... 6. Calbruc 7. Recury 8. POLL 9. Nuane -- Autechre :: Chiastic Slide :: LP4

Found a jazz version of Pule, which isn't very appealing but at least someone has transcribed it and presumably understands how to count it.

Their Cichli is better, but it's just such a great piece:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P22JX0lsK-Y

I don't know if its their best overall but IMO its their best 90s album. it's held up really well. it also seems like one of their biggest evolutionary leaps, to me this is where the rhythms really started to loosen up and swing

Remember when these were difficult albums to get into? Lol

the way the beat shift in "cipater" just completely changes the center of gravity of the song, gah

its their best 90s album. it's held up really well.

no need to let time prove worth, this was obvious twenty (fuck) years ago

I don't know if its their best overall but IMO its their best 90s album

yep this sounds right! right up there with untilted and exai for me

every second of "Nuane" is just omfg life

otoh if you told me in 2001 that I'd one day prefer confield to chiastic ...

ignore me, back to loving this fantastic album

I remember that AMG had a 3/5 review for Chiastic for a long time, which definitely colored my perception. Conversely, I think the heads on the Warp forum checked this album the most as Ae's best.

Calbruc is too "WHHOOMP WHOOMP KAH!" for me.

― The Great Cool Lulu who sleeps in Riley... (dog latin), Monday, 15 November 2010 00:49 (nine years ago) bookmarkflaglink

It is exactly the right amount of WHHOOMP WHOOMP KAH!

Oh I love it now. I mumble that 'WHHOOMP WHOOMP KAH! NyyyyeeeeOOOWWW' thing to myself and get funny looks in Tesco

'What is your favourite Autechre bit to sing to yourself while shopping' would be a good thread idea

The Acroyear2 melody is definitely my idle whistling tune of choice.

'Gelk' is their catchiest melody I reckon.

d sho qub would be in my head for weeks

Every time I listen to this album it reminds that that random autechre track that keeps popping up in my head once every couple of weeks is called "Hub"

that one conjures up an image of being on a chessboard with a huge chess knight stomping towards me and then retreating.
I love medieval Autechre. Maphive6.1 fits into that schism too.

love "maphive6.1," wish they had a few more like that one

having just now listened to all of it, if we're discussing best autechre albums of the 90s, my vote would go to ep7

it's so good. along with lp5 it's my fave. Just gets overlooked because they class it as an ep

is there another artist that mines similar territory to maphive? 🤔

not exactly the same but maybe the Tim Exile album on Warp?

thanks, I'll check that out!

really unique track for them. the way is morphs to-and-from sequences that sound almost "live" and untreated (for them) makes it sound like a bit tortoise ae remix or something. I wish they'd done a whole ep in this style.

This album sounds like wrapping paper. Scotch tape being pulled and torn, non-Euclidean gift items being bundled and unbundled

And Cipater wuz robbed in this poll.

Yeah when the beat switches up in Cipater feels like the precise moment where they launched into hyperspace

Cipater was never a highlight for me, but listening back yesterday it really stood out.

Though I wouldn't have voted for it, "Tewe" should have received more votes. One of my favorite "chill" ae tracks

I woulda. Genius track even the cat likes.

Received my represses of Chiastic and LP5 today. Love them both although sadly track 1 on LP5 has a few skips (I clearly know this album well cos the uninitiated wouldn't be able to tell).

Anyway, bunged on Chiastic for the first time in a while and I'm struck how (and humour me here) but bluesy Cipater is. Like, it's got this kind of swing to it and the bass is doing what a double bass would do in a jazz-blues tune, and there's just this sort of swing band vibe to it I never really noticed before. Anyway, Tewe is starting now so I'm putting my phone down

Man, I really hope they keep reissuing these. It's nice that they're doing them in small infrequent bursts, but I kinda wish EP7 had also been included in this round

I just ordered them... hopefully LP5 is untarnished. Are you getting a replacement for yours, dog latin?

Still waiting for Confield and Draft, the two I represses I'm anticipating the most.

The ones I really want are Untilted, Oversteps, and Exai, might have to change my diet and exercise habits to ensure I live long enough to get them given the way vinyl production is going

I find it interesting how much people have come to re-evaluate the Draft through Oversteps era.

I'm not sure if it's just me but that era felt, critically and commercially, like their wilderness period when their music got a lot less accessible (fewer obvious melodies) but also the appetite for Autechre and Warp/IDM style music in general was dwindling, maybe because stuff like the more leftfield end of dubstep, minimal tech etc were filling that gap in a hipper, more club-friendly fashion (why listen to Quaristice when you've got Ricardo Villalobos and Burial?).

Confield had nonplussed me, Draft had left me cold and I had almost given up on Autechre as a going cause by the time I heard Untilted. I think it was Oversteps that made me think " Hey maybe there's something left in the tank after all" and then by Exai I was definitely back on the wagon.

