Tri RePOLLtae -- Autechre :: Tri Repetae :: LP3

Not sure I follow your reasoning here, if only because the chronology wouldn't seem to fit, i.e. I wouldn't characterize their releases before Amber is particularly soulless. And coupled with Anvil Vapre, Tri Repetae seems to make sense in terms of how they sounded over their career.

"Amber" was a huge leap forward IMO, they really distanced themselves from everything else on Warp whereas before that they were still following the party line, so to speak. A entire album like "Garbage" would have made sense after that, i.e. to slide further into an odd style of soft, lonely ambient music. Instead they went back to making music by robots, for robots.

I'm not sure how you're connecting "Anvil Vapre" and "TR" -- AV is more maximalist than anything on TR, I'm not sure how it's supposed to make sense in terms of how their sound evolved. Unless you're using "Eutow" as your jumping off point.

I think I forgot to vote! Probably would have been for Dael or Leterel.

I don't see this as a step back because I don't see their pre-Amber stuff, or the Warp circa 92 party line in general, as music for robots by robots. And also because I don't really see this as any less robotic than Amber. It's harder and heavier so the mechanical nature is more obvious, but it's just a progression, not a break.

I think it's almost wrong to think of Autechre as "progressing" from album to album anyway. Sure they're a progressive band, but each album has its own distinct edge and feel. I don't know how much the artwork has influenced the way I hear these records, but Tri Repetae is very much a "Robot Wars makes a hip-hop album", whereas Amber makes me think of a lost soudtrack to the Bone or Pogo comic books.

Quarisice very much an "Australian Rugby player having sex with his dog" kinda album.

More going to go down the route of 20 drunken four year olds running around singing "On Top Of Old Smokey" the night after the Ascto races.

Ascot

I dunno, Incunabula always has sounded to me like their ideas were extending beyond their means (and maybe this is just me having heard it after their later stuff), it feels like they're starting to push at a limit that's they aren't able to break through until Amber, and which is refined in Tri Repetae and its auxiliary EPs.

Tri Repetae (and I own the ++ version, meaning I don't really separate it from the EPs) to me represents something of a highwater mark. I listened to it two days ago, followed by B12's electrosoma, and it's amazing to consider that Tri repetae et al came out only two years after electrosoma. I can't imagine having heard it for the first time in 95.

i think the soulless machine stuff is kind of a lazy way to talk about autechre. i mean a big part of what makes them compelling to me is the way they explore the middle ground, their own / human interaction with machines. on TR, envane, and chiastic slide it sounds like they often build little machines out of percussion sounds and then surround them with the emotional content in the pads and melodies.

Yeah, it's really just a misdirection for "this music doesn't move me"; the fact that it is so brazenly electronic means that people bring in these robotic metaphors, projecting their own lack of sentiment onto the music itself.

Yeah, it's really just a misdirection for "this music doesn't move me";

That's not what I meant in this case, I meant it as more of a literal description of the music. Words like "cold" and "mechanical" are complimentary when it comes to TR, I'm fairly sure that's exactly the mood they were going for! My point was that they seemed to digress back to a relatively safe style of music that would sound familiar to Warp fans. "Anvil Vapre" and "Garbage" sounded a lot more adventurous to me at the time. That's not to say that new music always needs to break new ground, but I didn't feel particularly surprised by anything on TR, compared to pretty much everything else they were releasing around that time.

Despite all this talk of TR being Autechre's "signature" album, it's kind of odd that "Eutow" won the poll (i.e. the song that sounds nothing like anything else on the album won the poll).

I think I also forgot to vote here ... I think I meant to vote for "Stud".

Despite all this talk of TR being Autechre's "signature" album, it's kind of odd that "Eutow" won the poll (i.e. the song that sounds nothing like anything else on the album won the poll).

And maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I'm tempted to look at this as confirmation of everything I've been saying here. IOW, when it comes to picking favourites, Autechre's supposedly "signature" aesthetic was in fact a lot less interesting than people remember it (the second half of the album got more votes than the first half).

i'm not sure eutow is quite like anything on any other album, although i'll happily consider any suggestions...

xxp wasn't referring to you really, you're a fan after all! rather people who use the robot thing as an excuse for not liking them.

damn I missed this. Would have voted for Clipper just for that sliding bass sound.

Oh my god. That weird noise in the background is the sound of this album finally clicking after fifteen+ years.

