Are you telling me this is AE: SIGN? (Autechre LP 14)

Here's what I think anyway: https://thequietus.com/articles/29078-autechre-sign-review

That was good! It's ironic that Autechre is ultimately one of the easier and more fun acts to write about, imo. (Not that writing about them doesn't take work, as I'm sure your review did!)

Thanks Josh. I deliberately tried to keep as much 'sounds like a mechanical Jonah tapping out rhythms on the inside of a whale made of silly putty' descriptions to a minimum, as it's way too easy and obvious to do that. Plus much as it's fun to describe these things, everyone seems to hear these things quite differently. Am I the only one who immediately thought 'motorcycle' when 'M4 Lema' came on?

(not that the piece doesn't fall into this trap - it's almost impossible not to project strange imagery into these things)

Am I the only one who immediately thought 'motorcycle' when 'M4 Lema' came on?

― Specific Ocean Blue (dog latin), Thursday, October 15, 2020 8:48 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nope!

Great review btw

imo elseq and nts are them rocketing through alien spaces, and this record feels like the return to earth, but earth has changed dramatically in the intervening years. it feels like there is an awful lot of longing and yearning in these tracks

I reviewed this for Stereogum, and came to a lot of the same conclusions as Brad.

Great piece!

cheers Paul and Tim. it means a lot that you guys liked it

Yes, both of these reviews were great. I like that Phil mentions both Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream, because I absolutely hear this now. I'm sure those people influenced Ae from the jump, but on this record those influences seem just as explicit as the electro, hip hop, and musique concrete influences have been on Ae albums past

Nice piece, dl. I'm interested that what you heard as a motorcycle I heard as them trying repeatedly to boot up their machines - so, basically a hard drive grinding.

Tangerine Dream

It's funny, the first time I listened to the album I absolutely thought it sounded like a soundtrack, or at least more than the group usually does.

alright this made me laugh

https://i.redd.it/hyiiw4b597t51.jpg

they do look a bit like grizzled mobsters in their recent photos

Xps enjoyed your take too unperson, and as I think I mentioned elsewhere, it’s uncanny that so many reviews address the “human” element of their music on this one.

Looking forward to the vinyl hitting my doormat so I can enjoy this with less critical ears

Good review DL! And unperson's too, I think Schulze is a good call.

I've a feeling SIGN won't end up being a lot of people's fave AE album. It is a sort of return to the basics, but it's extremely good and lush to ease into right now.

Yeah good reviews - better than this short & ambivalent one: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/oct/16/autechre-sign-review-warp

It's on spotify now so i can stream it around the house \o/

Typically excellent Philip Sherburne review on Pitchfork today

Here's an excerpt of the Japanese bonus track n Cur. Sounds a lot like Gas Königsforst 5 to me:
https://diskunion.net/DU-X1_audio_player.html?id=1008189907&disc=1&track=12

that Sherburne review is so good. he's summarised Ae so well in those opening paragraphs

Also for posterity:

https://i.imgur.com/8F5J1vd.jpg

This really seems to be hitting a critical mass, good for them. I do feel like a poser though, they've long been on my list to check out and I'd feel weird starting now because of all of this attention. I watched all the NTS Sessions discourse from afar but that seemed like a lot to start with.

Physical copy arrived in this morning's mail, as promised. I like when preorders actually work as designed. (I remember preordering the last Mastodon album and it came something like 10 days after street date.)

Another excellent piece on SIGN, from a slightly more musicological perspective:

http://5against4.com/2020/10/16/autechre-sign/

This really seems to be hitting a critical mass, good for them. I do feel like a poser though, they've long been on my list to check out and I'd feel weird starting now because of all of this attention. I watched all the NTS Sessions discourse from afar but that seemed like a lot to start with.

Start with Tri Repetae.

start with LP5! ;-)

i got my physical copy today too and it's so nice to listen to on vinyl without a screen and a tracklisting in front of me, and without having to use my critical listening brain

I started with LP5 and that worked perfectly--to me it's their most even balance of futuristic experimentation and melodic accessibility. But I don't think you can go wrong starting with any of their 90s stuff

start with LP5! ;-)

I agree.

Start with Tri Repetae, then go LP5, and if you like what you hear, move about at will.

really agree with starting with lp5

tri repetae is the apotheosis of their early sound but it def took me a while to figure that out, lp5 was way more immediate and one of their most beautiful tracks ever is in the opening run

My boss was intrigued by Autechre and asked for some select tracks. I put together a playlist, but it was really difficult. How does one put together a short sample of a 30 year+ career like theirs? Those LP5 tracks which once sounded so cold and clinical to me are more like chill hip hop rhythms. What would an uninitiated person think of Cichli? And how do I contextualise the post-Confield material? Have to admit, it wasn't easy at all to come up with anything comprehensive.

I’d really like to see the tracklist you put together!

