Most ridiculous post about 'NTS Sessions 1-4' album on the Autechre thread

cool ty I agree

Right now I am listening to The Fall on a mangled cassette but I would go for the 24bit. Realistically 320mp3 is good tho.

Everything but splash cymbals are a-ok on mp3, imo.

ban splash cymbals imo

2nded

hi-hat and ride only

maybe I should check back in with Autechre

you should! these NTS sets are what everyone's raving about right now. the 4th (and final) set is streaming now, at least for the next 512,580 seconds.

I wrote three of those yessssssss. I'll go to the mat all day, every day for my favourite artist and I'm proud to sound ridiculous when words fail.

You know you're too jaded when enthusiasm sounds ridiculous. I say, fly that enthusiasm flag high! When a really awesome group known for putting out these alien, enigmatic soundscapes puts out a great collection that 99.999% of the world, and perhaps some certain percentage of fans as well, will never know even exists, shout it to the rooftops.

Okay, lol @ 'bleepstores'

Bleep opened three years before Spotify and less than a year after iTunes

50 for 8 discs is pretty good, i might buy this

i like a lot of descriptions on that thread and will absolutely cop to being a bit rate snob AND i wholeheartedly support this poll. i'm voting for software upgrades just because they're really unpleasant and this is pleasant music.

isn't a lot of autechre's music really physical? seems like you'd want lossless for the headroom etc... FEEL THE BASS

if you don't hear this ________________
or this __^__^__^__^
you will not feel it

The pipes one was a funny anecdote so it got my vote
But yeah I’m finding it increasingly difficult to understand what lens Whiney sees the world through. Maybe the ilm regulars have a better handle on it than me, idk

whiney otm

first one is obviously best

software upgrades just because they're really unpleasant

Things getting better = unpleasant? OK.

Can "this is pleasant music" be added to the poll? Autechre is always my first port of call when I want some pleasant music.

show me someone who believes software upgrades are "things getting better" in 2018 and i'll show you a fool. p.s. don't be a bitch

Upgrade by definition means things getting better. If it isn't better it's not an upgrade.

If you want to wilfully misconstrue that I think it's only fair to return the favour and mention that "this is pleasant music" is more nauseating than anything in the poll.

There's no band I wish I liked more than Autechre. On paper, they seem like exactly what I want in a band, but everything I've listened to has been impenetrable. Might try again with this new release

autechre counts as a band? now i’ve seen it all!

though i agree strongly w the reading that confield was a post rock album

lentic catachresis is a post-rock jam for sure

Band, group, team, faction, whatever. Is it too late to add my comment to the poll options?

xp as others have noted it even ends in a digital feedback squeal

autechre is NOT a band

good day, sir!

https://www.discogs.com/Dr-Jeffrey-Thompson-Celestial-Dolphin/release/2846361

Relax, it's not the end of Autechre. They're hitting peak form, touring, releasing more and more music. People asked the same thing when L-Event finished with "Newbound".

I love you, Whiney. Never change.

Upgrade by definition means things getting better. If it isn't better it's not an upgrade.

looks like my 20-year experience of Windows is an outlier then

If anyone else is struggling with the meaning of the word upgrade I can suggest a dictionary or y'know, context ;-)

You're even free to look it up on your Encarta CD-ROM.

love it when ilxors wilfully misunderstand each other

it's a wilfully, pugnaciously bad take. if you're saying that software developers don't routinely release things called upgrades that sometimes make the user experience actively worse then i don't know how to argue. if you're saying that an upgrade that doesn't improve the user experience isn't an upgrade then that just semantic nonsense.

i mean it's also entirely irrelevant but fuck it, it's a quiet Saturday.

It's fine if you associate a word with some poor usage but a) that's not what it means and b) it's clear as fuck not what was intended in the original sentence - "software upgrades that make previous iterations redundant."

Also, many software upgrades are actually good.

Words gain their meaning from usage, and if dictionaries don't show this yet, then that's because they're slow to update.

So "upgrade" is primarily euphemistic now? Even when qualified as obviously positive?

Funny tho, I genuinely associate software upgrades with cool new stuff that pisses on earlier versions.

Euphemistic / ironic.

https://www.nolimitsendurance.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Jason-No-Limits-Endurance-Coaching.jpg

As a software developer, I can attest that "upgrade" doesn't always mean "better."

