Autechre: Classic or Dud?

they showed an willingness early on to deconstruct the role of musician and music with their Max/MSP approach, defining algorithms and sifting through the results, letting algorithms make algorithms, provoking the obvious "are they even the composers at this point?" kinds of questions. have they been taking this to the next level with the way they're collecting and presenting their music these days? it seems like the end goal is for autechre to have a catalog of 1 trillion songs, all of which can be recognized as autechre-like but difficult to define in terms of when it was actually released and how, pumping throughout the world in hidden speakers, like the music is just called "autechre" and no one really remembers where it came from, or something

xpost

I have FOMO knowing I just won't get round to listening to it properly because I'm too much of a caveman who needs a set number of tracks, preferably with titles, to get it.

yeah, exactly! i'm a caveman, too. i just can't even figure out what the hell is going on or how to approach them. like the NTS sets - i started listening and was digging it and i was about 20 minutes in. but i just stopped because i couldn't imagine myself playing this same NTS set over and over again, or having to jot down the timestamps of the parts that i really liked and skipping to them. and even if i did all that for one of them, would i then do it for all of them? i feel like i'm trying to stick a CD in a VCR or something

(sorry for too many longposts, i'm just amped up on coffee)

i'm reading underworld right now, and i'm still early on. but there was a chapter where it seemed like every paragraph completely changed subjects and POV, but yet the whole chapter made sense because it kept jumping between recognizable settings and characters and themes from previous chapters. so even though delillo would be talking about looking outside of a corporate skyscraper in one paragraph and then a deadbeat father leaving his family in the next, i could still follow it and make sense of it all in the end. is that sort of what autechre has evolved into, just this endless drift of recurring themes? i don't know wtf i'm talking about, sorry

it's like listening to a live improvisational performance, you just kind of let it wash over you

with the released tracks, you can do the same and then favorite the individual tracks and make a playlist or something

as loathe as I am to admit it, I read a pretty wicked burn the other day: "autechre is like phish for linux users."

it's the same dilemma you have if you listen to a lot of dj sets, which is even easier now when you can load them up as podcasts: if this section in the middle is something really appealing, and it turns out my love is not for a track that was played but some transition point between two completely different songs, how do you quantify that or capture it?

the answer is you don't, it's an ephemeral point that doesn't necessarily work outside of the context.

it's very seldom that you get that in an album unless there's an intentional transition, but there are definitely albums where I don't necessarily like song A or B, but the experience of listening to A blend to B is what I love

i just stopped because i couldn't imagine myself playing this same NTS set over and over again

thinking of musical experiences as something that need to be reproducible or even enjoyable more than once is pretty limiting! honestly, I listened to their first NTS show a few times and it benefits from the looping structure. just tune in at any random time, listen if you like it, if not.. come back later

that's how people used to experience movies in many theaters ("this is where I came in!") and it's foreign to us now, when we think of arriving at the beginning and leaving at the end having had a discrete piece of art delivered for our consumption

KM you know the 'released' version on CD/MP3 is gonna have these split into different tracks, right? This one is 12 tracks in 2 hours, pretty manageable

I know what you're saying of course, especially since their live sets tend to be so far off the studio albums that they'd practically be "new albums" if they were recorded properly (their Glasgow set in 2005 being the best example). So what is this, exactly? Is it mixed live, or what?

My attention wondered a bit around um, 'sinistrailAb air', but the first few were pretty exhilarating to hear 'live.' Whoops of approval may have been heard.

I wonder what the replay value will be; will 'xflood' be worth returning to for some time to come? There's a sense in which these releases are software upgrades that make previous iterations redundant. That's a weird thing to feel about music, and yet...

as loathe as I am to admit it, I read a pretty wicked burn the other day: "autechre is like phish for linux users."

as mentioned somewhere earlier in this thread, autechre is a jam band at this point. The main difference between them and other jam bands being that they make music I enjoy.

I mostly listen to autechre in bits and pieces these days. I listened to elseq over a period of a couple of weeks, I'm probably going to listen to this over a period of months. Somehow, despite feeling like I never really listen enough to truly get autechre, they end up always being among my most played artists every year. I never stop listening to them. I've been listening to a lot of Exai lately (I remember being overwhelmed by the length of that album when it was released!), I'm always a couple of albums behind with these guys.

Phish for Linux users or Acid Mothers Temple for baldies.

fun sounds for people who like sound

There's a sense in which these releases are software upgrades that make previous iterations redundant. That's a weird thing to feel about music, and yet...