Dear my 24 year old self: please go back and demand that your boyfriend play you Rsdio instead of Eutow. It is ten minutes of mains hum with strange beats wandering in and out. You know, like the moment where you're coming up on acid and the disorienting "is that the cat?" noises finally resolve themselves into your radiator singing to you.

This is so strange, because I can still hear everything that I ~hated~ about them and all the reasons I disliked Autechre, but maybe I've just worn down mine own resistance through persistence. But that slow creeping insectoid movement has finally grown on me.

I'm probably running a really bad fever from an ear infection or something, and I'll probably hate it again tomorrow.

other tracks you might like, maybe:

foil
drane
drane 2
uviol
bronchusevenmx

I'm going to groove on this for a while, but then I will branch out, so thank you for the suggestions.

I'm still so surprised that I'm not really approaching it with high hopes.

Just want to put this on quite loud and then go in the other room, or maybe out in the yard and listen to it seeping through the walls like rising damp. I have a feeling that'd be great (but my neighbours would hate me.)

This is not my favourite album by Ae (too beat-based, not enough pretty melodies /geir). I love Eutow and Overand quite a lot though.

Did you try any of their other albums, MB?

I have tried many of their other albums. I hated them all.

i think the best of their slow creeping insectoid movements is garbagemx

agreed. and I'm also not so hot on the album proper but the tri repeatae US bonus disc with the anvil vapre and garbage eps has long been my favorite slab of ae.

LP5 / EP7 era will always be the consolidated pinnacle for me.

Second Peng? I for one welcome our creeping insectoid overlords.

I think I like them better the less melody they use, and rely more on hissing drones plus beats. But where the beats still remain regular, not those brave new experiments in being infuriatingly out of time beats. Which I hate.

Hissing drones + creeping insectoid beats = my happy spot.

man this album sounds much much MUCH more interesting to me now than it did when it first came out

I guess I overdosed on too much Aphex Twin at the time

Yeah if you're expecting the lyrical melodic lushness of an Aphex Twin record this stuff makes no sense. I think that might have been my problem, too. I wasn't really ready for this level of... Abstraction? I don't know what else to call it.

just listened to Peel Session 2 for the first time in years. i was surprised by how dated it felt sonically, but the beats are still great. i loved how blifil gradually, smoothly shifts from 8 beat phrases to 9 to 6.

Yeah if you're expecting the lyrical melodic lushness of an Aphex Twin record this stuff makes no sense. I think that might have been my problem, too. I wasn't really ready for this level of... Abstraction? I don't know what else to call it.

"Clipper" has tons and tons of melodic lushness in it, though! I think really I just was not in the right frame of mind to engage with these guys, since everything I was listening to that wasn't in this vein was either Tricky, Portishead or *insert drum-n-bass legend here*

Expectations are so tricky. If I'd listened to this expecting it to sound like an E.A.R. record I'd have got into it. But I was expecting it to sound like 808 State or Orbital and oh boy did it ever not.

I'm still not sure how to wring any enjoyment out of this!

wow, v. surprised at the turn-out for "eutow" (considering i'm coming into this a year late). the song definitely has an initial appeal of that sort of tampered masculinity, w/ that borderline dubstep "YYYERRRUNNNGGHH" but it becomes gimmicky after about a minute of listening.

i think it was "leteral" that steered me towards complete fandom. it's that slow progression from pure ~technics~ to something that fringes on emotion/humanity by the end that i can't get enough of. in a lot of ways it's like the soundtrack of an AI feeling for emotion, if i'm not being too romantic about it.

'chiastic slide' is my other favorite. it's crunchier and more melodic than 'tri repetae' but it has some drones in there iirc.

'recury' is kind of an epic drone, sounds like seefeel or mbv almost. chiastic slide is like the winter pastoral to music has the right to childrens summer pastoral imo.

Yeah it was the Autechre remix of Seefeel's Spangle which maybe drove the wedge into my mind that I could actually *like* Autechre in the first place so I will keep an ear out for that kinda drone.

