Autechre: Elseq

Are these seated venues they're doing this at? I should certainly hope so...

Concorde 2 in Brighton definitely not seated. I wonder if they'll black out the big windows.

i definitely hope it's not seated. that would be depressing

Do you just stand still in the complete dark? Or move around and try not to bump into people?

Elseq 1 is on streaming services now btw!

I've never seen Ae before but I don't like the idea of sitting still in the dark listening to weird noises. Dark or not, it should still be a party. Plastic People had a pitch-black dancefloor and that was a riot.

I'm at this tonight & am also curious - I like the idea but wonder how it'll come off, whether people will be smartphone-torch-guiding themselves to the bar or what

i'd imagine most clubs have sufficient lighting to see the proper channels for walking. last year in Denver it was perfect, with ample room for dancing in your own little space. the sound was fucking incredible, 3D wraparound, super plastic air sculptures. it was a bit overwhelming for some people

I believe in Holland the bar was closed for the hour long set as per the bands request. If you needed help or wanted to leave you'd hold up a white piece of paper staff would spot with special goggles or something. But Willem knows best, I unfortunately couldn't make it.

That bootleg linked above sounded great on the tube earlier.

d/l'd the "package" (flac/mp3/etc) from that site -- the flac sounds freakin fantastic, the music is radically different from the sets of last year.. haven't really wrapped my head around the new material yet

Re sets in the dark, I "saw" them in Melbourne in 2010 and part way into the set, opened my eyes to realise I was standing with my face about 10cm behind a stranger's head. Pretty odd. Sound was INCREDIBLE, fully spatial and kind of hallucinatory (almost-saw sheets of texture rising in front of me, wasn't on anything either).

Are these seated venues they're doing this at? I should certainly hope so...

They're playing the Royal Festival Hall tonight and that's all-seated. Then again I saw Booka Shade there earlier this week and everyone was standing up and dancing within seconds of them coming onstage.

So, has everyone been stunned into silence?

Well. My expectations were unrealistically high after the triumph of elseq, and there were some awesome moments, but I struggled to get into most of the last third or so. Partly my fault getting annoyed by distractions. The darkness was far from total, especially as I was sat right behind the mixing desk, and maybe there were staff with night vision goggles hiding somewhere but there were also a lot of blue torches being waved around every time some dick who'd had too much beer needed the loo, which seemed to happen about every minute.

There were some great breakbeats,  a kind of spooky choir section which sounded quite unusual for them, and a sudden silence rapidly punctuated by a thunderous metallic horn sound blasting out like a train in the night - like a train in the night! Afterwards I thought it was probably lifted from mesh cinereal but at the time it sounded like the most fantastic and original new discovery in the world of noise.

That was the highlight and after that it really did seem to deaden down, the volume dropped and I couldn't really discern any compelling structure. Still I am looking forward to hearing a bootleg of it or another set from the same tour.

Russell Haswell musically not really my cup of tea but an entertaining stage presence, typical deadpan northerner, swigging from a bottle of bubbly, long gaps between tracks with largely inaudible chat. I caught "there is so much music that I don't like, and "this one's called 'I hate those things that you see every day all the time'" - followed by a five second burst of loud static noise. Possibly drunk, possibly phoning it in because the auditorium was 90% empty.

Andy Maddocks brought the old skool idm.

https://youtu.be/rX8NMaGEs6g

Autechre @ Tavastia, Helsinki FIN, 14.11.2016

https://youtu.be/tHrodaXLEUk

Autechre - Parkteateret Oslo 17.11.2016

as crisp/detailed as these recordings are, i'd imagine they're a very flat/poor approximation of actually being in the room. i was absolutely floored by their set in Denver last year--though the speaker setup/volume/mix was ideal.

"there is so much music that I don't like end quote. xp to self.

the auditorium was 90% empty.

that is depressing to me, these guys continue to challenge themselves and I want them to be playing to full houses

wait, was it that empty for the entire gig or just haswell's support slot?

