Autechre: Classic or Dud?

BTW, listening to NTS 3 right now... the track that just played was very..... Boards of Canadaish??! Whoa

Can't seem to get my download of

4:33.flac

NTS 3:

01 clustro casual
02 splesh
03 tt1pd
04 acid mwan idle
05 fLh
06 glos ceramic
07 g 1 e 1
08 nineFly
09 shimripl air
10 icari

Are there any albums that have a better ratio of quality to duration than these NTS sessions?

Sean's still naming tracks after his favourite chess moves, and has added his favourite tween TV shows

missed the last half hour but this one seemed excessively mid-tempo on first listen.

Are there any albums that have a better ratio of quality to duration than these NTS sessions?

most of them? including elseq. the 2015 live sets cover an extraordinary amount of ground and never stick with one idea for too long.

ok, thanks. I've heard most of them, and I think I disagree (and I was meaning more albums in general, rather than Ae, but that may be a separate thread).

I didn't like elseq or the live sets very much at all I'm afraid and had slightly given up on Ae as I hadn't liked anything since quadrange. I found elseq really trebly and annoying, and thought the tracks were way too long without justification. The live sets, as you've said, were the opposite. This NTS stuff seems, to me to find a middle ground that I'm absolutely loving.

ok i totally misunderstood the point of your question! my initial impression of these sets is that there's a lot of treading water - i love it when ae sound like a puzzle that you think you might *just* be able to figure out if you spend enough time in it, not really getting that here.

I thought the last track was riffing on vekoS from Exai so I went and had a listen to that and while it's a good track the new one is about 6,432 times more betterer.

I appreciate that some of these jams are only minimally edited, and while that might mean they seem to be 'coasting' a bit in places it's not clear they would work any other way and observing the process in process is part of it. Also there usually is change going even when it's masked by apparent repetition.

Those ultra submerged beat variations in that one ('icari') - probably starts getting really good around the 16 minute mark, but wouldn't be so cool without the rest of it.

Looks great but... I'd need to get a flight to Tasmania.

flights to Tasmania take about an hour and a quarter btw

Hobart Raving

the ferry takes 11 hours but is only about half the price

the flight to australia to catch the flight to tasmania takes a bit longer iirc

I found elseq really trebly and annoying

oh you really gotta hear it on something that can play it

and i don't mean like flacnerd quality, earbuds are fine, just, there's bass there to feel and to fill the room

it's definitely got some harsh his though, and some volume issues. it's slightly messy but i don't think that's out of sync with the emotional quality of the music.

i've been revisiting it and finding an absurd number of high watermarks for them. it's really.. there's a lot of emotion there. besides the obvious standouts i've been loving "spaces how V" and "acdwn2". but then "latentcall" and "mesh cinereaL" come on and i'm destroyed. "latentcall" in particular is so great, it's more straightforward beatwise but it never settles, it feels like it's constantly breaking down for 14 minutes, and i'm really moved by that lol.

i love it when ae sound like a puzzle that you think you might *just* be able to figure out if you spend enough time in it

yes puzzles but the bangers in NTS 1 are good too??

I find the post-Exai Autechre fascinating - there is a real luxury in tracks which take 20 minutes to evolve or orbit around a single idea. When Quadrange gave us "Perlence subrange 6-36" and it was an hour of massively slowed, distorting kick, a light went on in my mind and I thought, this is what I need. And the last two major releases have delivered that and more.
I don't find this music at all intellectual or challenging, it's just intensely aesthetically pleasing in a way nothing else is. Of course the process of learning what to listen for, which happened imperceptibly across 20+ years for me (and for them!) make stepping onto the carousel pretty daunting. But I guess I have to accept that they are my all time favourite musicians and that I will never be the same.

the flight to australia to catch the flight to tasmania takes a bit longer iirc

holy fuck whatever part of NTS 3 I am streaming now, 25 minutes in, waves of modulated static and that dry block beat from Draft 7.30 going nuts, trying to work but all my hair is standing on end

