Are you telling me this is AE: SIGN? (Autechre LP 14)

https://d1rgjmn2wmqeif.cloudfront.net/r/b/202853-1.jpg

Might as well have a thread to live blog the live stream.

sir, when and where is that?

I'm writing about this one for tQ and hadn't realised they were doing this, so now I'm trying to cram my own thoughts out before I get influenced by others' reactions

Ah okay, autechre.warp.net, 1 Pacific tomorrow

'SIGN' Album Stream. Thursday 8th October.
22:00 CEST / 21:00 BST / 16:00 EDT / 13:00 PDT / 05:00 JST (9th)
https://autechre.warp.net

oh goodie!

Welp, goodbye plans to work tomorrow

> LP 14

[citation needed]

LP01 Incunabula
LP02 Amber
LP03 Tri Repetae
LP04 Chiastic Slide
LP05 LP5
LP06 Confield
LP07 Draft 7:30
LP08 Untilted
LP09 Quaristice
LP10 Oversteps
LP11 Exai
LP12 Elseq
LP13 NTS Sessions
LP14 SIGN

Are Elseq or NTS Sessions not official long players? I mean they were kinda extra long too. Unless you consider the 5 Elseqs and 4 Sessions their own LPs, in which case we're on LP21

EP7, Qradrange and Move of Ten don't count as official long players, despite containing enough music to be one.

There's an argument against 12 and 13 being LP's given that 13 started as 8 hours of radio and, iirc, 12 was things they were using live. And the lengths count against them, imo, yes.

Maybe i'm just railing against calling something lp14 when it has a perfectly good name already. Like calling Jon Pertwee The Third.

elseq doesn't overlap much with the live stuff, and it was described as an album by the label and the group at the time I think.
Also worth noting that several titles suggest a numbered list: Tri, LP5, Draft 7, Exai.

If there's a numbered list - I wouldn't get hung up on it - SIGN suggests this is LP12: signs of the zodiac, the circle on the cover

It's clearly (clearly!) the 14th release of long form studio material (accepting official designations of their EPs). I don't think 'things they were using live' clearly demarcates elseq from any other release.

i think it's possible to think of elseq and NTS as being something different to the "album" albums, and if you think of the number-related title sequence as a thing then i can make a case for "Sign" as 12 but can't figure a connection with 14

this is an entirely trivial game/crossword puzzle by the way, albums are long dead ffs

after a very casual first listen "gr4" and "th red a" was my fave sequence of tracks.

F7 is an absolute banger as well!

vocal track "esc desc" takes a very lovely detour

quite upset that “pissin AM” turned out to be exactly what it sounds like

Still in doubt if I want to listen to this tonight? Like let it wash over me in all it's - undoubtedly awesome and confusing - glory, but without the chance to dive in again until the lp's arrive, versus ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and enjoy the ride.

(psst..) it's *available* to stream on slsk as well

tick.jpg

(psst..) it's *available* to stream on slsk as well

― calzino, Thursday, October 8, 2020 9:54 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

How can we be sure they aren't fakes?

the one on slsk right now is definitely not real

I like some of these fake Autechre tracks, they might be better than the real thing!

hmmm

So how does this work? I just go to the Warp page and it'll be there? Or is it being hosted someplace else?

autechre.warp.net

thanks!

zomg i'm locked in

lol i've got to go out shortly

It's starting!

Yay, going with silence beforehand was a good idea

lol i wondered where the noises in the house were coming from then remembered i'd got the stream running

I love it already.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh

Those pesky sound designers next door

i am listening on cheap child's headphones because our daughter is being restless and i didn't want to go upstairs and risk waking her, these were all i could find downstairs.

avoid the chat. are those things always like this? gonna periodically check in here instead

love this already btw

damn

imagining myself on a beach tbh

Stuck at a city hall meeting #sadlol

Enjoy people.

That chatroom is so gross and unpleasant and reminds me why I don't look at 99% of things I could look at online

This is lovely music though

lol i never dreamed of looking at the chat, same as i turn it off if i'm watching a football stream

yeah it's gorj so far. leaving the chat tab hidden for sure

The synthetic yet operatic quality of the pads and their lovely, cavernous reverb (which seems to be a different reverb effect they've been using the last 5-6 years) is incredible. Very different vibe immediately

ah here we go on some electro shit

omg whut with this 2nd track already

oversteps feel here. so lush though! almost feels like they're trolling us.

soo...Oversteps 2??? nice

def lush

plus ended up being the one i connected with the most. sign is gorgeous but i need to be in a specific mood to enjoy its combination of sedateness and restlessness. plus is classic weird rugged autechre i.e. the heart music.

