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

FP'd you for flashbacks to Hans Zimmer's crime-against-humanity reworking of Pink Floyd's 'Eclipse'.

lol

Trailers don't count though, they're their own special musical hellscape

Fair enough, exception granted.

This is definitely more ambient and soundtrack-y than most of their stuff. I've occasionally wondered if they would ever do (or if someone was interested in using them for) soundtrack work. I think they'd be good at it.

I think I killed my enjoyment of this record by listening to both it and Oversteps for the first time last week, and Oversteps is by miles the more interesting and prettier record.

they both have a lot in common to be fair. for a while i was convinced some of the tracks on SIGN were remixes/re-versions of Oversteps tunes, but apparently not

Wow apparently I need to revisit Oversteps

right now I'm hearing Depeche Mode's Behind The Wheel sung over the top of psin AM

I also want to somehow make the claim that this is the first Ae album where very smart people can't make the by-now common observation that this is still hip hop influenced music deep down; but I'm not sure what to think of this myself even

I think I've said before a couple of times this on this board but Oversteps/Move of Ten is probably the most underrated autechre era. I'm happy that they came back to this and I would love for SIGN to be their starting off point for going deeper into this sound.

that idea is terrifying to me for some reason

xpost

This is their droniest album, which explains why I'm liking this.

I, ah, um, have you heard NTS Sessions? Also Amber feels way more droned out to me, e.g. Yulquen.

hey my copy finally arrived

still waiting for mine

already has more ratings on RYM than all the elseqs and NTS Sessions in case you're wondering how them releasing a digestible album is going

does anyone get excited when psin AM comes on? it's like the honeydew melon of this delicious fruit salad of an album.

it sounds like something off of Black Dog's Bytes, and I mean that in the best possible way obv

I went back to Oversteps and it's tight, you all are right that the tones have more in common with the new one that I remembered, and it's got that lush reverb too. There are moments of 'Treale' that could genuinely be sampled & looped for a rap track too.

Thinking about how their drum sounds & patterns are what usually keeps ae sequestered in their own experimental/IDM zone. Taking out or de-emphasizing the beats on SIGN instantly put it in the same world as other ambient & soundtrack-y music, for better and/or worse.

I wouldn't say it's solely their drum sounds & patterns - they have quite a distinct style of sound design and sound creation, e.g. the amazing robot gargling on pendulu hv moda or the darwinian tangled bank of elyc6 onset. That's still present here, though less so in some tracks.

Came today, picked it up on way in at 8, listening to it at just past midnight. Probably not ideal.

not gonna say it's a grower, cuz i liked it immediately. but i still like it, and differently than when i first heard it. will unquestionably dig this out in ten years when i'm looking for "that 2020 feeling".

yeah the mood of this album hasn't lost its hold on me, i still listen to it a lot. it helps that even though it's more subdued and melodic, it still feels like everything could fall apart at any moment.

this is v nice. I was almost suspicious at first by how easy it went down but there's still a lot to hear on repeat listens

the other day my dad showed up during one of the quieter passages & dismissed it as massage parlour music. he didn't know why I found that hilarious

giving this a wee break and then coming back to it is very rewarding. Much like I find with Boards of Canada, the quality of these chord progressions start taking on an almost ancient quality, like they've always been there in the back of my head. When those big chords finally sound out during the intro to Metaz form8, it's like the door to a pyramid suddenly scrpaing away

I don't know why I buy these albums on vinyl: most of the experience comes from listening on decent headphones which I can't do with records on my set-up.

realised this when 'r cazt' clicked with me last night just as I was falling asleep with the headphones still on. thought it was a bit of a dirge, but there are these wonderful higher notes that come in and punctuate the deeper chords later on and fill it with a jazzy human-ness

that said, the record arrived today and is sounding lovely.

said it already but X4 has to rate as one of the best Ae tunes in years. Just so much going on in it, and I love the Arabic-style scale that flitters in and out during the middle section

I need to check if it's sitting in my mailbox

if you've got the vinyl version of this, try listening to it at 45 RPM. it's way more chaotic, like the Autechre you're used to

Never really dug into Autechre before now, but I'm loving SIGN so much. PLUS should get here tomorrow.

My CD of PLUS was in my PO box this morning.

still waiting on my LPs, hoping they show up today

My copy of SIGN, which I preordered, arrived yesterday. God knows when I can expect PLUS.

yeah PLUS just arrived for me

My PLUS and SIGN LPs showed up but the packaging was all mashed. Very annoyed.

having had these albums a few weeks, i'm really starting to get interested in the final few seconds of some of these tracks, just the last few bars after the main bit of the track has finished. there's always been something really interesting about how Ae seem to peel back the layers of a track on the outro of tunes like Garbagemx or Cichli, but here it's often just the last 5 seconds, you barely notice them

They also have an interesting tendency of having a new song movement or a bit of a track's chaos to coalesce into something more accessible right as a track ends.

ecol4 on PLUS is a fantastic example as well as Parhelic Triangle on Confield - the latter exposes a very pretty melody that really only begins surfacing in the last minute and then is laid bare as the beats are faded out.

SIGN and PLUS though seem to really focus on track endings though, more so than past records. Every single track on PLUS has an extended outtro (save ecol4 where the outtro is the beat getting exceptionally funky).

never even noticed that about parhelic triangle before.

pic.twitter.com/tnKBm0C4Lr

— Emily Jeanne (@emilyjeannedb) October 8, 2020

M4 Lema played on radio 3 "New Music Show" on saturday night

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q39k

I did it!

https://i.imgur.com/Ij7rV5A.jpg

with thanks to map for the idea

omg that shirt

also i got so focused on plus i nearly forgot how good sign is

pretty much every time I listen to either PLUS or SIGN, I afterwards put on the other one. This definitely feels like one double album to me.

haha that is wonderful xp

nice color too

took me a while to pick a colourway but settled on Tri Repetae green. Got it from a website called Red Molotov

At this point, I have a clear preference for SIGN over PLUS, but the front half of SIGN and back half of PLUS could make a nice combo.