I've since come back to Draft and Untilted and I really like them now, but certainly at the time they sounded like an act that had hit a creative rut to me. Anyone else feel this or is this just my subjective experience?

Yeah, I had a very similar experience with 00s Autechre. I loved Confield when it came out, but I couldn’t get into Draft or Untilted at the time because they seemed melodically/harmonically dry in comparison. Which is weird in retrospect, because there’s plenty going on harmonically on those albums; it’s just sublimated/Sublimited (and nothing on them appeals to the emotions as directly as the synths on “Pen Expers”).

Now, since I properly revisited Draft and Untilted last year, I love them unreservedly, and it seems obvious that they solved music with “Surripere” and “Augmatic Disport.”

If there's one Ae album I can't really get my head around even after countless listens it's Confield

this is me with Draft

Must have said this before but I think of Draft as "wood", all creaking and snapping, crunching and stretching. Whereas Untilted is more metallic - like being inside a big pinball machine or a futuristic Speedball-style sport stadium. Confield I just don't know. There are so many horrible sound choices on that one

Draft is most definitely wood, they said at the time a lot of the sources were recordings of pieces of wood. "Xylin Room" even gives it away in the title.
For those wanting to like the album more I recommend absolutely cranking "Surripere", it elevates to a new dimension when insanely loud.

Huh. Didn't know Xylin was a wood varnish

I thought it was a corruption of xylem which are the tiny tubes running through wood to carry water

Xylon is Greek for wood - see e.g. xylophone.

Dog Latin - yeah, in that era my interest was fading a little, too.

If I’m honest, 1998-2002 is the first peak AE time for me. ‘98 is when I got on board. It was glorious. W we not back to the earlier stuff and spent time with it but (yes, I know I’m alone in this feeling) it felt too generic, too … I don’t know. Accomplished but unexciting? Put LP5 up against the earlier material and it’s night and day to me.

2003-2010 was a stretch of following along but not being sure how much I was earnestly enjoying myself. They became mood ring music in the way Black Dice/Eric Copeland are too often - every listen a different impression, frustrating, hard to know where I stood with these guys, often an shifting target. A lot of times a release would have a track or two that really worked for me. This is a period I intend to re-evaluate soon.

2013 is when things started to really, really work for me again - Exai clicked! Elseq totally clicked. The live stuff too (though I haven’t heard it all, there’s too much). NTS is great. SIGN/PLUS not so much but I’ll revisit this winter.

“Went back to the earlier stuff”

One thing we can all probably agree on: what a wild, *open* catalogue these guys have. Taken together, they kinda do anything and everything.

Raymond, that's exactly my experience. Bought LP5 c1998 after having bought as much Aphex back catalogue as I could.
At first I wondered if it was a joke! Or maybe not a joke - Aphex had always had a sense of humour, of tongue in cheek, so to hear this same kind of music played out in such a po-faced way, especially since tracks like Fold4,Wrap5 and Drane2 seemed to be using similar techniques as Aphex had on Come To Daddy and Windowlicker, it really made me wonder whether Ae were to be taken seriously.
But LP5 and soon after EP7 grew on me and became firm faves. Felt the same way about the earlier stuff, and it's only in recent years I've really got to appreciate Incunabula for what it is. Confield threw me: It was just one level of abstraction too far and I remember a lot of hardened fans online complaining about it. I tried and tried with it but I still to this day find even the most popular tracks quite painful to listen to.

Quite similar for me too, I had borrowed and listened to Tri Rep quite a bit and liked their vibe, but when I heard LP5 I bought it after 2 tracks. Went back, Incunabula was a shrug, Amber transcendent, Tri Rep now seemed bland, Chiastic impenetrable but charismatic, all the EPs superb. EP7 came out, complete obsession, Confield was like the face of god to behold. I never really calmed down after that but it tailed off gradually until Exai planted the flag again.

I really think, especially for fans of 90s Autechre, that peeps should revisit SIGN/PLUS. I firmly believe they are some of their best albums and I'm very surprised others on here don't rate them so highly.

I tried giving NTS1 a listen last night while playing video games, but I'm still not sure I fully get it. These tracks are too long and trundling to really elicit concentrated deep listening, but if they're on in the background I guess they provide a sort of monotonous grey groove? I don't hate it, but it really feels like an endurance test a lot of the time. Really I'd be able to pick maybe three or four essential tracks from the whole thing and be happy with that

Hmmm.

You know, it think somehow just I’ve come to want longer AE tracks, collected, where each track is its own planet.

(Or they’ve trained me to want this.)

When each track is long enough it’s easier to roll with the fact that 4-5 tracks are reasonably different from one another.

And then the swing back to LPs that attempt to sustain a mood (sorta) with 3-8 minute tracks don’t quite cut it.