Autechre - NTS Session 4 POLL

oh I voted the hell out of it. it's just kinda hard to talk about.

really all of this 2 hours is amazing

i'm v into unchanging drones (cf kevin drumm) but i'm not gaga about all end. tonally i think it just doesn't do much for me. i get why people love it though.

i'm going to throw a vote to 'mirrage' because it gets to a feeling i've only ever felt while listening to zeit by tangerine dream -- this deep outer space empty dread. idk it's just remarkable to me that they did it so well, i wasn't expecting that kind of move from them. i mean they've always flirted with dark ambient i guess but that track is a dark ambient mini masterpiece. my real favorite here is 'column 13' though, that has crazy depths i feel like i can't quite fathom every time i listen to it.

imagine the out-of-world elements of the 2017 Twin Peaks soundtracked with "mirrage"

my favorite of the 4 by far.

column thirteen

i wouldn't say all end is unchanging - it feels like a static, shimmering cloud, with a rapidly shifting intensity... or there's a weird limiting effect, similar to the outro of nodezsh. it bears a superficial resemblance to instances of Tim Hecker's music on Virgins and/or Ravedeath, in its 'bright' density of glassy-textured sound spectra. kevin drumm's drone stuff (on Imperial Distortion) feels heavier, and less stacked somehow, with deeper or more involving movement and tangible mass.

this 'moment', stretched out (all end), kinda diminishes its 'special-ness' that it has as the outro for bladelores. it doesn't feel like there's much to it, but i could just be not ready to 'receive' it, appreciate it, or whatever

Thanks Lowell, part of what you're saying is what I was trying to convey by putting 'unchanging' in quotes. Listening closely it's clear that "all end" contains a whole world, and is ever-changing in subtle ways right to the end. For me its hour length doesn't feel excessive

haven't really felt the kind of constant subliminal movement in Kevin Drumm's music as I experience with this (but his discography is huge). I love Tim Hecker's Ravedeath and especially Virgins, but to me they feel very different, maybe as intense but more varied and not as relentless

listening to Ravedeath again, maybe not as intense. "all end" feels like it's inducing an auditory hallucination

the lysergic effect of "all end" reminds me if anything of Coil's Time Machines

do some folks live in an alternate reality where andrew chalk, eliane radigue, & asmus tietchens do not exist?

i do like spending time in the haunted spacestation, but juking, dabbing, and/or teabagging in the haunted space station presents a number of health & safety issues

I was just thinking how it's nice that by decoupling from the beats this session connects most directly to the OG electronic music avant-garde, but with more reverb.

dagnabbit that digital rvb is a lazy crutch

I can't see every sitting through "all end" again. I must have listened to the rest of this box ten times since it was released, but skipped this one every time after my first listen. Maybe I've heard too much Eliane Radigue and Andrew Chalk, but then again maybe I have less time in my life for the aural equivalent of magic eye paintings. I'm glad the track exists, and it seems a very Ae way to end this box, but, eh, it isn't for me.

How anyone can vote for anything except "column thirteen" is beyond me. Dissonant, mysterious, and dense like the best Ae. Sounds like the combination of six or seven different melodic pieces for marimba, gamelan, and doorbell rendered with incredible sonic detail. Just magnificent.

If I could have voted for the transition between "mirrage" and "column thirteen," I might have done that! Grateful Dead, eat your heart out

I was just thinking how it's nice that by decoupling from the beats this session connects most directly to the OG electronic music avant-garde, but with more reverb.

― The First (Noel Emits), Sunday, December 9, 2018 1:16 AM (fifteen hours ago)

dagnabbit that digital rvb is a lazy crutch

― massaman gai (front tea for two), Sunday, December 9, 2018 1:46 AM (fourteen hours ago)

"by decoupling from the beats this session connects most directly to the OG electronic music avant-garde" makes sense to me. Otoh I'm not a musician and am not sure what you guys mean by digital reverb, or how it might be a crutch. the sound on this is as distinct to me as the music I've heard of Eliane Radigue (I love her music too)

used to get annoyed by the digi reverb but now i find it sort of comforting, idk. the one thing they've always used.