Through 3 of these sessions and I feel I could reduce the 6 hours to about 1.5 for a personal "mini album". I would disagree that this so far has a high quality to quantity ratio. That said - it'll be really easy for me to splice together 2-3 hours of tracks that are all highlights, but this is a lower ratio than elseq for sure.

third track on the release (tt1pd) is probably what you heard, Matthew. it's 22 minutes (!)

still going, fucking mental, love love love it

Assuming session 4 has as many highlights as the other 3, for a band to release 2-3 hours of incredible music 4 releases in a row (Oversteps/Move of Ten, Exai, Elseq, NTS) in a decade? That's pretty incredible

FWIW - icari is the crown jewel of Session 3 for me.

does nobody rate AE_LIVE_DUBLIN, or Utrecht? for real, these sets are f'ing beautiful.

now this is some proper radio

yes puzzles but the bangers in NTS 1 are good too??

yeah i dig a gnarly banger. but i listened to the 2005 glasgow art school set for the first time recently and that's like a puzzle that bangs *swoons*

does nobody rate AE_LIVE_DUBLIN, or Utrecht? for real, these sets are f'ing beautiful.

yep, in terms of variety and detail they are incredible.

Firing up Session 3 now.

Some deep bass on Session 3. "tt1pd" could almost be something off an Electric Ladyland compilation.

i listened to the 2005 glasgow art school set for the first time recently and that's like a puzzle that bangs *swoons*

the ending bit that slowly increases tempo provokes a strange bout of anxiety in me

that speedy drum loop with the quick bass drum rolls and the popping distorted snares eventually showed up on one of the quaristice releases, right? love that part & vaguely remember being a little disappointed with the 'studio' ver at the time.

forgot to note the time but it starts ~23:27

It's more like something off Untilted, definitely similar to LCC, maybe elements of Sublimit as well.

duh, LCC! yeah, that is quite close. it's also literally the first thing you hear on that record, so um yeah, I haven't put untilted on in a few years.

there's definitely parts of Quaristice in there too though. most notably "IO" though I'm sure there's more than that

forgot how much I love "iera". intro just sounds so slippery and that soft white noise acting as a hi hat... mmm...

no FLAC-related issues with NTS 3 btw. listened to that bad boy all weekend. autechre's support team is ON IT!

just checked in to see if George Starostin took the time to review all the elseqs, and what do you know he did

its pretty amusing to me b/c Starostin is kind of the prototypical Ae semi-fan who'd been thrown by the wayside long ago - he likes the early stuff, thinks they completely lost it with Confield, maybe has some time for Oversteps....but his OCD-fueled review style kinda forces him to review everything in earnest, even if he doesn't like any of it. hey, credit to him for trying.

also, lol @ this line: "I just hope they won't take five more years and come out with a 20-volume album"...well it was 2 years and 12 LPs...enjoy !!!

having never heard of NTS Radio before this thing, i see they are doing the music at the Tate Late on friday, at the Tate Modern.

http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/late/uniqlo-tate-lates

(anyone been? video seems to suggest a rave in the turbine hall)

(archive here: https://www.nts.live/shows/uniqlo-tate-lates )

NTS has all sorts of wonderful things. I just learned about them a few months ago. Search for Haruomi Hosono day

pete swanson from yellow swans has a really good monthly show.

so this has been like AE doing SAWII...very nice

Yeah this is gorgeous

lee gamble's NTS sets are superb

sorta curious what Autechre fans think of his last album

i didn't know he had one after 'koch', which i liked

so this has been like AE doing SAWII...very nice

Which "this" do you mean?

i didn't know he had one after 'koch', which i liked

― j., Thursday, April 26, 2018 9:45 AM (ten minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

it's a lot more frenetic than 'koch', takes a bit to warm up to but it's fun as hell. it's on HyperDub and it does kind sound like a "HyperDub album" if you know what i mean.

the live set they're playing on https://nts.live RIGHT NOW

(which will be available for replay when it finishes in sixty seconds so don't sweat)

xp