Autechre: Classic or Dud?

The elseq "buy" link on warp.net goes to the autechre shop

says a person who has clearly never experienced the buzzkill of running to "shimripl air"

feeling this

quaristice is super weird isn't it. i like it but it has a lot of outliers for them i think.

'acid mwan idle' is also pretty different for them in a similar way maybe. i don't know wtf is going on with it but i've kind of connected with it.

yeh, acid mwan idle is really distinct from anything else they've done - love it though

i have a hunch violvoic is based on IO from quaristice although i haven't bothered to find the parts that make me think that. anyone noticed any other bits that suggest the NTS tracks could be descendants (or at least relatives) of tracks from other releases?

upthread:
- "all end" ... the bulk (the surface, at least) of it, is from the outro to "bladelores" (Exai)
- “violvoic” is obviously using a “voice” from Confield’s uviol when you listen to it
- "clustro casual" from nts 3 sounds a lot like "teartear"
- "four of seven" sounds lifted straight out of the Amber era too
- noticed the pads from "Altibzz" creeping in at the end of "debris_funk"

autechre will eat itself

also as noted upthread north spiral is straight outta the 2014/15 live sets.

tbf this is like taking a shot at Bach for using the same 'cello sounds in ALL of the 'cello concertos

yea Ae recycling stuff is pretty exciting, tbh

carefree counter dronal sounds a looooot like some early parts of pendulu hv moda and maybe another track in the elseq set I'm forgetting.

Definitely seems like they're recycling instruments or "parts" to generate new tracks. While I do like this, I hope they change their palette up a bit for their next release. It's been fairly consistent and refined since Exai. One of my favorite things about their post Confield explorations in organized chaos and musical entropy has been the consistent changeup in sounds between albums.

i don't see it as necessarily good or bad, just an interesting observation. it makes sense that they'd build on max patches over time (rather than constantly creating new ones from scratch) and I think the recent releases are snapshots of these patches at that point in time

resident advisor just did an autechre piece (jo3 muggs) and i couldn't get more than two paragraphs into it, really cringey, like most of ra these days. made me appreciate the pitchfork nts review that much more, just for being thoughtful and coherent.

link to article?

i'd still rather listen to tri repeate, untilted, oversteps than any of their recent work..controp maybe

xpost they did a review a few weeks ago, but it wasn't by jo3 muggs: https://www.residentadvisor.net/reviews/22429

the last jo3 muggs thing with autechre at RA was this, but it was a couple years ago: https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2756

btw i don't know who jo3 muggs is

he reviews the electronic music in The Wire.

oops i didn't look at the date on that piece, fucking facebook

If it's still called critical beats then that column.

look i don't mean to diss jo3 muggs i just clicked on a linky link to a year-old article and didn't likey like lol sorry

I don't think it's been called Critical Beats in years

I haven't bought it for a long time.

i remember "Critical Beats". as a name it sounded like dj spooky was mad and wanted to hit someone with an "assemblage"

I actually thought the RA review of NTS Sessions was pretty good. The enthusiasm convinced me to check it out.

Haha yeah great mag, but I always hated the section titles in Wire. Especially 'Critical Beats'- isn't that track 3 off the first Chemical Brothers album? Jo3 Mu9gs is a good writer on the whole. Don't know about the RA article though

S0m3 r34lly 1nt3ns3 g00gl3pr00f1ng h3r3

Again: they haven't had those section titles in years

jo3's piece on elseq seemed pretty good to me. they're hard to write about, noz nailed the current stuff in a way i've never seen before

So this was pretty great - far more abstract than their previous live sets I thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR_0gW6XGlg

i'd have found that a tough listen i think, would have fallen on my knees in gratitude when the beat came in at 44:00. the guy recording seemed to enjoy it though, maybe the sheer weight of noise in the live setting would make a difference. 33:20 ftw either way.