Also lol at this thread.

I don't understand why we have to police fans for being enthusiastic and hyperbolic

enthusiasm is rockist

As someone who has never listened to Autechre, for no particular reasons, these descriptions have convinced me to give them a serious shot.

The answer is Whiney perpetually feels he has to be ~ahead of the game~, beat the backlash before it beats him. He'll still put NTS1-4 in his EOTY top 10, just you wait. He'll rave about it yet only in writing he's actually paid for. On here he'll scorn and police people *liking music*. He can't do it without an ~ironic fight~ on a message board. Not realising that tiresome gig is up since, what, 1998?

You could be that person too, Moodles. Alternatively, you might not want to bother with that tiresome meta-post-shizzle stick dragged out into ancient history, making a caricature out of yourself. In which case you are way, way better off. Choose wisely!

I could? Gosh.

Weary Whiney stick is weary, is all.

I love that Whiney makes fun of ILM! On the other hand, all of those poll choices are my kind of posts, are what I come to ILM for

This kind of post is probably how /r/SRS started, too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/03/26/48-hours-inside-the-internets-most-toxic-community/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4d4339300507

Lol u all mad

that's kind of a revisit of just part of elyc6 0nset from elseq, right? I'm not going to play them back to back to check this out, even though I do really like them. I'm sure I've mentioned it elsewhere, but apparently not on this thread, they put me in mind of a darwin quote:

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth

though that really underplays the complexity and interconnectedness and fundamental wonder of both the tangled bank and this track.

The quote continues:

and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us two nerds from sheffield.

Really enjoying your live-blogging, map. I’m going to see them live in October and I can’t wait.

xp hahaha otm

2

a lot of squelch on this one. they've always done this thing where tracks are kind of "split" into two "sections". sometimes one section is like "zeroing in" on something from the other. "dummy casual pt 2" is like this. it's kind of a horror show of a track, a bad trip. still not my favorite thing here.

"gonk tuf hi" remains nuts. "xflood" kind of washes over me. "violvoic" remains a highlight, that last half goes deep into the bowels of the essence of metal-spring door-stoppers. i like the last half of 2 more than the first. 'e0' is very pretty. 9 chr0 is the endless variations on blunted stutter goat.

I just love the sound of this record so much, Autechre at their most limpid. Not that there was anything wrong with SIGN/PLUS but that had a ... warmth to it? something. that I didn't like as much.

'limpid' is a good word for it!

i do feel like some parts in 2 get a little loud / harsh but i think it serves the material. a lot of 2 feels 'boom bap' inspired to me.

there's a section at the end of 9 chr0 where very faintly there appears a kind of macro chord progression through a bassline that "stays" roughly on the same note every two measures, and then moves to a iv or a v the next two measures, etc. how it gets absolutely mangled until you wonder if it's still there, how it appears and disappears from all of the scree and whatever effect sounds like spring-loaded reverb on steroids - that is thrilling to listen to in an 'oh my god, what is going to happen next?' kind of way. there is kind of a sick thrill in listening to a lot of this..

'turbile epic casual' oh that's right, the loooong ambient one! it's a mood. when this first came out i was listening to a lot of it on trails in desert wilderness. this sounds like being lost in the desert to me.

were these guys the first people who put forward the proposition that synthesizers should sound like insects from another planet?

Not that there was anything wrong with SIGN/PLUS but that had a ... warmth to it? something. that I didn't like as much.

― rainbow calx (lukas), Friday, August 29, 2025 5:01 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm, nailed why I never find myself wanting to return to these (though I did like them both at the time), expressed in a way I was unable to exactly articulate

3

clustro casual. so impossibly deep in there, such languid pads, i just let it float along.

splesh gets progressively funkier. it might be one of my favorites on the whole thing. i like this thing they do where patterns mostly repeat for a few measures - like a few synth lines are more or less the same - and then there's a new section for a few measures, and then a new section, etc. it's them at their catchiest on this release.

little snippet of all end

then tt1pd - the beast. i love this track. dunno what to say, it just goes. another with a second section. love the little clicks that sound like closed hi-hats throughout. is this what you say about an autechre track - 'i love that little sound that....'. ok there's kind of a third section too! all of the nasty buzzy synth lines moving in that chromatic sort of pattern get so loose at the end. another thing that happens with these tracks is sometimes you hear then basically doing long-form improv with one sort-of-idea and they're very good at it. unlocking a feeling of freedom by keeping some elements constrained and just absolutely rinsing others.