FWIW this is what I ended up with: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5zFEsaK4t8cbDNM7VrEdWX?si=omrSJr6jSe6NSPyvvBqnRg

Arch Carrier
Cichli
Eutow
Pir
Garbagemx
d-sho qub
Fold4, Wrap5
Maphive6.1
Rae
gr4
6IE.CR
Krib
Slip
M4 Lema
violvoic

went for the more pretty/melodic stuff with a few curveballs thrown in.

Perfect opener imo, good set!

I started with Tri Repeatae, didn't really like it. felt it was way cold and the super high-pitched tones on "Stud" annoyed the hell out of me. it's still probably my least favorite album of theirs. which I think speaks to how great their catalogue is.

Fwiw, one reason I always lean to Tri Repetae as a recommendation is, no surprise, strictly personal, in that after the first two albums and especially them being clumped in with the IDM scene (specifically on those two Artificial Intelligence comps), "Clipper" specifically was something that clicked with me as totally new and mysterious. Made me a fan for life, tbh.

Which is the first Autechre album/track to really embrace that "ball bearings spilling out onto the floor" sound? I can't remember the chronology offhand. Is that LP5?

Chiastic Slide is where they fully formed into the Autechre we know today imo

Hmm, just googling around and found this dude, who ... seems to do a pretty good job summing things up?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea3FP5NqUqM

my impression is Tri Rep gets recommended the most because of "Garbage" on the bonus disc, which is probably the best way to convert the uninitiated (you like that, do you? well here's 30 hours of Autechre music, none of which sounds like this)

dl, I like your list but would definitely have included "VI Scose Poise" (first track from Confield) on it; I think it's one of the most beautiful pieces in their catalog.

Have to admit Tri Repetae too me a while to grow into as well. It's a very textural, granular and tone-free album; so depending on your tolerance for industrial sturm und drang it may or may not float your boat. I listen to it mainly for Leterel and Eutow, with Overand and C/Pach being pleasant surprises.
But it's quite a different album from Amber's pretty ambience.
Chiastic Slide is when they really started sounding like alien music as opposed to 'what humans think alien music sounds like'. 'Rettic AC' as the second track is like a statement of intent. 'Hub' is as far from a 'dance' tune as it gets. And even 'Cichli', for all its melodic wonder, is really a five-limbed thing

dl, I like your list but would definitely have included "VI Scose Poise" (first track from Confield) on it; I think it's one of the most beautiful pieces in their catalog.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Friday, October 16, 2020 5:24 PM (twenty-one seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

It is very nice indeed, especially as a delicate opener to Confield (an album I still struggle with); but somehow I've always heard it as a retread of things like Drane2 off LP5, Krib off Cichli Suite and possibly Aphex Twin's Nannou.

something i just noticed when playing back VI Scose Poise is that it's a shame it doesn't somehow segue into Cfern in a more pleasing way. it sounds like the two tunes almost have the same chord structure and should somehow blend together more satisfactorily

Tri Repetae++ was my introduction to Autechre, which I decided to check out after falling in love with Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children. It didn't quite do it for me at first – it felt too harsh, too industrial – and I likewise found 'Stud' especially hard-going, but repeated (heh) spins dispelled my reservations. So I suppose whichever one you decide to start with, don't forget that it's unlikely to click straight away.

Whenever they release a new album I realize I spend so much time moving forward with them that I don't spend nearly as much time as I'd like listening back. To be fair, when you do things like release 8 hour albums it is a lot to ask to just put that in rotation with your other stuff. In some ways I think of each one as its own little island and don't necessarily consider how they connect as the Autechre archipelago, because it's just easier that way.

Was so looking forward to listening to this but I'm in meetings all day ;_;

My first exposure to Ae was Chris Cunningham's video for "Second Bad Vilbel," which I thought was some pretty uniquely damaged posthuman electronic music. Cunningham's own feeling that the video was inadequate, apparently shared by Booth and Brown, made them seem like artists with an impossibly high standard (I thought the video was cool). So I tracked down a copy of the 2CD Tri Repetae, then out of print, and basically found it too cold and austere for me to take over the length of a (long) album. I had read about Confield's notorious difficulty and was curious about it but probably figured that if I didn't like TR I probably wouldn't like Confield either. Then when Quaristice came out the novelty of shorter tracks sounded appealing, so I tried it, but it didn't leave much of an impression.

Then in 2018 everyone was abuzz about NTS Sessions, and I was looking for something difficult and decided to try Confield after all. I did, finding it "makes me smile" funny, both in terms of the zany sounds and so-dark-it-comes-out-the-other-side senses. From there I headed straight into NTS Sessions, which was a proper listening adventure. I continue to enjoy not really knowing quite how to evaluate Ae — I don't seem to get inside their music as much as some of you here but I keep coming back to it nonetheless.

half the fun is that they're an enigma,a puzzle to be toyed with in the hope of unlocking it

Really enjoying SIGN right now (on my second listen). I can't tell if autechre has become more accessible or if I've become better at listening to them but I feel like over the last several albums I've been enjoying them almost immediately whereas before that it would take me months or years to appreciate them.