!!! thank u Matthew <3<3<3

It was a pretty challenging listen in that context, especially since it was a festival crowd and probably only 30% of people would have been up to date on where they're at these days. But I liked the fact that they tried something more interesting than 4/4 banger approach. Much as I love it when they do that.
Same person (not me!) recorded the Melbourne show the night before, and it's obvious they have a lot of control and flexibility when they perform these days.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T83QrIIbhQI

can't get enough of nts you guys

Has anyone actually received CDs/vinyl or are they not actually available yet? Site still says "pre-order".

I got an email a few days ago:

Dear Customer,

Thank you for your pre-order of the Autechre - NTS Sessions. We are writing to inform you that your order is now due to dispatch from our warehouse on the week of the 30th of July. You will receive a dispatch notification when it ships.

If you have any queries about your order contact us at supp✧✧✧@bleepsto✧✧✧.c✧✧.

Best wishes,

Bleep Stores Support

That Tasmania bootleg is worth it just for the guy recording it

Tokyo ga arimasu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kVtwZ7cEE8

lol at the bit in Tassie gig where he turns the recorder off for a few seconds after being scolded

I wrote about the 20th anniversary of LP5 for Stereogum.

saved. I love that album.

As I say in the piece, it was my entry point for them.

me too. I definitely hear it as their 'purest' album. Nice words btw

Lovely piece - the Gelk description made me smile. That record CANNOT be 10 years old, it’s sparkling clean and new every time I hear it.

My favorite line:

"It’s at that point that the album really starts to reveal itself, and become so beautiful it’s like watching an endlessly spinning, deceptively intricate sculpture of chrome and glass twirl in the sunlight."

This album definitely took me a while to get into it. And I remember playing it a TON during the summer of '98 at the coffee shop I worked at. This also reminds me that Music Has the Right to Children will be celebrating its 20th anniversary this fall. Oy.

yea this was the album that really convinced me these dudes were brilliant after all. I've retroactively come to appreciate their earlier work (especially Chaistic and Amber) but LP5 was the first album where it really clicked. so much cool stuff on the disc but I think what really got me was the way the rhythm on "Fold4, Wrap5" radically shifts tempo in the middle of each measure, as though it trips over itself and falls down the stairs over and over again. one of the first times I've heard electronic music used to do non-human things that wasn't just playing at 250 BPM or whatever.

Tri repetae was my intro but LP5 sealed it for me

Had no idea this was one was so highly regarded. I love it, of course (I love every Ae release), but it's never been my favorite because I tend to think of it as Fold4, Under BOAC, Arch Carrier, and some other stuff (I have never cared for Rae).

LP5 was my intro to autechre as well. I remember having downloaded a bunch of idm-ish stuff and listening to it while playing games on my computer. I still remember my "what is this?" reaction the first time I heard arch carrier. That track opened up a whole new world for me.

I sold my lp5 CD in a backlash mode at a time when i'd encountered some younger IDM nerds IRL who were annoying tits.

Also a lot of it is well soppy and I still don't much like soppy-techre ;-)

it's definitely their 'pop' album, might even pass the old grey whistle test, acroyear2 in particular.

gelk description lol otm, always loved that melody.

i like this interview which comes from a slightly different angle from the usual gearhead pieces - i don't do enough listening in the dark:
https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/autechre-something-happens-when-you-listen-to-music-in-the-dark-1.3558048

it also clued me in to these nts dj mixes which i think passed me by at the time:
https://www.nts.live/shows/guests/episodes/autechre-22nd-january-2016
https://www.nts.live/shows/solid-steel/episodes/solid-steel-radio-show-2212016-hour-1-autechre

unperson's piece is interesting because it seems to focus on the tracks I think about the least. if I don't have time to listen to the he whole thing I tend to skip the first two cos they're a bit bonkers and frenetic and go straight for Rae which is one of their prettiest songs. interesting that they included Melve which, well it's very short and low-concept and not much like the rest of their stuff. I'd like to know more about how that track came about