Autechre: Classic or Dud?

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?

its Flep. coincidentally the one that's playing right now

Flep is wholesome.. it makes me think of scraping barnacles off the keel of a boat, or something like that.

Oversteps is so good. Like a glacial breeze

Loving the mellow, latter third of NTS 2... these tracks are really well-composed, beats all over the 2nd session.

still haven't tuned into these, been kind of obsessed with 'exai' lately, especially running to it. i'll cop the wavs when i can, because i love to listen to their stuff while i'm outside and moving. i'm totally on board with what they're doing, don't feel it's too much at all. i was obsessed with early autechre for a long time and didn't get the post-confeld stuff in spite of being into noise and sound art and all that but now i mean it all hits differently but it's a joy to listen to, such a wide range of moodiness from the hard as nails stuff to the flying atmospheric stuff. i like the long running times of their latest releases, you can listen to the release a lot and still pick up new pieces to focus in on and enjoy. my oversimplified take is that they're zooming in on a bunch of aspects of early electro and creating these very spacious and dynamic sound worlds out of them. anyway, really happy they're back with a bunch of stuff so soon after elseq.

of course they've always tended towards releasing long-ass albums with lots to digest but probably their label situation now makes it easier for them to really go for it, which i say rock on dudes

> their label situation

???

Has anything changed there? I'd figure this is all still warp but given that there haven't been physical versions of recent things it's kind of hard to tell.

(Oh, the new CDs do have a warp catno)

(I wonder how this stuff does commercially and all. They are one of the prestige warp acts, always have been, and have a loyal fan base that buys everything but is that enough? Does it provide them with a living?)

It'd fucking want to, with the amount I have spent on their vinyl and CD releases in the last 5-10 years.

and re the new session, what the HELL is going on with "dummy casual pt2"? shit is INSANE

a quick hack: https://github.com/acdean/fauxtechre

example output:

fauxtechre: [Baderoupre]
fauxtechre: [arideraet]
fauxtechre: [:NSterbqMal]
fauxtechre: [E.]
fauxtechre: [cer]
fauxtechre: [Ofa]
fauxtechre: [jadferlederlee]
fauxtechre: [7]
fauxtechre: [Jotrdetill.Caca]
fauxtechre: [e]
fauxtechre: [bqudeveast Bind]
fauxtechre: [deni]
fauxtechre: [Zewacouanons]
fauxtechre: [h90101)]
fauxtechre: [12]
fauxtechre: [wepchiiianterthavo]
fauxtechre: [bloias]
fauxtechre: [wocerestreeluas]
fauxtechre: [mal IVilit T tilatr]
fauxtechre: [wonc9X]
fauxtechre: [vilizeg]
fauxtechre: [Focal]
fauxtechre: [=0nceaumee]
fauxtechre: [l9 JYux)]

it picks a random start character and then randomly chooses the next letter based on the frequency of letters following that letter in the original track titles. repeat until it gets a newline.

code could be nicer and it needs to consider matching braces, i think. and perhaps a minimum length of 3 characters.

fauxtechre: [Focal]

wow!

I'm thinking of moving my Autechre CDs from the "Electronic • Dance" section of my collection to the "Out • Avant" section

wocerestreeluas

going for that experimental music/experimental condiment crossover market?

no gonk/casual, no credibility (but seriously: nice!)

Autechre are the only group of this ilk (IDM or whatever) that I've bothered to keep up with. Well, I guess Aphex Twin is the other one.

to the "Out • Avant" section

this is correct

it is also why their 20th century records are p. boring now

koogs, great work!