I love SIGN but the whiplash effect of alternating between ambient track and beat-based track for most of the album has always felt a bit disconcerting to me. I think it would have been cool if they had fully committed to a percussionless sonic palette, but I can pretty much assemble that album by playlisting the beatless tracks from SIGN and PLUS

I agree I didn't give either of these albums, but particularly the second one, the attention they deserved, not just because there were two of them and the second distracted from the release of the first, but also because "NTS Sessions 1–4" sort of ... burnt me out. Not that I'm burnt out on Autechre, those recordings just took so much energy and time on my part, and was so rewarding, and felt like such a defining statement, that "Sign" and "Plus" sounded to me almost like reunion albums.

― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, November 16, 2021 9:08 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

could not have put this better myself. Exactly my experience, and not just because I view NTS Sessions as their absolute pinnacle. I got way too obsessed with that box when it came out. It's one of my favorite albums (if you could even call it that) of all time.

That said, I really do love SIGN

J. Sam OTM

yea Autechre really answered the question "is it possible for an artist to put out too *much* great music at once?" it was just overwhelming. Underworld did it too the following year but Autechre's music hits way more of a niche spot

idk how even to compare these two to NTS & elseq. obviously the latter albums contain more "good stuff" and have some insane highs but if I just wanna pop some Ae on both SIGN and PLUS hit the spot

in fact SIGN strikes me as the kind of album that would be getting a lot of excited buzz if a new artist had done it. not to say Autechre is overlooked but I do wonder how it would be received if it was just made by some guy on Orange Milk Records

Heck, I could still listen to "All End" on repeat and be happy.

Nothing against the NTS Sessions, they're great and they contain some lovely stuff, but yeah they're not exactly the most immediate of accessible things Ae have released by any stretch, and that's in terms of sonics and sheer volume of material. SIGN/PLUS you can just put on and vibe out to without it having to be an epic intense listening session.

Or basically what frogbs said. I wouldn't say NTS is all gold at all

I wouldn't claim to love every individual track on NTS but, when I view it holistically, it's clearly a masterpiece. I guess you could say its more than the sum of its parts, but that's not quite right, either, since a lot of those parts represent some of the most astonishing music I have ever heard

when I view it holistically, it's clearly a masterpiece

I think 4 really helps it out here, it seems like as a whole it has an order to it that I don't get from Elseq, which to me is just a big grab bag of long (and really good) Ae tracks

NTS is one of the few Ae releases where I know every track by name and can recall how it sounds when I read the title. It felt like the apex of their achievement and I would have been fine with it as a "last word". I've probably listened to SIGN/PLUS least of all their releases in the year following, every now and then I remember it and put it on, but after NTS most of the tracks just feel like the start of something. I say this as an Ae obsessive since about 1997.

It felt like the apex of their achievement and I would have been fine with it as a "last word".

yeah

This is all very surprising to me. NTS is enjoyable but on the whole I find it largely an impenetrable murky affair. Save for maybe a couple of tracks like violvoic, I couldn't tell you what each track is like from memory. All End is hugely hugely overrated and it surprises me that people hold it up as being remarkable. OTOH SIGN/PLUS is very memorable to me, with each track having a defining characteristic that makes it sound unique.

Honestly, while NTS etc is remarkable for its achievement as a sheer monolithic work of artisanship, SIGN/PLUS to me is their most enjoyable and their most listenable since before Confield.

Revisiting SIGN today though, I was brought right back to October 2020, and the emotions I was feeling then. There's an ache, an emptiness to tracks like gr4 which will forever be synonymous with that lockdown interim period in the UK where we could just about start mingling again, and then just a few weeks later were plunged back into it. What a dark, melancholy time it was.

never forget that when you don't have the time for "all end" you can always listen to "bladelores"

I love bladelores

This isn't an original opinion or anything but All End just feels redundant when you've got... the entire genre of drone music to compare it to, as well as the rest of Ae's catalogue - I don't see what makes it remarkable other than it's length and that it's by Ae

NTS has tracks like gonk steady one and column thirteen that take the late-period Ae exploratory vibe and add massive hooks, just exhilarating stuff. And I like the sound of the record - super clear and widescreen without being brittle or harsh - much more than sign/plus.

I dunno what to tell you about All End. I've listened to plenty of drone and that track doing what it does, sounding like it does, coming where it does in the album just does it for me. There's some sort of aural illusion happening with that track, my brain keeps hearing melodies and harmonies that aren't there.

Yeah, I liked it to watching Derek Jarman's "Blue."

