Autechre - Amber

Montreal

this has been done, i think i even updated the thread last week

“yulquen” or “piezo” though. at the moment my favorite autechre record

oh shit now i see it in the search. well there are a lot of autechre threads and a lot of people talking about autechre might as well poll this again

seriously though

damn

i think this is my way in

oh word. yulquen or piezo for me. some weird gorgeous jams on this.

xp woah

Nil

"teartear" has a boards of canada vibe, i always turned that one up in the car. i listened to this album a lot on road trips.

Never heard amber TIL this poll

uh oh whiney's gonna get mad again.

He loves it.

The other poll has a better title IMO.

Flappy what’s yer pick

piezo for that 'wolf howl' rising and falling tone

The cover photograph depicts mountain formations from CapPOLLdocia -- Autechre :: Amber :: LP2

Yulquen and Piezo tied in the previous iteration of this.

I voted Teartear. Yulquen was a close 2nd

Also, my least favorite Ae record. Seriously.

didn't Whiney poll the titles of these threads at some point

^^^^

I still enjoy it (I like everything they've done), but it's not at all what I want from Autechre when I get in that special Ae mood. It also suffers a bit from SAW II (or--if you like--Loveless) syndrome, where it's been copied so much it's often difficult now to hear what was so advanced about it at the time

I mean xp

the last 30 seconds of "Silverside" where it pulls back and reveals the "full" melody is one of my very favorite Ae moments and one of those things that basically made me a fan. so I gotta vote that. plus last time I heard it I was driving through a thunderstorm which was a pretty cool experience.

I think "Teartear" is probably the best track otherwise. "Slip" will probably win. Man, this is a great album though. Never really cared much for "Yulquen" but I dig everything else. "Nine" is so pretty. Really like "Further" too. "Glitch" is a banger. Love how "Montreal" uses a door stopper as a percussive noise.

you mean one of these?

https://www.secured-sites.co.uk/images/gallery/B5Y78EENZS/93712205P1.JPEG

never thought of that. will have to go home and give mine a ping tonight.

Slip is so lovely

This band needs an editor in re to their shit song titles

Takes a special kind of fan to Think “oh yeah let’s load up vietrmx213.31.14”

those ones aren't so bad. take out the "mx" and the numbers (which correspond to the % of the EP they take up) and you have a fairly normal tracklisting..."Garbage", "PIOB", "Bronchus Seven", and "VLetr"

Anvil Vapre on the other hand with "Second Bad Vilbel", "Second Scepe", "Second Scout"...what was wrong with the first one???

I still enjoy it (I like everything they've done), but it's not at all what I want from Autechre when I get in that special Ae mood. It also suffers a bit from SAW II (or--if you like--Loveless) syndrome, where it's been copied so much it's often difficult now to hear what was so advanced about it at the time

― Paul Ponzi, Friday, May 4, 2018 5:51 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i disagree with every sentence of this post lol

Second Bad Vilbel refers to a nearby town that is twinned with the German town of Bad Vilbel

wait what are the records like Amber

Yulquen for life

Flappy what’s yer pick

― done and dusted (Ross)

not sure yet, i literally heard this album for the first time last night. "Slip" stuck out to me but that seems like the most immediate/melodic one. going to listen to this a lot more in the next few months. autechre is pretty much the perfect band to read to

For reading man? ZAmfir tho

this is a very good autechre album but autechre were not then and have never been "advanced"

are you intimating that they are copyists or that no-one else has copied them?

still stands as a favorite, along with ep7. these were my "entry point" into Ae. Would love to hear an album that sounds like Amber, if anybody cares to cite something.

xp neither

there is a ton of contemporaneous stuff that is a lot like amber

idk what though. I'm not really an IDM head or nothin' but if you like the first two Ae discs then Bytes by Black Dog Productions may be up your alley

lol pretty much all of it

just google 1994 ambient electronica and see what youtubes come up

it's not going to sound exactly the same as autechre any more than leonard cohen sounds exactly like bob dylan but in terms of beat construction + synth deployment + production tricks amber is pretty much standard stuff

if anything i would argue that autechre are really best at creating and maintaining a distinctive "mood" that sets them apart from other acts

ty, frogbs. i've a mate who's pretty well-versed in early days Rephlex / Warp / Artificial Intelligence comp. -type stuff, and he's mentioned Black Dog a few times.. figure i should've followed up on it by now. Some of Cylob's latter day material reminds me a lot of Autechre -- stuff like the first couple Ambient News albums, as well as older Cylob in general.

yea it's sonically similar to something like Tengo n' Vectif but I feel like even then Ae were big into screwing with the nuts n bolts of a track more than their contemporaries. if that makes sense

Saw them live Circa draft and they played one snatch of second bad Vibel admist a fully improv set

Amber is actually pretty unique, there is/was a lot of stuff around that sounds like Incunabula (Black Dog indeed), and again a lot of IDM that sounds like the later stuff, but Amber (and largely, Tri Repetae) hits a sweet spot in between that hasn't really been imitated that much.