acid mwan idle. hoo boy. i remember the first few times i listened to this i did not expect a trebly anemic hissing throbbing drone piece. repetitive, trippy. kinda satanic, kinda coil. the minimalism! fire gets closer at the end.

fLh. bleep bloop, let's get real detuned. not among my favs.

glos ceramic. here we go, back to it. another one with sections strung together--eddy to eddy. gets appealingly chunky and crumbly. weirdly catchy.

g 1 e 1. the pretty little lo-fi piano one that turns into a hypnogogic boards of canada ambient smear.

nineFly. kind of another 'sick thrills' one. dank as hell slow crawler.

shimrpl air. one of my favorite of the ambient pieces. so ethereal. cirrus clouds. layers of them. moving very fast. on neptune.

icari. one of the best for last. so much space between the percussive elements, the thuds and clicks. that slow-moving feedback drifting through everything. very deliberate-sounding. carefully strung together sentences. feels organic, like an ecosystem. we're cutting through brush at night.

Lukas, I think that’s why I didn’t love those albums. I wanted the astringence of Elseq/NTS.

i adore PLUS. i think some moments come close to sounding like 'nts' - 'ecol4' for instance. it does sound a little richer overall. an extra touch of sheen maybe. i think one of the secret weapons of 'nts' is how quiet they get. start at kind of a normal volume and then just get quieter from there. or to start quiet and stay quiet. for 20 minutes. there's a lot of that in the live shows too - quiet, careful intensity. things kind of barely holding together.

I guess I'll have to listen to these all over again - 2 and 3 anyway, which have more tracks i find difficult (amidst some giant stompers like violvoic and tt1pd). 9 chr0 sounds like someone doing weird DIY.

Yoooo

I'm glad you revived this one map

Im walking home from a five hour dj gig and north spiral sounds like the night defragging itself

that’s a proper mad one

Something I find myself increasingly obsessed with is how music sounds when it's out of range.

I once had a desk job where the office overlooked a large factory warehouse. You could hear the pop radio music coming through from the warehouse but it was at once tinny and muffled. I heard the little violin vamp from Britney Spears' "Toxic" bleeding through the walls for weeks before actually hearing the song properly and going "Ohhhh that's what that was". I'd been hearing it totally differently.

Other times I can hear a soundsystem playing house and techno from far away and my brain hears the "one" in a totally different place because the kick drum is inaudible. It becomes this strange offbeat "mm TIK uhh, mm TIK uhh" until I move closer and all the sounds fill in and make sense.

That's kind of the effect I get from NTS 1. Like if I've been out listening to loud music all day and now I'm in bed and my brain is still playing that music while I'm on the edge of sleep

love sign and plus, I think much more than the contemporaneous live stuff actually ... weirdly I always kept imagining Dave Gahan singing over several of the tracks then I realized they were probably big Depeche Mode heads in the 80s before the hip hop and house wave kicked in and it seemed to make a lot of sense viz the kinds of melodic structures they tend to return to, very dramatic, very melancholic, very romanticist ... like tell me if I'm wrong but are say "esc desc" or "sch.mefd.2" or "psin AM" or "iipre.esc" (from plus) not fairly Depeche-circa-Black Celebration-coded?

Funny, i find myself sometimes doing "Bryan Ferry-isms" over Ae. I could definitely imagine someone with his or Gahan's vocal range working with them

haha yeah, totally crooner core ... Sylvian as well would fit

this from Milton Parker on the elseq thread is so otm, really gets close to how my enjoyment of this stuff has increased:

"where the point is an unknowable flood of so much of it that you stop thinking of it in terms of 'pieces' or 'albums' or even physical media, you stop consciously thinking of it in terms of putting on a specific album. you just engage with it as sound without that record-geek side of your consciousness stepping in to track or map which one's your favorite or which album it is or which stage of his career it is you're dealing with and instead it is all continuum. which is pretty much where you want to be"

Yes. Especially with these long format releases. They force you to live "in the moment", and by that I'm talking on a micro scale, like zooming in and in on a waveform