LP5 probably the best example of this. first time I heard it, it was like something from the distant future, I immediately thought I was listening to one of the best albums ever made. coming back to it now...its like going back to Nintendo 64 or Windows 95..."Christ, did it always sound like this??"

I sometimes wonder if we're not missing anything by not seeing the patterns in max/msp or whatever tool they're using.

we're missing nothing

personally i'd like to see them just because i've always wanted to dabble in max/msp for other things and it would be neat to look under the hood

great posts upthread mh, btw. i guess i'm just wondering if the've ever openly discussed the disorientating way they release music

upgrades is definitely right. each new album sounds like a program you were just getting used to using and then the developers add a bunch of new features and you have to learn to navigate around all over again

There's a sense in which these releases are software upgrades that make previous iterations redundant. That's a weird thing to feel about music, and yet...

This is utter nonsense

Karl, Rob talked a bit about it when I got to interview him http://thequietus.com/articles/13899-autechre-interview-exai-l-event (brag)

from a learning how to make similar music viewpoint, you'd have something to learn

just listening to music, though, I've felt at times that seeing the process leads you down the path of analyzing what's going on rather than experiencing the music. I have limited ability to recognize things as far as the tools they're using because I've only played with them in passing, but in regards to the aforementioned dj mixing, it's a mixed bag. sometimes the result is "ah yes, blending A into B and then cutting the bass, brilliant result!" and other times it's trainspotting to think "ok, what are they blending into my favorite track here to get that result, *strokes chin*"

oh nice! i'll take a look. also, that's awesome! :)

xpost

apropos of nothing other than autechre, the twitter account for label ghostly international (or more accurately, "ghostly by night", the unknown night editor who makes ridiculous in-jokes and shitposts) had a running joke that apple after the return of steve jobs was completely inspired by autechre. a few funny ones in there

Autechre at Oakland CA's Club Indigo May 18 2001 = Zero Hour of Apple Design. Ive and Jobs in attendance. Like Sex Pistols in Manchester 76. pic.twitter.com/I1ZhtMzZY2

— Ghostly (@ghostly) April 2, 2017

argh it's "ghostly after dark" #gad

aphex twin got a compilation of remixes! they should release an autechre one

Plaid have a remix comp as well.

xp woah I might've been at that show!

Can neither confirm nor deny Ive or Jobs being in attendance though.

I listened to elseq as one thing for a month or so but almost all my listening for the last few years has been via big randomized playlists with auto crossfade and ae are almost always in the mix cos they work great in there

Re: 'upgrades' - I'd swap out elseq for this latest batch if I had to choose one set. It's clearly from the same ecology but almost entirely a refinement IMO, and I don't feel that attached to many of the older 'tunes' when there's something new and 'better' in any of those modes. Who's got the time for all of it? I'm happy to move on and I feel that's the spirit in which it's made as well.

That's both good and bad. I mean it means the music is improved as far I'm concerned, but also I paid for the last lot and it's non transferrable ;-)

Actually more prosaically maybe elseq could do with being remastered less obnoxiously squashed.

It's a pretty great time to be an Autechre fan, we went from long periods of toughing out the gaps between albums, to a release schedule which allows barely enough time to assimilate each release before something even bigger drops. Years of hunting down live recordings and the occasional soundboard (will anything top Glasgow Art School 2005, I doubt it) then suddenly a 9-set archive of soundboards. The last 3 longform releases have been 2 hours, 4 hours, now 8. After 20 years I've reached the point where I don't have to "get" any of this stuff, it's just their latest ideas using a vocabulary they've worked on for ages, here's some cold beauty, here's some shattered funk, here's the most fucked up hiphop bottom end paired with a sublime glacial drift. Listen to the kick degrade slowly. Can you still feel the pulse as the beats drift around the timepoints. I feel like they do a LOT of work to set up amazing spaces and foundations and parameters and turn their algorithms loose, then bring back the coolest shit they found. Never been an artist like it, maybe never will again.

will anything top Glasgow Art School 2005, I doubt it

just downloaded a copy - and all the remixes i was missing - as if i didn't have enough to be getting on with already.

i think the way they've released this stuff is great, the excitement of a shared experience plus a keepsake to take home and treasure forever, enchant the grandkids with. unlike elseq it does seem designed more like a live experience though, interesting to see if it will stand up to repeated home listening.