Garbage has the best melody ever in ae history

While I get that Autechre have long since moved away from this album artistically, I still think very highly of this record and still enjoy the hell out of it. While I'm listening to it, I don't think "meh, this is old shit and it sucks that it's not more like Exai", I enjoy it for what it is. It's where their heads were at at the time and they did a great job of it.

Otm

i actually have a lot of work to do today but how many youtubes would it take to convince people amber is not unique among its contemporaries in 1994 ambient electronica

years back, somebody on ILX talked about this album - https://www.discogs.com/Phthalocyanine-Navy-Warship/release/11956 , by Pthalocyanine.. it's pretty singular-sounding, though it def shares some qualities with Ae's music.

xxp that sounds right map except

what they were actually doing earlier within certain constraints of equipment

don't hear this

oh damn never heard of xenakis before

hm why'd you ask then?

what they were actually doing earlier within certain constraints of equipment

don't hear this

― the late great, Saturday, May 5, 2018 5:36 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

by this i'm referring to all of the really wild syncopation that it felt like they were taking great pains to make sound as accidental and organic as possible. like they got as far as they could with sequencing machines and once they found a platform where they could be much more indeterminate with rhythm suddenly it sounded like all hell broke loose, but they were always trying to make that kind of music with the more grid-bound tools they were first using. that tension used to be the coolest thing about early autechre to me, but now i think i'm a lot more appreciative of what they do melodically.

ok i get what you're saying, i get that the aleatory elements were always there (at least since flutter) but i feel autechre were much much better when the tension between avant garde and functional was still there

Yeah, I’m all for odd time signatures and I absolutely get escaping the gravity of loops. But.

i think the technik-narrative is not exactly a straightforwardly progressive one, and it includes a lot of shifts that open up ranges of possible music for them that are not in themselves very technical, like the embrace from quadrange remix eps up through the live recordings and elseq and the radio sessions of longform process structures. or the gradual comfort with kickdrums.

other times it's more in the way of musical refinements of things, as said, that they were already doing. i played draft 7.30 the other day and was struck by how much the electro-breakbeat-sculpted-from-noise technique there was reflected in what they're doing lately with synthesis. which - i don't know anything about the actual technical details - sounds like a way of setting up, in various recognizable ways, a small number of concrete elements that are audibly internally related, in really multidimensional ways, like pitch and timbre and attack and i dunno like viscosity, but treated in a volatile way, so that they can also transform them into each other, or take them apart, as you listen. i think of that especially as a post-oversteps refinement. i'm sure something similar was going on before, but to my ears the lushness and precision they can achieve with it now enables them to invest nearly every moment or every variation, if they want to, with an inherent interest for the ear. they're just more of a joy to listen to.

(you can imagine old fans treating the new music like grindcore carcass fans treat 'heartwork' and 'surgical steel'.)

i also feel like a lot of the recent improvements in 'technique' are not so much in equipment/programming as they are in language. you see people comment that this woodblock or that beat from so-and-so reappears in a new track, but i think it's more that they've established an expressive enough repertoire of elements in their style that they're readily intelligible to listeners, even maybe less experienced ones, and don't need to be 'explained' via extensive proof-of-concept uses.

i was listening the other day to the first track of 'move of ten' and noticing how it has a 'startoff' / baton raising kind of function realized by the high-pitched noise and the quick breakbeaty static immediately after, so brief; there's a similar bit at the beginning of 'gonk hi tuff' on the radio sessions. again, i don't think that's original to them or a technical milestone or anything, they've just worked through enough of that in every detail of their composing/improvising idiom that they're able to 'speak' in a richer way. especially without seeming like they're imprisoned by their tools, captive to their recordings slaved over in the studio, etc.

a track like 'all end' would be a whole record by an artsy contemporary drone artist, you can imagine how they would give interviews describing their bullshit process or whatever, how they were trying to make lots of similar sounds for installations in gallery spaces, yet it all hangs on them basically having found a compelling way of making ~one kind of noise~ for an hour. perhaps they do nothing else like that, but often they would try to build a career out of repeating it somehow, with some sidesteps and twists and variations.