Chiastic Slide is about the last album I'll listen to before Autechre went full off into their wanky schizoid period. I'm all for artistic progression and would even defend Korn's decision to move to dubstep if I knew enough about the band, but with Autechre I'm just not all too sure what the hell is progressing album to album. It all come across to me as attempt to pretend their glitching robotz.

xpost

Bowery Electric is a very cool mix of MBV/Seefeel

actually the more i hear the later albums the more i feel like the elements never actually changed that much, they just got shuffled around and zoomed-in-on or something. the broken beats are just like.. extended break downs. the newest one is really melodic actually. the electro influence is hyperactive/symphonic to a degree that feels out of sync with the other elements. it can still make me shrug my shoulders but it has definitely grown on me a bit. i bet 'quaristice' probably sounds great if you're high idk

i mean everything they've ever done would not sound out of place soundtracking a skateboarding video. the later stuff is just for crazier editing.

anyway, "stud" deserved a vote! so did "c/patch"! i think "eutow" might be my least favorite track on here, no fronting.

Haha see I don't see skateboarding video I see David Attenborough nature films and C/Pach is where the columns of army ants move in.

'garbagemx' is basically about arachnophobia.

(i mentally include the garbage and anvil vapre eps with this album because of the aforementioned US double-disc.)

I don't know what it is about this music that makes me think insects, spiders, centipedes etc. I think it's just the highly articulated beats make me think you gots to have more than the standard number of legs to move about to it! Milipede techno.

i say skateboarding video soundtracks just because so many of these beats code as hip-hop to me. i think my real favorite on this is 'overand.' i just... can't resist the ambient.

xp haha yeah. clickity-clackity

xpost haha, back when Confield came out nearly every review had to have a token mention of "insectoid robots" in it.

it's that slow progression from pure ~technics~ to something that fringes on emotion/humanity by the end that i can't get enough of. in a lot of ways it's like the soundtrack of an AI feeling for emotion, if i'm not being too romantic about it.

― kelpolaris, Tuesday, 3 April 2012 17:33 (Yesterday) Permalink

In many ways each Autechre composition is the aural equivalent of attempting to make machines feel human emotion, with varying levels of success.

Googling "autechre insectoid robots" is pretty funny actually.

love that they did untilted and quaristice back-to-back.. one is so thorough, consistent, repetitive, and HARD, while the successor is their most varied and 'unhinged'. hope they do something drastically different from oversteps/move of ten

Love Oversteps. Should revisit it soon. Best I their latter day records I think.

It's probably my second-favorite of theirs (favorite is a toss-up between Untilted or Confield).

Another thing that I dislike about a lot of Anvil Vapre and Tri Rep's mixing - it feels very flat and lacking depth, like a low quality recording or a rough punk 45. Might be part of its charm for many, but not me.

Much like what has been said above about Cichlisuite, I believe this is when they really honed in their sound and improved the quality of their mixes immensely. The only record prior I would say is mixed with quality and depth is their debut, which had some additional hands in the production process that their later releases would lack.

Going by Discogs, the debut had a mastering credit (Geoff Pesche) and from LP5 onwards everything has been mastered by Frank Arkwright. Perhaps they did their own in between (Amber, Tri, Chiastic) and this album suffers most. LP5 is absolutely lush compared to the preceding stuff and it’s all sounded great to me since then.

oops I forgot Noel Summerville who has done much more of their recent stuff than Arkwright, and also did the vinyl reissues of the earlier albums

I can't say I really hear a flatness in the mastering/mixing on this album. There are some quite tough frequencies - lots of very high pitched grinding sounds - that lend it a gritty industrial edge.

Anyway, I'm reviving this here because I'm DJing at Glastonbury and I really want to slip in some Autechre as a curveball.

What Ae track would you put in an eclectic (but dancey) festival DJ set? I was sort of thinking Eutow

we r are why? play weisensee against im gluck?

latentcall if you want to push the envelope a bit.

err, pendulu hv moda (banging track, not overly intelligent)

Anyway, I'm reviving this here because I'm DJing at Glastonbury

It's cool, just a little set at the Ridge & Furrow (Bella's Field). 11pm-1am Thursday if anyone wants to stop by (plug plug plug!)

i've played a bit of 'four of seven' before, fairly straightforward and around 120 bpm, that was a moody october night thing tho

i could hear that working for at least a short minute

you probably googled this already too: https://www.reddit.com/r/autechre/comments/ugijxz/best_danceable_autechre_tracks

how did it go?

Haha, I did't play any Ae. Fun little two hour set in a bar stage, mostly playing Bollywood, soca, Afrobeats and breaks/bobbins type stuff

Sounds like a nice set, but you missed an op to drop Inhake 2 to build up to the breaks

This is strictly a winter album to listen to on dark evenings, right?