I like the NTS sessions so far, but it is pretty weird that their recent stuff makes me think of discs like LP5 as "their early, pretty songs."

it is also why their 20th century records are p. boring now

nah, i just picked up the EPs box set last year, and most of it holds up pretty well (!?)

but i don't have copies of any of that stuff, except for ep7

I put these on at bedtime yesterday and woke up in a sweat thinking something horrible was happening to the pipes or something in my apartment, but it was just the last few minutes of "violvoic"

I feel like Autechre got interesting for me starting at around LP5, which is where I came aboard when a friend loaned me the CD. I've gone back and played/bought the earlier stuff and it has its moments - some high points for sure! - but generally feel little desire to return to it.

(There were also some moments in their 00s work where I was shrugging, but reliably every album held some magic.)

I kinda seem them as at least two different bands now. Last ten years or so I listen everything from Confield and later a lot more than the classic 90's stuff.

One thing I'd love is a remix/master of their earlier records. Their sound from that era is far more sterile and doesn't really hold up well. Compare it to things like Urbin Tribe's Collapse of Modern Culture or some of their label mates on Warp of the time like Plaid.

i still try to play tri repetae more than anything else from back then, always thought it was a very lush-sounding record, but it's getting pretty thin by comparison to the last few

I'm gonna dig into Exai and Quaristice, neither of which I bothered with when they were new even though I liked Oversteps and Move of Ten a lot. Nothing's gonna convince me to revisit Draft 7.30 or Untilted, though.

Those records are wonderful - "surripere" and "6IE.CR" on the former are IMMENSE tracks, they need paint-peeling volume. Untilted is a weird little world unto itself but the laser cutlery noises of "fermium" and the incredible chaos at the end of "augmatic disport" are catalogue highlights for me.
Confield is the dividing line for me - I was sporadically into them around Tri Repetae and then LP5 / EP7 got me really excited, but nothing changed my musical world like Confield. Everything since has been an order of magnitude richer than the early work (which I also love).

untilted is so gnarly, it comes across like an extremely obscure and fucked up breakcore album imo

i still have a lot of love for the tri repetae era and think chiastic slide is kind of underrated - it has a blurry sound to it i love. they were really good (and are still good) at gridded beats and overlaying longer and shorter phrases to create syncopation. 'garbagemx' is this nest of phrases that is still really powerful imo. but yeah as far as sound design goes, everything from tri repetae onward is ++.

i still like amber ffs but i don't think they started getting really interesting until after that.

Amber >= Chiastic >>>>> Tri Rep

some more track title speculation (up to elseq even in the box on the left) http://autechre.wikifoundry.com/

(all autechre threads end up in this same argument)

I'm thinking of moving my Autechre CDs from the "Electronic • Dance" section of my collection to the "Out • Avant" section

I honestly find a lot of their 21st century material to be at least as challenging and intellectually engaging as a lot of academic electroacoustic music. I'm actually surprised that they have the audience and media coverage that they do. I have barely even listened to most of Elseq just because I'm still digesting Exai. (It's always a pleasure to digest.)

Sund4r otm. Don’t have anything to add other than ‘this thread rules’.

yea their stuff is definitely challenging and intellectually engaging but I also think there's this raw violence to it that makes it cathartic even when you're not trying to analyze the different patterns or really pay much attention at all. I'll crank up an album like Untilted or Exai for the same reasons someone might want to blow out their eardrums with black metal or grindcore.

It's just sound, I don't really get an intellectual thing out of it... is it like Bach or something?

'just sound' is an intellectual thing!! pythagoras!!!!

Sure it's all a matter of perspective

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

and in classic linux style, it seems I'll have to figure out some weird workaround to do something pretty everyday and mundane on my old ubuntu fileserver, i.e. listen to the ae NTS sets that I just bought. the WAV and FLAC files are unplayable & even untaggable for some reason. there's a metaphor in here somewhere...

you just ha2ve to run aplay -l and 5fig3ure out which93 1card the s27ound devi5ce you34 want t3o3 use i1s 8on. then )sudo vim alsamixer.config an31d edit thea defbeepbeep2ult soundcard toboop the one you found !with 85aplay, rebo(@$ot (you mighafdsbleep booopt also need to edit2

lol