't play rock?" over VProc. There's a big old-skool influence on this too.
The first track sounds like a giant Dune worm pounding along the ground, and the second track makes me think of being on a creepy old pirate ship. Maybe my third or fourth favourite album of theirs.

one of my favorite things about the chiastic period is that they released two great singles off the album. i don't think that's happpened since.

i would love if they dropped some 4/4 or trance on us. could you imagine the melodic build ups? holy fuck.

Can't remember any bad reviews of Chiastic Slide.

try 'slow acid' from the Gescom ISS:SA ep... came out two years ago but the pieces date from LP5/EP7 era.

i play around with "we r are why" a lot when i am mixing - it's one of the few 4/4-ish tracks i know by them.

i have that warp remix comp, but can't recall the track vahid mentions. must investigate...

They didn't come on till midnight though, which meant four hours of sitting around, as we got there at 8, and couldn't be bothered to dance or even listen to the support DJs.

I listend to Chiastic for the first time this weekend, my fellow Warp chum told me it wasn't a great album and remarked that it was a bit of a mess musically but I really like it.

Personally, so far, I hate it.

Really, I think this is their best and most accessible out of the last few and I'm still trying to understand Confield for some reason. A lot of it is very similar to EP7 as well and there's some really cheeky samples buried deep in there.

Tell me more about these samples...

One track has all these 80s breakdance sounds and actually sounds like it's supposed to be played off of an early electro record.

The first track is kind of pumping - it's the danciest thing Autechre have done in ages. I do kind of wish they could do another Arch Carrier again, just for me though.

There is a track with loads of "hooraying" crowd noises and strange human mumbling - and i like that in an autechre track. Not since that BOAC track have I heard any real human samples being used.

i haven't heard much of the new record yet but i was told they played lots of it.

both autechre and snd were more engaging than most rock acts i've seen. in some ways this wasn't surprising at all.

i'm going to see autechre in asheville two weeks from now. i'm stoked!

I was kind of undecided about untilted, but seeing them live made me appreciate it a lot more. I've been listening to it a bunch these last few days.

I enjoyed Untilted quite a bit on first listen. In a weird way it reminds me of listening to things like drum solos or West African drum circles. I might like it more than Draft 7.30 (the only other one I have) but that might just be because it seems to have more straight grooves.

According to the schedule on Warp's website, SND are playing all dates on the tour incl. Canada.

I saw SND a couple of years ago and they were similarly awesome. I have no idea why their records are so boring in comparison to their live sets.

But, it does seem to be all about the 'craft' and little else here to me. Doesn't feel like a significant advance in sound compared to the records I know by them (Tri Repetae, Chiastic Slide, LP5) but I do love how smudgy, oily and dark it all feels, it's a very 'live' sounding record. Sublimit' is a bit of an anticlimactic closing track compared to some of their other work though. Doesn't really surpass, or expand my expectations of them as a whole record.

Plus getting home from Camden after tubes have finished = a bitch.