Autechre: Elseq

the last few tracks on elseq 5 are some of the best tracks on the whole thing.

i immersed myself in elseq and it feels hugely texturally varied, a landscape with peaks and lakes, forests and blasted heaths. nts feels much more homogeneous to me right now but i'm sure that will change in time.

NTS 2 > NTS 1 > NTS 4 > NTS 3

There should probably be a poll

NTS 4 >>>>>>>>> NTS 3 > NTS 2 > NTS 1

(there should probably be a poll)

can it wait till a while after physical versions arrive

Find it pointless to even consider ranking NTS 1-4, but "all end" is beyond compare when I need that kind of thing. Each has at least 2 uniquely brilliant tracks. I haven't yet listened to the whole thing in a block but I am looking forward to it.

voilvoic is kind of my secret favorite on this whole thing.

i tried listening to a pared down version of this but i ended up missing every track i left off.

even t1a1 which eventually finds its zone.

my favorite ambient-ish track might just be "carefree counter dronal" - bright and beautiful.

still transported to different planets by "13 ctrl" "four of seven" and "column thirteen"

and the madness of "north spiral".

I love the LOL Autechre of calling the first track "t1a1".

Seeing as there are so many tracks how would you all feel about a mini ballot poll for the NTS Sessions? I'm not necessarily volunteering but I think it might be fun.

Say, top 8 tracks ranked or unranked, and a sessions 1-4 ranked side poll. Wouldn't need a big production results thread or anything.

Not before the boxes are out there anyway.

*Not quite sure how the points are supposed to be weighted but haven't given it much thought.

a mini ballot poll

A shimriPOLL casual, if you will.

I like this idea

pendulu hv moda is so magnificent

so much of what they do is so dark that when they decide to go sunny it's like a vitamin d overdose

It's certainly magnificent, maybe my favourite of all their recent releases. And I guess it is quite sunny, yeah, until the grey clouds roll in and the alien mutant thunder rumbles low over the hills.

Returning to this release my first thought these days is how poorly mastered it is. Compared to NTS (excellent return to form mastering wise), Exai and especially Oversteps, this is overly compressed, narrow sounding and in your face. Shame, since this is some their best work.

otm

Definitely one of their harsher sounding collections.

Not sure of the authenticity of this but seems to be 400+(!) 1-2 minute pieces with accompanying slit-screen animations.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5ow3ZyXAhopA4NUdSIuAfTCvWTemihut

^^ ugh my bad. didn't see the other thread.

My God I never even considered the possibility of needing to shell out for Ae remasters some day

It's kind of nuts that they need to be mastered (but I recall Frank Arkwright's name on many of their best releases). I'd imagined it might be possible to run the files through some kind of mastering algorithm as a final step, but on reflection that would mean it was possible for any digitally recorded music, and there are clearly people who are very good at mastering.

I've thought the same about elseq. The harshness and compression might be baked in, but perhaps not.

Noel Summerville did NTS and I marvel at how nice it sounds. Creamy smooth 'texture' but plenty of detail and impact.

What crosses my mind in terms of practicalities is that there's obvs a significant cost to getting that much material mastered. NTS was put out by Warp so presumably they will have paid mastering and production costs upfront but elseq was essentially self-released Maybe they could put a few quid back and get it redone. Wishful thinking.

Noel Summerville has mastered all their main releases since Draft 7.30, apparently, with the possible exception of elseq.

Further confirmation that I don't have 'golden ears'. Exai is the only one that's consistently given me audio fatigue.

Exai is quite dense and mid-rangey, perhaps. But that's more just a function of the music itself.

audio aural fatigue, of course. Listening to elseq 5 now, maybe it's just the power of suggestion but it does sound slightly harsh and thin. You fuckers!

I'm listening to this now for the first time in a while and am liking the harshness.

eastre (which I'm listening to right now) wouldn't be as good with NTS-style mastering I think. Having all these tiny bits exposed are what make this track, if this track was on NTS it would probably be more hidden beneath the main up and down melody

pendulu hv moda definitely reminds me of Eidetic Casein from Confield in that it's based off a fun and perhaps even catchy melody that gets garbled to the point of no return. but I think it's a better track b/c it demonstrates just how far they've progressed. maybe it's b/c this is the only way my dumb millennial brain works but to me they've sort of paralleled the evolution of video games, during the same time frame too - early stuff like Amber & Tri Rep like the SNES, tangible, limited but very artfully done...Confield/Draft/Untilted being the forays into 3-D worlds that were closed off...now this & the NTS records being like these huge open-world games where everything seems possible. each era being classic in its own way, but man - there's such a vastness to their recent work that's hard to explain. like...that gurgling pinball bass thump never quite goes away in this track does it? it's always lurking somewhere.

here's a track that I don't see people talking about much here: "foldfree casual". there's such a heartbreaking melody in there. it's as gorgeous as anything on Oversteps if you ask me. I don't think there's a bad track on here. Besides "TBM2" I guess, which strikes me as something that probably wouldn't have gone on any of their other albums. The 4 hours just breeze by ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It's very much in the style of Drane2 (a good thing).

Elseq 5 is 'lost in the vast underground caverns, afraid of the monsters' par excellence.

"feed1" is the best thing that's ever happened to me

I love how Autechre's music has slipped free of easy reference points, from instrumentation to titles.

Though, that plus release velocity makes finding a tune you half-remember quite a task.

(pendulu hv moda, this time)

if you just play them all the time then you don't have to remember anything

c16 deep tread and eastre are the alpha and the omega here for me

Has their been a trend piece on big-name electronic musicians from the 90s (Autechre, Aphex Twin, Underworld) turning to a strategy of releasing massive amounts of material? Underworld's Drift seemed a little more structured than Aphex Twin's big Soundcloud drop, though maybe if you graphed Autechre's release history over time there would be a pattern.

everyone releases massive amounts of material now

of course since Oversteps their releases have roughly gone 1, 2, 4, 8 hours in duration - awaiting the next with interest

In a time when the internet can quash any initial mystique about a piece of pop culture in just a few clicks, Autechre's music still feels enigmatic and mysterious to me.

don't forget the 28 hours of live performances.

and those weird colour-noise videos

indeed, they are restless spirits

you could also maybe add FSOL's endless stream of archival releases & Moby's very long ambient albums, though this along with the Aphex dump all seem like very different things than what Autechre & Underworld are doing. both those groups have always produced a ton of music & I think the 'trend' is just to go, "what if we didn't have to cut this to an hour?". to me there isn't a huge difference in what Ae is doing now and say, the Tri Rep/Garbage/Anvil Vapre period, or say LP5/EP7, just that those releases were edited to fit the CD and these aren't. which in turn affects the sort of things they choose to pursue. in Underworld's case, they've always had endless B-sides and non-album tracks for people to obsess over, most of which just never got released

to me this definitely feels like artists not having the constraint of physical media as the main distribution method anymore and adjusting accordingly + having a solid enough fan base so that they can release really long and possibly difficult material and know that enough people are willing to put in the required time to listen to that material

Also more releases probably = more streaming revenue, right?