Autechre: Classic or Dud?

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

So did longform AI improv jam crew Autechre started with the 9 shows & Elseq, or was Exai pointing the way?

https://www.discogs.com/Autechre-Quaristicesubrangeepae/master/8570

Yeah Quaristice / Quaristice Versions / Quadrange was really their first major foray into jammed-out longform releases. At the time they described their workflow as having changed into more exploratory, loose approaches, e.g. http://www.themilkfactory.co.uk/st/2008/03/interview-autechre-life-cycle/

I’m in for the perlence variations on those

> the WAV and FLAC files are unplayable

Um, I was tempted to get the flacs but maybe not now. What does metaflac --list say? Or flac -a file.flac? I'm wondering if the bitrate or sample size is too high.

Does audacity open them?

That said, charging 50% more than the mp3s for the flacs is a bit excessive, usually it's only an extra quid on an 8 quid LP, say.

I downloaded it in wav, forgetting those don’t have tags and it was playable. Then I downloaded in flac and it was tagged and played fine. So uh, it’s fine?

no clue what issue bgm had

yeah, I didn't mean to make it sound like this is a potentially widespread issue or anything. probably something specific to my environment. but have never had this issue before with a library of about 13.5k albums. (not that I've listened to every single one...) weird.

clementine, puddletag, and my old squeezebox (via squeezebox server) all choke on the flac & wav files. I just grabbed the mp3s the other day and rolled with em since I wanted to listen to these albums and not troubleshoot audio issues.

but koogs - those commands spit out what you'd expect afaict. no errors and I see the expected tags running metatag. it looks like audacity does indeed play the files, and apparently, so does vlc. dunno.

given that it’s autechre are they 24 bit instead of 16 and your player doesn’t support it?

You can get either 16 or 24 bit WAV, and 16 bit FLAC. I got the FLACs, they transcoded flawlessly and all the metadata was perfect.

yep, 16 bit FLAC. which is supported by everything that didn't like playing these troublesome NTS sets.

the music is cool btw! I've still only listened to the first set but keep going back to it. first half is pleasant but kinda plodding? not sure if I've wrapped my head around what they're going for there yet. but the second half is more immediate and satisfying. "north spiral" is sick!

Classic that this is the thread where people try to figure out why they can’t play FLACs

If audacity can play them then try saving out new copies and see if the copies will play.

I made the executive decision to have ALAC as my backup format, working well so far

obviously the format inspired by autechre

just buy the CDs

but they don't ship until all the radio sets are over and we want them now

just realized Quaristice is 10 freakin' years old now. 10 years since "they've finally lost it for good"

celebrating now by listening to "The Plclcpc"....blip lipliplip liplilipp

If audacity can play them then try saving out new copies and see if the copies will play.

so, looks like this did the trick, thank you! fix verified on production and bleeps are blooping losslessly. let's close this ticket out.

I also ran into some weirdness with the files, and I just dropped them into XLD for some quick batch converting. No need to go one by one with Audacity.

just realized Quaristice is 10 freakin' years old now. 10 years since "they've finally lost it for good"

Funny I felt Quaristice was a warm return to form and appreciated their use of something other than raw percussive elements and abstract FM synth noises as part of their sound palette. Looking back now however, it's my least favorite release of theirs and I usually just listen to about 4-5 songs off of it as an "EP".

Quadrange > Quaristice Versions > Quaristice

album version of "90101-5|-|" > all other "versions" of it (it's a diff beast altogether). The "Plc ccc" is one of the very few improvements on the album versions of the tracks.

i'm thinking of The PlclCpC (versions), where they actually fleshed out the original track. my bad

Yeah those versions and Quadrange "EPs" never really did it for me

BTW, listening to NTS 3 right now... the track that just played was very..... Boards of Canadaish??! Whoa

Can't seem to get my download of

4:33.flac

NTS 3:

01 clustro casual
02 splesh
03 tt1pd
04 acid mwan idle
05 fLh
06 glos ceramic
07 g 1 e 1
08 nineFly
09 shimripl air
10 icari

Are there any albums that have a better ratio of quality to duration than these NTS sessions?

