Autechre: Classic or Dud?

Fantastic show, accurately summed up by this tweet:

was so awesome to find out how it feels to be a terrified little mouse under some mysterious machine in a huge factory, thank you autechre i loved every minute

— Toby (@_toby231) October 7, 2022

I’ve hallucinated at both Ae shows I’ve seen (nothing beyond alcohol in my system). And the sculpting comment is otm.

I had my eyes closed for a lot of it and near hallucinated - not seeing but imagining, without trying, forms moving and changing.

anyone go to the second set? to both?

So ... it was a gig played in darkness and if you had to leave your seat you couldn't go back? Or have I misunderstood Twitter?

that is correct. it wasn't dark for the support and you could go for a piss before the main event as long as you were back in time but with ten mins to go the queue for the gents was huge.

and autechre's set was only 65 minutes.

this sounds like the kind of diva behaviour that puts me off people

went to design museum on tuesday and they had tri-repetae vinyl on sale in their tiny, curate shelves (£20). it was like they'd picked them for the covers.

Sending thoughts to all the 50-something males.

I’m jealous of all of you who got to experience this

The Helsinki set from Sept 11th has dropped.

The set ends when the last person has to go to the bathroom

lol

think i might have to go without fluids for 24 hours before i went to one of these

i don't think it's diva-ish tho, it's part of creating an event

djh ouch but otm in my case

Sending thoughts to all the 50-something males.

Jugs under their sound rig

The Helsinki thing is great - they sent a lossless link to all the ticketholders after there were sound problems at the gig. Intriguing set too.

they got a review: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/oct/09/autechre-review-barbican-london

that's a good review! I went on Friday and though I enjoyed the experience I must admit that my attention did wander a fair bit, it seemed to me that their sound has completely slipped its moorings from being music into something closer to sound design if not pure abstraction. I saw them 20-odd years ago (ages I know!) and their set then was more recognisably techno rollers, even if very wonky techno rollers.

it seemed to me that their sound has completely slipped its moorings from being music into something closer to sound design if not pure abstraction

Know what you mean of course, but SIGN/PLUS were released recently and are much more song-oriented.

doesn't song imply singing?

you have to really turn it up

possibly discussed elsewhere, but Autechre put out a 5.5hr mix of 1992-ish stuff that contextualises the newly-reissued Artificial Intelligence compilation. It's akin to that marathon electro mix they did a while back and is great:
https://autechre.mixlr.com/recordings/1977679

it was mentioned on a thread called "autechre - classic or dud"

:-)

what we didn't mention was the tracklist, which is this work in progress (not my work)

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Fy1mZkeMTI1CvLWmPy7NOAwFkFu-a6FHrx2EMgt4_3w/edit#gid=0

ah the perils of two C or D threads! thanks for the tracklisting sheet...

nice, hope they keep going. I'll get these but Untilted/Quaristice/Oversteps/Exai are the ones I really want

https://www.treblezine.com/autechre-announces-vinyl-reissues-of-confield-draft-7-30/

Will definitely be picking up the Confield reissue. I want both, but I'm trying to buy fewer records this year. It's not going well so far.

Very happy about this. Wish I could get my hands on the rest of the EPs on wax though. Would love Envane, Cichlisuite and EP 7.1 (I have 7.2).

They seem to have forgotten the CD editions.

They seem to have forgotten the CD editions.

The idea of listening to Autechre on vinyl is completely baffling to me. "You know what this ultra-pristine collection of 100% digital crunches and pings needs? Some hiss and crackle! You know, to add 'warmth'! Oh, and less bass!"

What is life without Plumtree's potted meat? incomplete

unperson I assume you know they put this sticker on the Tri Rep CD:
https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7TCF8SlZcMQ/W-LlsMHTAAI/AAAAAAAABlg/ATiFT3Ry4PAHM1889JNer2WR9_D4ggJqACLcBGAs/s640/autechre1.jpg

tri rep is the only one I felt like I should own on vinyl. Got it as birthday gift to myself last year. For all the rest I'm fine with CDs or digital.

LP5 has so much bass it causes the needle to jump around if your turntable’s cheap

I have to remember that I’m no longer part of whatever “the demo” is now, and what the demo wants is vinyl reissues.

To hell with "listen to this on vinyl" pointers on CDs

CDs will come back, bring on retro-futurism

FFS Autechre. I can't afford this to happen to me this year

Man, Ae change attitudes towards formats a fair bit. I love these albums. I want them on a plastic slab

LP5 has so much bass it causes the needle to jump around if your turntable’s cheap

lp5 is also so crisp and clear that it feels like it should be listened to on CD

xp but would you like the plastic to be vinyl or polycarbonate?

I tried listening to Gonkcast, and it's decent enough (I certainly can't imagine trying to talk about Autechre out loud for this long), but I kinda feel like they're not nerdy *enough* about music and production for the task? Like, I want to listen to someone who really has hands-on experience with Max/MSP and can dig into what's going on in some of the tracks (like I think they were saying Cichli is in 4/4, I WOULD NEVER).

Anyway it's just making me want to go back and listen to the records, which is good. Confirmed once again that I don't get as much out of Tri Repetae as others seem to, and that Chiastic Slide is a big time classic for me.

Also listening to the recent NTS influences mix in chunks, so much good ahead-of-its-time stuff.

"I want to listen to someone who really has hands-on experience with Max/MSP and can dig into what's going on in some of the tracks (like I think they were saying Cichli is in 4/4, I WOULD NEVER)."

If you are looking for detailed commentary on Autechre, I recommend the description of "Gantz Graf" at the 5:4 blog:

https://5against4.com/2022/08/05/20-years-on-autechre-gantz-graf/

Now that's what I'm talking about, thanks!

the "embarrassing" review linked in the NME is a lot more entertaining than that blog post, even though the cliches in it about intellectual european idm listeners were already 10 years old 20 years ago

that blog post is funny because it tries to pass itself off as a very technical explanation of the track, but when you really get down to it, the writer is just saying "this part is noisy" / "this part is less noisy" / "this part sounds more like beats", with a lot of around those ideas

a lot of *padding around those ideas

yeah, honestly i just want to see a screenshot of their max/msp patch

there's a useful and simple test i like to apply to bullshit music criticism like this, and it's to replace any of the meaningless details with a different meaningless detail and then ask myself whether the meaning would be altered in any way. if not, then bingo, i was right, it really IS meaningless detail

example: when author says "the way that the five pitches are used throws emphasis onto the intervals, strengthening their connectivity." imagine the author had said FOUR pitches, or THREE pitches, or SIX or NINETEEN. would it make any difference?

here's another: "Throughout this sequence, the underlying beats, though complex, don’t meaningfully change at all, working to support this melody. Though low in the mix, Autechre tease it out slightly by putting just a touch of reverb onto each note"

what if the author had said ECHO or COMPRESSION or PHASER or DISTORTION instead of "reverb"? would we care?