but for autechre now it's like a one-off afterthought, to extend the end of bladelores. a lot of it isn't even particularly marked with their signature, but just enough so that it broadens their idiom just a bit more. which you can't pull of unless you've already got a very comprehensive means of musical expression at your disposal.

what i like about "move of ten" is that it sounds a lot like amber-era autechre but what i don't like is that it feels like they've just randomly sprinkled musique concrete elements all over it

this basically could have come off amber or tri repetae imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfjY7lnIDXk

that's a great post! xp

i do like "bladelores" a lot

it still sounds pretty fresh

one of the exciting things about these new long releases is you can hear them expanding their idiom in real time. you get to follow along with the experiments and when they're successful it makes them that much more exhilarating. of course some end up fizzling, but much more often than not you feel like you're discovering a new place, or a new combination of places, along with them.

yes it's very frank, which is kind of like a show of strength for an artist, to be able to do a track like elyc6 onset off of elseq, and not have to tart any of it up in a dramatic structure, just set the thing going, and gradually make it decay into something else, over a LONG stretch of time, with every bit in the process there for you to hear. yet it doesn't sound like a gimmick or an indulgence (something i felt a bit hearing one of the 'shrimpls' tonight, with all the slow undersea mountain king tuba farting) of a musician who's trying to audaciously REALLY LET IT GO ON. more like a fact: 'yes, this actually can go from here to there, and you'll stay riveted the whole time if you listen'.

was reading recently about erasmus' 'copious style', the famous bit with 'your letter delighted me greatly', and it seems apropos for autechre's recent music

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copia:_Foundations_of_the_Abundant_Style

fits nicely with the extreme track/release lengths they've favored, too

other times it's more in the way of musical refinements of things, as said, that they were already doing. i played draft 7.30 the other day and was struck by how much the electro-breakbeat-sculpted-from-noise technique there was reflected in what they're doing lately with synthesis. which - i don't know anything about the actual technical details - sounds like a way of setting up, in various recognizable ways, a small number of concrete elements that are audibly internally related, in really multidimensional ways, like pitch and timbre and attack and i dunno like viscosity, but treated in a volatile way, so that they can also transform them into each other, or take them apart, as you listen. i think of that especially as a post-oversteps refinement. i'm sure something similar was going on before, but to my ears the lushness and precision they can achieve with it now enables them to invest nearly every moment or every variation, if they want to, with an inherent interest for the ear. they're just more of a joy to listen to.

otfm

What sounds like Amber? Yeah nothing *exactly*, of course, except maybe Gescom's (duh) Sciew Spoc, although that's atypical with its almost A/B song structure.

Other than stuff already mentioned, Bedouin Ascent had a similarly nifty way with syncopated patterns (of which Montreal is almost the ideal form, Glitch and Piezo to an extent of I remember titles correctly. Later the mighty Rotar.)

Treading The Earth is prob the most Amber-like. I loved Pavilion Of The New Spirit but the jazz / proto broken beat vibe turned / may turn some off.

Oh, this EP came out in 1992!

https://youtu.be/QZdC2fNhhls

The ambient bit at the end of four of seven on NTS 1 sounds a *lot* like it could be on BA's Science, Art & Ritual, incidentally.

Always happy to get an excuse to mention this guy's music.

loving the takes in this thread, map in particular very much otm

Just for the hell of it I checked my iTunes library and I have 495 tracks in my Autechre section, no repeats (unless you count "Weissensee" at both 33 and 45). And many of those are live sets, so I could actually listen for 7 straight days from front to back.

Map, were you calling me a drunk guy?

no lol, tombot

although we've all been drunk guys i'm sure

great posts by map and j upthread, a pleasure to read

also this:

it wasn't so much new plugins as it was gradually moving to max/msp and an object-oriented programming approach to composition though, right? at least that's how i always think of their transition from more conventionally arranged music of the amber era to their amoebic morphing (but always readily identifiable as autechre) recent music.

― obviously DLC (Karl Malone), Friday, May 4, 2018 11:30 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

is otm. I guess I fall on the side of preferring the recent (post-Confield) music because, at the most basic level, I'd rather listen to Roland Kayn than Boards of Canada. At a less basic level, j said it more eloquently than I could in the post quoted above.

ok i get what you're saying, i get that the aleatory elements were always there (at least since flutter) but i feel autechre were much much better when the tension between avant garde and functional was still there

― the late great, Saturday, May 5, 2018 1:02 AM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I feel exactly the opposite! It isn't as if the Mantronix / boom bap / Kraftwerk funk has disappeared, it's just become so much more integrated and subtle, which is why I find latter-day Autechre so singular and why early Autechre (as many have argued on this thread) can--fairly or not--sound part of a particular time and place. This may sound naive, and I may regret writing this if ILX exists in fifteen years, but I don't think NTS Sessions will ever sound dated.