Sean's still naming tracks after his favourite chess moves, and has added his favourite tween TV shows

missed the last half hour but this one seemed excessively mid-tempo on first listen.

Are there any albums that have a better ratio of quality to duration than these NTS sessions?

most of them? including elseq. the 2015 live sets cover an extraordinary amount of ground and never stick with one idea for too long.

ok, thanks. I've heard most of them, and I think I disagree (and I was meaning more albums in general, rather than Ae, but that may be a separate thread).

I didn't like elseq or the live sets very much at all I'm afraid and had slightly given up on Ae as I hadn't liked anything since quadrange. I found elseq really trebly and annoying, and thought the tracks were way too long without justification. The live sets, as you've said, were the opposite. This NTS stuff seems, to me to find a middle ground that I'm absolutely loving.

ok i totally misunderstood the point of your question! my initial impression of these sets is that there's a lot of treading water - i love it when ae sound like a puzzle that you think you might *just* be able to figure out if you spend enough time in it, not really getting that here.

I thought the last track was riffing on vekoS from Exai so I went and had a listen to that and while it's a good track the new one is about 6,432 times more betterer.

I appreciate that some of these jams are only minimally edited, and while that might mean they seem to be 'coasting' a bit in places it's not clear they would work any other way and observing the process in process is part of it. Also there usually is change going even when it's masked by apparent repetition.

Those ultra submerged beat variations in that one ('icari') - probably starts getting really good around the 16 minute mark, but wouldn't be so cool without the rest of it.

Looks great but... I'd need to get a flight to Tasmania.

flights to Tasmania take about an hour and a quarter btw

Hobart Raving

the ferry takes 11 hours but is only about half the price

the flight to australia to catch the flight to tasmania takes a bit longer iirc

I found elseq really trebly and annoying

oh you really gotta hear it on something that can play it

and i don't mean like flacnerd quality, earbuds are fine, just, there's bass there to feel and to fill the room

it's definitely got some harsh his though, and some volume issues. it's slightly messy but i don't think that's out of sync with the emotional quality of the music.

i've been revisiting it and finding an absurd number of high watermarks for them. it's really.. there's a lot of emotion there. besides the obvious standouts i've been loving "spaces how V" and "acdwn2". but then "latentcall" and "mesh cinereaL" come on and i'm destroyed. "latentcall" in particular is so great, it's more straightforward beatwise but it never settles, it feels like it's constantly breaking down for 14 minutes, and i'm really moved by that lol.

i love it when ae sound like a puzzle that you think you might *just* be able to figure out if you spend enough time in it

yes puzzles but the bangers in NTS 1 are good too??

I find the post-Exai Autechre fascinating - there is a real luxury in tracks which take 20 minutes to evolve or orbit around a single idea. When Quadrange gave us "Perlence subrange 6-36" and it was an hour of massively slowed, distorting kick, a light went on in my mind and I thought, this is what I need. And the last two major releases have delivered that and more.
I don't find this music at all intellectual or challenging, it's just intensely aesthetically pleasing in a way nothing else is. Of course the process of learning what to listen for, which happened imperceptibly across 20+ years for me (and for them!) make stepping onto the carousel pretty daunting. But I guess I have to accept that they are my all time favourite musicians and that I will never be the same.

the flight to australia to catch the flight to tasmania takes a bit longer iirc

holy fuck whatever part of NTS 3 I am streaming now, 25 minutes in, waves of modulated static and that dry block beat from Draft 7.30 going nuts, trying to work but all my hair is standing on end

Through 3 of these sessions and I feel I could reduce the 6 hours to about 1.5 for a personal "mini album". I would disagree that this so far has a high quality to quantity ratio. That said - it'll be really easy for me to splice together 2-3 hours of tracks that are all highlights, but this is a lower ratio than elseq for sure.

third track on the release (tt1pd) is probably what you heard, Matthew. it's 22 minutes (!)