Holy shit this new set is great

a release schedule which allows barely enough time to assimilate each release before something even bigger drops...The last 3 longform releases have been 2 hours, 4 hours, now 8.

This reminds me of something I wrote about Anthony Braxton recently.

braxton is kind of a good analog, actually.. an unwieldy corpus of work... lots of hard hard thinking implied

.The last 3 longform releases have been 2 hours, 4 hours, now 8.

just as i expected, autechre's grand plan is to exponentially grow and become the universe. by the 30th release there autechre releases will be more than a billion hours long

I'm a total Autechre newbie, I just dived into everything a few months back and tried to make sense of it. The key I found to the last phase was the way they kept elaborating on Quaristice, releasing a double disc version with different versions, then an EP called Versions, then four more EPs with different versions. Yeah, it's jam bands, it's remixers, but it's also 'Versions' as in Dub-culture. It's like they're creating their own culture, a computer-culture, a sort of scenius of the singularity. Someone on here described Confield as portraying a planet in sound, but the new stuff portrays a city, a people, a species of aliens, for whom this type of thing makes sense. At least that's how I think of it, and even though I kinda don't belong to that tribe, I like that it exists.

Btw, I was listening through everything Rhythm & Sound released related to 'See Mi Yah' and it's a bunch of EPs all based on the same riddim, a couple of dub versions of some of the versions of the riddim, and then a bunch of remixes of the versions of the riddim, including a remix of a dub of a version of a riddim. I love that sort of thing.

yesssssss

(that was to KM but I like Frederik’s take too)
It’s interrsting to hear elements reused and track names more obviously referencing elements and feel - like we’re seeing more of their process these days.

god i love the na feh throw dub, so deeeeeeep

and i don't know how i only just heard this the other day: https://www.discogs.com/Paul-St-Hilaire-Ren%C3%A9-L%C3%B6we-Faith/release/188064

e.g. all the references to pendulu(m), casual etc. Also “violvoic” is obviously using a “voice” from Confield’s uviol when you listen to it.

it seems like the end goal is for autechre to have a catalog of 1 trillion songs, all of which can be recognized as autechre-like but difficult to define in terms of when it was actually released and how, pumping throughout the world in hidden speakers, like the music is just called "autechre" and no one really remembers where it came from, or something

I've always felt their endgame would be that right before retiring, they'd release an app that would generate tracks. You could, over time, influence the parameters genetically by approving/disapproving the output and have your own personal never ending Autechre releases catered to your tastes. There would be a whole culture around people's "discoveries" and grass roots curated collections of the "best tracks".

didn't Oval do something like that

It would be interesting to have a neural network try to create autechre songs

(maybe start with song titles)

decided to play Exai on this fine afternoon, its like getting a brain massage

the track that sounds like a woodpecker going to town on a piece of sheel metal owns

didn't Oval do something like that

― frogbs, Friday, April 13, 2018 12:02 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah: https://www.soundonsound.com/people/oval-markus-popp

generative music is a thing

they could call it fauxtechre.

I mean it's been done before, but Ae would release something that would produce tracks with enough nuance, novelty and originality to rival their best work

I am of the sneaking suspicion that these last 3 releases are exactly that. "Sean, turn the machine on for another 4 hours, we've bills to pay"

"It's a pretty great time to be an Autechre fan, ..."

pretty much sums up the last several years. I don't see what's so problematic about this pattern of output - with something like AE_LIVE.. does it really warrant serious deliberation over how to index it, or feel the need to 'get to the bottom of it', conceptually? It's sound art / sculpture, and it's successful. Ae has been honing in on something marvelous. Sometimes it resembles the motion of weather / atmospheric phenomena, fluid shapes, complex machinery, or a malfunctioning electronic device. It brings to mind ideas of [any sort of] state variables, and the physical action that might entail.

Ae's music conjures fantastic imagery and movement, with sounds.. is it so unusual to sit with a piece of music for an hour or two? Listening to NTS 1 right now, it's all sticky techno, part of the structure disintegrating, becoming deformed and then composing itself through countless mutations. It's wild. It's a spectacle.

As somebody mentioned upthread, I've really enjoyed tuning in (NTS Sessions) at any point of the broadcast, knowing it's there (all the time), repeating. Take your time with it.

in case y'all were wondering I'm pounding Exai again while drinking beer and losing my ass in online poker. feels good

please pardon the corny sentimentalisms.. these NTS sessions are dope "af"

wondering which track sounds like a woodpecker hammering on sheet metal... is it Flep, or Fleure?