Autechre: Elseq

Huge interview with them here:

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2756

Could he (Kanye) be Autechre's MC for the fabled hip-hop album? Or if you got the call would you contribute to one of his records?

Sean Booth: Oh fuck no! [cracks up laughing, then pauses to think] But you know what? If he did call, I think I'd do it, just to get into the studio with him and see his process. I think he's an interesting guy. Psychologically interesting. I want to nail it, find out what strain of narcissism he's got, or how much he's taking the piss.

But no, there is a list of MCs I'd work with. I don't want to start on it because then it's insulting to name one and not all the others. It's a fair old list. There's at least five or six that we'd 100% work with if they approached us, and a bunch of other interesting ones. Just lately I've been listening to a lot of Westside Gunn. He's from Buffalo NY, and it's really thugged out but really brainy at the same time. It's quite Ghostface, he's obviously really into Wu-Tang, but it's a lot slower, and stylised and weird and amazing to me. I'd work with him in a heartbeat, but I don't think he'd go near us—he's just from another world, and I think his music probably sounds a lot better without my input anyway. Roc Marciano—he's another one, he's fucking amazing but I'd probably ruin it. Ahhh, see I'm doing it already, see what I mean? I'd work with Jean Grae in an instant, too. She's incredible, she's a little bit hipster now—just in terms of her audience, not as a person—but her flow is the best in the world, she doesn't get nearly enough credit. There's a few others.

you missed out the young thug bit, lol

great interview. nice to learn that they use each other's software, making each track a collaboration

Great interview.

someone dumped a load of Max Martin tracks on me to try and explain what he was about, and it seemed really, really alien to me, like Nazi youth music or something. I think everyone has a different idea of what weird is

<3

Great interview. They seem like v good guys.

"With this kind of algorithmic music"

see!

"gospel, and rhythm and blues, and jazz, and algorithms. All those are just labels. We know that music is music”

it does appear to be a seated gig...

https://tickets.southbankcentre.co.uk/booking/production/syos/98366?performance=

i like the shout out to James Blake's Untold remix, that track still sounds as fresh and massive as anything.

Love interviews with these dudes. Just seem like regular guys happy to explain how they do the thing they do, vs. piss-takers like RDJ. Though even Aphex has been a lot more forthcoming lately.

If this isn't Autechre's best album, it's close to it. Maybe the highs aren't as high as their best 90's stuff, but there's four hours of it, and nearly all of it is unmissable.

I feel like we're missing 2/3 of what their releases are about since the construction/programming seems to be at least as important as the audio result.

maybe they should include screenshots of their Max patches with each release, along with detailed explanations of each process. honestly though, that's always been part of the appeal with their music.. barely understanding how it was created, as if it was some sort of alien speech or prefabricated construction. Like Pirsig's romantic idea of the thing vs. the classic, or logical idea of it. though it's rad to think about a wildly convoluted series of homemade, interconnected patches, and all of the fiddling, experimentation, and streamlining involved. it def sounds way more fun than playing GTA

"Clapping music" uses an algorithm, which is of course way cool and sick bro, but knowing that doesn't make it sound any better.

oh, totes, bro. toooaaaats

fuck this is great stuff

I went back and checked out the Ae ballot poll results thread again (probably one of my all time favorite ILM discussions), looked at my song and album ballots and want to make significant changes as a result of this record. At least 2 or 3 songs from this release would be in my top 20. I have a feeling a couple others would feel similarly given some of the comments above.

saw a poster for this in shoreditch, lol.

"if it doesn't seem beautiful, perhaps you're living in the past", says the wire. yeah, grandad.

if they play anything like latentcall at the rfh, how will I ever be able to stay in my seat stroking my beard?

I was listening back to LP5 the other day with my o/h (she's coming with me to the gig in November), it's funny because now LP5 just sounds like fairly accessible electronic music. It's fully composed and structured with strong melodic and rhythmic features. Compared to Elseq, which sounds improvised and dense, it's a pop record - maybe even a bit dated? But that's not how I first heard it. Listening to LP5 when I first got it was more of a shock-of-the-new feeling than listening to Elseq for the first time. So I wonder what someone coming to Autechre with fresh ears would make of their pre-Draft stuff today?

And that's another thing: When Draft came out, I found it unremarkable. In retrospect it was DRAFT, not Confield that seemed to kick off the most recent phase of Autechre. Confield ended the Tri Repetae onward phase. So really this is how I've come to think about them:

Incunabula -> Amber - initial ambient phase
Tr Repetae -> Confield - griddy '2D' phase
Draft7.30 -> Elseq - '3D' phase

That said, the developments are often so incremental, it's only until you look back at an album from three releases before that you notice the difference.

Actually, I'm going to double-back on this a bit because I'm listening to Tri Repetae now, an album which on the whole I always had trouble with. Always saw it as a transitional album, one that relied on gritty, grainy mechanised rhythms in order to work. Listening to it now for the first time, this is clearly true. The beats are definitely looking more towards the future, but the underlying melodies (which I'd never truly appreciated till now) are straight out the Amber book. So I'd be tempted to stick Tri Rep in the primary Autechre phase and start phase two around Chiastic Slide.

