Autechre: Classic or Dud?

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

kickin' off the morning with the Quadrange EP and so far that's been an excellent decision

Just got an email that the NTS Sessions physical boxes are being delayed an additional two weeks. Grrr...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTg2ruTYvQo

My copy of the NTS 8CD box is on the way...

I've lost count of the amount of times with Autechre that I've heard a new piece of music of theirs (to me) that initially sounds confusing and inscrutable, only for something to click and suddenly it makes perfect sense. It's like it initially keeps the listener at arms length before saying "right, I'm going to let you in now" and what once was flat and inscrutable suddenly becomes like being in the middle of some 3D aural landscape.

Their songs are the aural equivalent of a stereogram

Didn't know I'd be getting hit with local duties and tax on top of the shipping cost. That was a fun surprise.

Their songs are the aural equivalent of a stereogram

― octobeard, Monday, August 13, 2018 8:22 PM (three days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This really needs to go in that hall of fame thread

Okay so I've been listening to NTS a bit more and I've come to the conclusion that:

- It's cool to have an almost endless stream of new Autechre
- I get jam-band Autechre as a concept - it totally makes sense
- But also it's a bit of a slog innit? I mean, I don't wanna sound like a lightweight but some of these tracks go on for so long without really developing a whole lot. I do miss when it felt a little more composed, a little less like I'm listening to a generative algorithm, and they'd fit an idea or five into 5-6 minutes

This food is so great! If only the portions weren't so generous!

I jest, sort of. I would suggest going back to the 2015 live sessions for more varied and idea-heavy stuff, albeit with a similar sonic palette.

thesis: I get jam-band Autechre as a concept - it totally makes sense
antithesis: some of these tracks go on for so long without really developing a whole lot
synthesis: ??

IF Ae = JamBand AND NTS_Sessions(AvgSongLength) / NTS_Sessions(TrackDevelopment) < DesiredRatio THEN LikesJamBands = 0

Spurious logic. Never trust a computer.

Wow. Sounds like someone hasn't accepted that they need to adapt to the music and not the other way around. Some of us have made SACRIFICES

I think that = needs to be a ==

Also, he hasn't closed the block

Autechre made the front page of Reddit yesterday. Amusing seeing a number of people unfamiliar with them all of the sudden check out their tunes and report back:
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/97hmfs/til_in_1994_in_an_attempt_to_ban_raves_the_uk/

ultimately my appreciation of this doesn't really outweigh my emotional enjoyment and I'm kind of down about it cos I want to love it, instead I just think it's good that it exists

(a metaphor for a lot of things in my life rn when I come to think about it)

I would never berate someone for not loving or appreciating this music.

You do get some odd objections, though. Not what Dog Latin said above - I read a post on prog forum where someone was complaining about the lack of space and depth (all surface, two dimensional,) lack of longer sounds (all short "samples",) and lack of development over releases.

Which is kind of baffling but perhaps is to do with way it can demand a different mode of listening to a lot of other pop music.

One thing it does have in common with complicated prog is the way it can be more enjoyable as as your brain learns the tracks. With prog it's the compositional twists and turns, with Autechre it's things like textural details and odd spatial relationships.

Box set came in today! It's ... huge. Pretty cool triangle pattern on the spines to help make it easy to keep them in order.

Ha! I had a note in the post today that DHL couldn't deliver a package as I wasn't home. Couldn't for the life of me think of what it was until you mentioned this right now! Ordered it ages ago, it feels. Picking it up tomorrow, stoked.

I got mine yesterday.

In today’s mail: the 8CD Autechre box I ordered on April 9. My favorite aspect of the design is the black lines on the spine of the individual sleeves, each one a little longer than its predecessor. pic.twitter.com/EanXZ85jyU

— burning ambulance (listen to the podcast!) (@burn_amb) August 20, 2018

Oh that's beautiful.

The black mark next to the 1 on those photos, does that have a purpose?

part of original cover art. iirc is a placed differently on each of the 4 volumes.

it matches the left-hand edge of the lower right-hand figure.

Does it though? It's a bit lower than the top of the one and you'd think a simple 5x5 character set would be more regular. Also, why?

https://www.reddit.com/r/autechre/comments/8bt5v5/something_i_noticed_on_the_nts_artwork/

This agrees with ledge. Still looks like a mistake to me though.

Edge of the *right* hand figure (i.e. the 4). It’s not a 5x5 pixel grid either, the zeroes have diagonal slashes on the four session covers.

(remember these are the guys who made the Exai sleeve look like binary or a QR code - before Sean admitted they just scribbled e, x, a, i in rough pixel grids and messed it up a bit)

I'd say the black line is just a graphic reference to the other parts of the design and makes the outer edge look more balanced / identifiable.

(my contribution to the inevitable poll)

On the Reddit image they do line up...

They don't show the box front though, do they? (As well as being digital images from months ago.)