Comparing NTS to SIGN is like comparing Trans Europe Express to Radioactivity. I strongly prefer Radioactivity but I know a lot of people would disagree

And ohmigod some of the tracks on NTS go on for sooo loooong without really doing anything. I don't know how they can justify something like bqbqbq being 11 minutes. It's interesting for all of the first minute

super disagree on that, it's a maximalist piece which asks "what if this, but played out to its fullest extent" and I could listen to that all day. So many tracks mutate, or splinter into tangents, and the length basically forces you to work past your first impressions and listen for other things.
and re: all end, sure there are other works of similar magnitude and concept, sure it's just a timestretch of a simple noise piece, sure there's any number of ways you could criticise it, but lukas is right that it's a ganzfeld on which I hallucinate my soul. I listened to it cranked, a few times in full, during a phase of my life where my emotions were basically unbearable and unprocessable, and it felt like being suspended as a cloud of atoms and was immensely healing to me. So I don't really care if it's clever or original or whatever, it's just wonderful. This kind of art is equally about selection as creation, and putting that up as an hour-length block was clearly an aesthetic decision. Wouldn't matter if it was a field recording of an electric fan.

I agree with dog latin - I get that the length and drawn out patterns are part of the appeal but certain tracks on here just don’t do anything for me and they just go on soooo long. I love a good 3/4 of it though. Including “bqbqbq” (which you gotta admit is pretty funny to have as the 2nd track)

I think we can all agree that … we want more AE in 2022, though, right? 🙂

mattt otmfm

I’d be down for more Autechre sure

Every time this thread comes to life I get a PTSD shock that the band might have dropped another 8 hours of music.

I still want a physical 5CD box of Elseq. I know it’s never coming but I hold out hope.

fwiw the individual NTS Sessions on vinyl are actually pretty cheap, you can get them for like $25 + shipping even though they are 3xLPs. I guess too many people (correctly) decided this was ridiculous to have on wax. but they're wrong. it's awesome on vinyl even changing a record and flipping a side in "all end"

because of the activity on this thread I am listening to PLUS and honestly I think it's as good as anything they've released, at least on a per minute scale. and it's probably the most accessible thing they've done since LP5, outside of Oversteps/Move of Ten. pretty much all the things they do well are on it. and it's got "lux 106 mod" which is arguably prettier than anything on SIGN! can't help but wonder how it would've been received had it been released first.

also its nice to hear Autechre making music that sounds funny again. "TM1 open" is like Hobbit disco

because of the activity on this thread I am listening to PLUS and honestly I think it's as good as anything they've released

been meaning to make this exact post all day

anyway now that I'm done I will be listening to Cluster, who in many ways were the original Autechre. no I will not elaborate on that

@unperson yes! My NTS Sessions CD set gives me warm wibbles and it's a shame we can't have the same with Elseq.

Listened to Plus yesterday, aside from a track or two it still mostly passes me by, possibly because I was never so much into "beat based techno in the classic era". Love the lush and pillowly Sign; I also think of NTS as a career peak and a monumental achievement that transcends its own few longeurs. What I go to most often for a quick and easy hit of ne plus ultra ae though is elseq 1 tracks 2-5.

I bet they press elseq on vinyl for the 10th ann in 2016

*2026

Fuck, just realised that's not far off

Unperson, that’s something I want too.

Speaking of which, I got notified today that my Copies of Chiastic and LP5 have been dispatched and OMG I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR LONGER THAN BQBQBQ

Good news! Hopefully that means mine are en route too. I typically prefer Autechre on CD but I'm very excited to get these.

yeah i don't know why i even own Autechre on record, but these are very impotant albums for me and it will be a nice way to rediscover them

Just another voice on the Internet saying "I'd like an Elseq CD set" (was even considering some Russian boot but now all I see on Ebay is a thumb drive in a box).

Is "buy it and burn it" not an option? or unsatisfying without artwork?

the lack of a physical copy means that despite Ae being one of my favorite musical acts ever I'm barely familiar with elseq relative to the rest of the catalog

xp -- probably mostly the latter for me, plus CD-Rs being more likely to degrade over time than factory-pressed discs (Russian boots in my limited
experience have been factory-pressed)

but lukas is right that it's a ganzfeld on which I hallucinate my soul. I listened to it cranked, a few times in full, during a phase of my life where my emotions were basically unbearable and unprocessable, and it felt like being suspended as a cloud of atoms and was immensely healing to me.

I recently programmed some LED lights to create a visual ganzfeld while in a sauna listening to All End for 20 mins, and this description feels like it matched my experience a bit

my soul sibling

picking this up again after a year and I never realized how symphonic a lot of this album is. you could almost envision an orchestra playing it. guess I missed a lot of that because I'm not used to hearing stuff like that out of Autechre.