Chiastic Slide definitely feels like a huge leap forward in retrospect. Not sure what people thought of it at the time (I myself only started listening to autechre after LP5 was released).

is Confield griddy? i remember it being mostly pulseless, with lots of granular synthesis type sounds.

when it came out, confield felt like a hugely different proposition to what had come before. in retrospect, I'd say that it's Draft that sounds the most unlike the previous albums. I dunno. I do need to listen to those albums again.

hah I had the same experience with LP5 - I remember the first time I played it, it felt like the most inhuman, mutated electronic music I'd ever heard.

I think of Confield as the start of the '3rd phase' of Autechre mainly because it's their first release that lacks any 'accessible' tracks.

LP5 was also my entry-point and I found it very challenging (compared with the Orbital / Underworld stuff I was listening to at the time) but it still had tracks like 'Rae' & 'Corc' that I could cling on to. Confield was just start-to-finish horrible the first time I heard it ... love it now though!

LP5 was somewhat challenging, but I still remember the first time I heard it and it grabbed me almost immediately. I was playing games on my computer while listening to LP5 (which I had mostly randomly downloaded because I'd seen their name associated with Aphex Twin, not really knowing anything about them), I was only sort of half paying attention to the music and suddenly archcarrier starts and here was this very accessible track that somehow sounded unlike anything I'd ever heard before. It felt like pop music from some alien civilization.

Yeah I loved it at first listen too. It is indeed very off-putting but in ways that I think are easy to parse - it's easy to describe what's happening at any given moment, at least in comparison to the albums that would follow. Kinda like the RDJ Album, they're just a deviation or two away from being relatively normal electro tunes. Confield was where they started to fuck with literally everything.

ep7 through untilted is imperial phase, everything since is ethereal phase

EP7 was my entry point, and soon afterwards i caught wind of Mego stuff, like the first Fenn o'berg cd, Get Out by Pita, and Fennesz' album on Touch (Plus Forty Seven Degrees 56' 37" Minus Sixteen Degrees 51' 08"). Going 'back' to LP5, it seemed reasonable, or not entirely out-of-left field for them, though it sounded overly metallic, synthetic. I grew to appreciate it much later on. Draft still feels more accessible and slick, compared to Confield.

I was well versed in Aphex Twin but when I heard Ae for the first time on LP5, I thought they were taking the piss

in all, I think Confield is the last album they did where it can tell you or recall what each individual track sounds like. after that, I'm a bit lost despite having listened to all the albums a lot of times.

I dunno, the tracks on Quaristice and Oversteps are pretty distinct to me

yeah that is a big speak for yourself moment, dl

wolf greek

sure there are tracks like d sho qub and simmm and irlite get (0) off the later albums which I particularly enjoy, but I couldn't tell you what each track sounds like- especially if you factor in the accompanying EPs which act a bit like expansion sets.
Like, I can describe pretty much any track from Confield and before, but after that it gets a but murky. Especially since I found Draft and Untilted very challenging when they first came out.

suddenly archcarrier starts and here was this very accessible track that somehow sounded unlike anything I'd ever heard before. It felt like pop music from some alien civilization.

you know what's a really great release, Move of Ten.

pce freeze 2.8i will sometimes just randomly pop up in my head. One of very few latter era autechre tracks catchy enough for this to happen.

It's one of the few Ae releases that doesn't wear me out by the end. I always want to play it twice. M62 is such a corker.

like, it could easily have been one of the better tracks on Analord

Etchogon-S is a dope little track.. took a minute to adjust to its 'attitude', thought it was kind of shit at first. freuleax, though. it's like m62's older cousin, smoldering, broke down on an F-Zero motorway.. bass line sounds like a petrified esophagus

ely6 0nset 'clicking' lately... not sure if that's a good thing or what

came up with my scores on the doors a while ago and they haven't really shifted since - not listening a tenth as obsessively as i was though:

feed1 3
c16 deep tread 4
13xo step 3
pendulu hv moda 5
curvcaten 4

ely6 0nset 5
chimer 1-5-1 3
c7b2 3

eastre 4
tbm2 3
mesh cinereal 5

acdwn2 3
foldfree casual 4
latentcall 11
artov chain 4
7th slip 3

pendulu casual 3
spth 3.5
spaces how v 3
freulaeux 4
oneum 4

lol

ikr

latentcall is properly amazing true

yeah ely6 0nset was really peeling back the old cerebral membrane for me the other day, top track

i'm not sure i like what it turns into, too quiet for one!, but those first ten minutes my god.

yeah i'm finally digging into this. it's pretty fucking wild. mesh cinereaL is one of the best things they've ever done.

Mesh cinereaL sounds better every time - when it comes crashing back after the fakeout ending is a lol for sure.

autechre is kind of still dance music and this is a breakdown imo

or what matt in dc said

Mesh Cinereal is amazing and that bit 15mins in is about as close to a hands in the air moment as I expected from this record.