Oh yeah it was totally full for ae, everyone just stayed in the bar for the support, apart from a handful of enthusiastically vocal Haswell fans.

The bit like a train in the night - like a train in the night! - is at 44:20 in the Oslo set. Turn up to 11 for the full effect of course. Not a direct lift from mesh cinereal but similar - see also 0:57 here:
https://youtu.be/jzYzVMcgWhg

no one in for the opener, how rude

haven't seen russell haswell live but definitely in for his recorded work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IJmvkXm2D4

re: like a train in the night!

Got a long plane flight coming up in about two weeks, gonna try to make it all the way through this.

― Don Van Gorp, midwest regional VP, marketing (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, 23 November 2016 13:15 (six days ago) Permalink

It's perfect for long plane rides.

Can't see a London bootleg anywhere yet (there are a couple of videos that link to a dodgy looking streaming site). But I guess they could put all 29 nights up for sale on their newish website eventually.

Bristol one was standing. We laughed all the way through Russell Haswell's set, mostly cos it was ridiculous and partly because we kept looking around at all the chinstrokers trying to take it seriously. Autechre were out of this world. Spent most of the set with my eyes closed. Hallucinatory and meditative. About 35 mins of the usual abstract sounds and then they bust-out the catchiest (for Ae) riff ever before it gets buried back under the noise. The pipe organ section was extremely effective too.

but yeah

CD 1

eastre
mesh cinereaL

CD 2

latentcall
elyc6 0nset

^_________^

― illbient microtonal poetry Surbiton (imago), Tuesday, December 27, 2016 3:32 PM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i've got a nice little hour-long condensed playlist of these for runs and such that i'm really attached to:

chimer 1-5-1
pendulu hv moda
latentcall
freulaeux
mesh cinereaL

― map, Monday, August 29, 2016 1:48 AM (three months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

add to these pls. realistic cd album edits, with or without explanations

such a huge journey, this record, so worth the effort

c16 deep thread is the one I keep coming back to

I could make an unimaginative cd length best of but I just don't listen to it like that, would rather just hear one or more in their entirety. Fwiw though, I think I might be more grateful to them for the robot gargling in the back half of pendula hv moda than for anything else in their catalogue.

is there anywhere you can stream all of elseq 1-5 online? Bleep is giving me a playback error.

Just came back to this after a couple of months off, what a huge record in every sense.

not sure what TBM2 is all about. Anyone going to vouch for this one?

slow day at the drum circle. a soft shoe shuffle in diving boots. an amble down a quiet country lane swinging at nettles with a stick.

that's the one where they riff on the we will rock you beat isn't it

yeah. it's pretty repetitive although i like ledge's description more than the track itself

Finally started listening to these. Only 2 tracks into the first one and I must say this is the best ae in over a decade. I had pretty much given up on these guys.

I'd give Exai another spin if I were you!

Yeah they never really dropped off. They could be accused of over-releasing though. Only the most diehard fans would have listened to all those Quaristice and Oversteps spin-offs, but they've always been all over it.

Impressed that Exai was their highest-charting UK album since Amber

Oversteps spin-offs?

'move of ten'

(oh, the webcast. that's hardly canon though, is it? (or is it?))

No I meant Move of Ten really. I love Autechre's album/EP strategy but by the late 00s they were releasing so much material it was hard to keep up; especially since the music was getting ever-more complex. I like Elseq because, even though it's extremely long, the individual tracks seem easier to digest in their extended format. Exai is great but it's a lot of Autechre to take in in one go.

I think you can point directly to one specific release, the 2 1/2 hour Quadrange "EP" with the 58-minute ambient track, especially given that there was already a totally different version of the album out there already. Not to mention that their track titles were getting increasingly obtuse and hard to remember.

yeah, the move of ten ep was nothing like the chore that the quadrangle ep was. and was half (4/7ths) the length of the original rather than twice as long.

plus it was relatively straightforward and beat driven, with the sort of bangers they hadn't done since like, LP5

Meantime, enjoy a month-long residency on NTS

https://www.nts.live/projects/autechre-nts-residency/