Autechre: Elseq

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.

i think they've really made like an encyclopedia of digital music generation with this. there are big final frontiers, like ely6 0nset, which superficially reminds me of a perverted xenakis, and then these moments of repose / calling back. i like how minimal and low-key tbm2 and pendulu casual are. they just float along like good-natured dub. freulaeux has a chiastic slide feel to it but with all the digital spatial stuff they've gotten so good at lately included.

the thing that gets me about mesh cinereal is how the harmonics evolve out of feedback in this gnarled and endless progression that never really resolves, just keeps suggesting and dodging. it's really emotional to me in the same way that garbagemx is. the baroque never-ending question.

feed1 is still one of my favorites too. it's so thick and black and totally blunted.

I find I like this album more on headphones than on speakers. Not unusual for an Autechre album, at least not for me, but this one even more so

I still need to make a whittled-down version

elyc6 & mesh would make a good tape / LP.

eastre, latentcall and idk something off elseq 5 as the other LP

I still don't quite "get" "Eastre" and I wish I did

there's something very 'fizzy' about this album. reminds me of getting my ears washed out at the doctors.

Yeah I'm not sure about Eastre. Oneum is the ambient track of choice on this album.

Still very much scratching the surface of this album, although I listen to it at least twice a week. Think C16 Deep Tread needs another mention - those gliding, whinnying high frequencies are really eerie.

The intro to 13x0 Step is pure apocalyptic '92 raveaggedon

Think the most perplexing ones are Curvcaten, Eastre and TBM2 - just not sure what I'm supposed to be getting from these.

The intro to 13x0 Step is pure apocalyptic '92 raveaggedon

Shame it really falters after this.

Curvcaten starts off all kids birthday party at laser quest, then (after a bit of meandering) actual terminators with phased plasma rifles in the 40 megawatt range show up.