I will also concede it may also be that the early work reminds me of my life back then, so of course it sounds dated to me. I wonder what a person discovering Autechre for the first time today would make of listening to Amber and Exai back to back. I think context is mega important here. Does Portishead's Dummy sound like the 90s because it is forever associated with a certain strain of coffee shop lifestyle music, or does it sound like the 90s because that's when you heard it? Would a teenager in 2018 hear "Wandering Star" and immediately think "oh, 90s, blech." I'm not so sure.

I sort of envy a person getting to hear any of this stuff for the first time.

I think you're mostly right PP, but the elements of NTS which disappoint me a little are the very obvious sonic callbacks to their earlier work, e.g. column thirteen is basically an extended O=0 - sometime when I'm feeling strong I might make a list. But aside from those quibbles, it's clear that the guys have complete control over the sounds they are trying to get, and the balance of chaos and determinism in the way the tracks play and mutate. At heart they feel rhythm and sound viscerally, and in many ways I think their quest has been finding ways to maximise that buzz - letting a track mutate slowly so that the same rhythm figure means something different every time, or making the sequence stumble and trip while your brain fixes it and waits anxiously for the track to get back on the rails, or presenting 200 variations on a sound or a melody until it lifts out of the track. They've been pressing these buttons for the last 25 years and getting better and better at it, so now tracks can run 10, 20, 60 minutes and stay riveting.

column thirteen is basically an extended O=0
One is all tuned comb filters, the other is FM chimes. Completely different ;-)

O=0 sounds like it should be the theme tune for a science-based afternoon quiz show in the 80s.

So does the following track now I come to mention it.

One is all tuned comb filters, the other is FM chimes. Completely different ;-)

Foil for me here every time

Autechre have come back to the Amber sound and structure in later works, definitely on Exai for example.

apparently even perception of similarity can be completely subjective!

It isn't as if the Mantronix / boom bap / Kraftwerk funk has disappeared, it's just become so much more integrated and subtle

right, so ... pretty much what i was saying?

starting to become more familiar with this album, my love for it growing each and every day

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Did I ever share this?

https://i.imgur.com/ByzHWT7.jpg

Coincidence? I think not. Just played Papa Don't Preach backwards at 33rpm and it sounds remarkably like Teartear ;-)

soundcloud or it didn't happen

it didn't. love the cover connection though

Very good! Wrong album, but I've always through 'Recury' off Chiastic Slide would have been brilliant with an MC over the top.

I do love the idea of Madonna, ear to the ground, reading word of Autechre in the hipper corners of the press, putting on an album in search of new producers to mine for ideas, then immediately pressing stop.

Desperately seeking Surripere.

autechre really should have done more work with mcs

Ccec iis the only thing I can think of with an "MC" on it.

Funkstorung are kind of "Autechre with MCs", right?

East Flatbush Project - Tried by 12 (Autechre mix) (which basically dissolves into ccec); The Bug - Skeng (Autechre Remix); the microphone fiend 'remix' (mashed up with blifil live)...

but yeah, more would be great.

"Goz Quarter" from Envane samples Kool Keith rapping

Them collaborating with Tricky in the 90s is one of the big missed opportunities I think. He was going into dark electronica territory on Pre-Millennium Tension which would have married with ae's aesthetic quite well I think. They could have bonded over a shared love of 'Microphone Fiend'.

I always thought their remix of Tortoise was an odd match. They never remixed or worked with NIN, did they? That's surprising, all things considered.

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO @ the madonna combo

Heh, yeah always makes me laugh. It was a genuine double take on my part - the Madonna album was out on a shelf one day and in the corner of my eye I thought I saw Amber. Some of the detailing and how they may have up is uncanny

https://www.stonesthrow.com/app/uploads/2020/06/beauty-and-the-beast-1024x518.jpg

Just read that was a thing

I dreamt that there was a suite of videos for the whole album that somehow I'd never discovered - drone flybys of landscapes like the one on the cover, manipulated with 2d and 3d digital effects, fitting the music perfectly and talking it to another level (though I think in the dream the music was actually my own subconscious creation!)

Feel like I need a full-library Autechre session soon, it's been a while since I've listened to any of their albums which is stupid because they are perfect for losing myself in sandbox video game worlds and late night hacking