Dissonant, mysterious, and dense like the best Ae. Sounds like the combination of six or seven different melodic pieces for marimba, gamelan, and doorbell rendered with incredible sonic detail. Just magnificent.

this is otm, rainbows within rainbows.

the digi reverb is the setting you turn up that makes your key strike sound like it's been played in a 5-acre palace. they have been turning that shit up to 11 million on lots of different tracks since at least "vletrmx". idk there's something charmingly b-boy about it imo.

there's still a lot of electro in them

I adore every track on this set, especially mirrage and column thirteen (the latter being gorgeously accessible and trance like ambient, cosmic electro), and on the surface either one of these could be my pick, but all end has taken me to a space few, if any, other songs have. Maybe Laraaji's Sung Gong or some local sound mediation performances using gongs and delay/reverb effects in San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, but that's about it. Sound mediation at its finest, but more alien and abstract. It's incredible. The way the underlying tones pulse and mutate underneath the unrelenting granular chord that dominates the mix creates this visceral organic texture in my mind visually. Very easy to get lost in it and to lose your sense of self. It is kind of a more digestible expression of the constant, hypnotic chaos at the end of Lentic Catachresis. The vinyl release splits it into 3 sections, about 20 minutes a side. It's a really great way to take in all end as a smaller and more casually digestible composition (definitely recommend part 3 for this). I consider it a capstone track to their very large and very brilliant oeuvre.

I do need to be in a certain headspace to take in all end in a single sitting, but when that happens, it's been incredibly rewarding, whether as sober sound meditation or the backdrop to an intense psychedelic journey.

it is trippy as hell. want to say it exudes a cosmic darkness lol.

― macropuente (map), Saturday, December 8, 2018 4:46 PM (yesterday)

absolutely otm

dagnabbit that digital rvb is a lazy crutch

― massaman gai

ironically I think this is the main problem with the post-vinyl output of Asmus Tietchens! (i.e. the mid-90's until now)

It's not as if they just flick a big 'add reverb' switch. On a single track some instruments/sounds/channels will have heavy reverb, some light, some none, some variable, iirc they will even key the reverb on one channel to the output of another.

Not only that, but the ultra-dry kick drum is the signature of the Autechre sound to me.

So, after this we get to have a poll ranking the four sessions, right?

I think I would vote for 3, which I find is underrated here (see poll)

has a track ever deserved / demanded fade-out as much as All End?

So, after this we get to have a poll ranking the four sessions, right?

The whole thing almost needs its own ballot poll (sessions/songs). But yeah I'm assuming that's the next natural pollgression.

A ballot poll? Sounds like a crazy idea to me.

next is to poll all those stretchy picture videos

C'mon, let's keep polling this till 2020.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

*bites nails*

God I still haven't listened to this one enough to make an informed decision

kinda wish I voted for mirrage

i did! i bet frane casual gets 0 and the rest get at least 1

if all end was split into 3 parts like on the vinyl release, which would you vote for?

here we go

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow! really surprised frane got 0

ugh, you "all end" people

This was closer than I thought. I mean column thirteen almost won!

who was the other mirrage voter

a totally worthy winner. and since it got the most votes of any track in the four polls it's officially the best track of all!

checks out

These are insane results, 'all end' is a scam (or a joke). Pretty sure it's just the other tracks run through Paulstretch. Most throwaway track out of all four sessions.

you're right that 'all end' is a timestretched version of the end of bladelores (from Exai)

i see where you're coming from in your frustration with it. it probably took them 5 minutes to accomplish (not counting the time it took to make Bladelores). and pretty much anything that is relatively short sounds pretty damn great when stretched out to an hour (imo). so it can be seen/heard as a lazy gimmick.

on the other hand, the degree of difficulty in making a track has nothing to do with the emotional impact that it has on a listener, or the enjoyment that they get out of when thinking of it conceptually, even. that's not a new argument, i don't think - i imagine a bunch of people debated this when monochromatic paintings were all the rage

I get that, and I know people love the sound of extreme timestretching, but I also did not get enjoyment out of it. Mostly because that sound is very familiar to me and I'm burned out on it (primarily from messing around with it on my own).

Cool to know that's the source track though, thanks.

i'm 99% sure that's right (i found it on some reddit thread)

i know Lowell N. Behold'n identified the source on one of the autechre thread, but i couldn't find it.

Sean said as much in an interview - either the one for Italian Rolling Stone or the interview they did in Japan when they played there this year.

nope, it was p4k: https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/autechre-interview-nts-sessions-david-lynch-where-code-meets-music/

it's not timestretched though? it's the exact same pitch/octave with no artifacts or anything... just a longer extrapolation of that section/patch

I think those algorithms/plugins are able to extend duration without changing pitch, by repeating tiny slivers of the waveform (like granular synthesis if I understand it right)

what would've been nice is mentioning this poll in Poll 3 so we could've noticed it before it closed.

i'd've voted column thirteen.

Hey we never polled the individual discs, did we? We should get on that. I still listen to this (well parts of it) at least once a week

Create it! Will be a tough choice for me.

it's "column thirteen"