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

Heck, I could still listen to "All End" on repeat and be happy.

Nothing against the NTS Sessions, they're great and they contain some lovely stuff, but yeah they're not exactly the most immediate of accessible things Ae have released by any stretch, and that's in terms of sonics and sheer volume of material. SIGN/PLUS you can just put on and vibe out to without it having to be an epic intense listening session.

Or basically what frogbs said. I wouldn't say NTS is all gold at all

I wouldn't claim to love every individual track on NTS but, when I view it holistically, it's clearly a masterpiece. I guess you could say its more than the sum of its parts, but that's not quite right, either, since a lot of those parts represent some of the most astonishing music I have ever heard

when I view it holistically, it's clearly a masterpiece

I think 4 really helps it out here, it seems like as a whole it has an order to it that I don't get from Elseq, which to me is just a big grab bag of long (and really good) Ae tracks

NTS is one of the few Ae releases where I know every track by name and can recall how it sounds when I read the title. It felt like the apex of their achievement and I would have been fine with it as a "last word". I've probably listened to SIGN/PLUS least of all their releases in the year following, every now and then I remember it and put it on, but after NTS most of the tracks just feel like the start of something. I say this as an Ae obsessive since about 1997.

It felt like the apex of their achievement and I would have been fine with it as a "last word".

yeah

This is all very surprising to me. NTS is enjoyable but on the whole I find it largely an impenetrable murky affair. Save for maybe a couple of tracks like violvoic, I couldn't tell you what each track is like from memory. All End is hugely hugely overrated and it surprises me that people hold it up as being remarkable. OTOH SIGN/PLUS is very memorable to me, with each track having a defining characteristic that makes it sound unique.

Honestly, while NTS etc is remarkable for its achievement as a sheer monolithic work of artisanship, SIGN/PLUS to me is their most enjoyable and their most listenable since before Confield.

Revisiting SIGN today though, I was brought right back to October 2020, and the emotions I was feeling then. There's an ache, an emptiness to tracks like gr4 which will forever be synonymous with that lockdown interim period in the UK where we could just about start mingling again, and then just a few weeks later were plunged back into it. What a dark, melancholy time it was.

never forget that when you don't have the time for "all end" you can always listen to "bladelores"

I love bladelores

This isn't an original opinion or anything but All End just feels redundant when you've got... the entire genre of drone music to compare it to, as well as the rest of Ae's catalogue - I don't see what makes it remarkable other than it's length and that it's by Ae

NTS has tracks like gonk steady one and column thirteen that take the late-period Ae exploratory vibe and add massive hooks, just exhilarating stuff. And I like the sound of the record - super clear and widescreen without being brittle or harsh - much more than sign/plus.

I dunno what to tell you about All End. I've listened to plenty of drone and that track doing what it does, sounding like it does, coming where it does in the album just does it for me. There's some sort of aural illusion happening with that track, my brain keeps hearing melodies and harmonies that aren't there.

Yeah, I liked it to watching Derek Jarman's "Blue."

Comparing NTS to SIGN is like comparing Trans Europe Express to Radioactivity. I strongly prefer Radioactivity but I know a lot of people would disagree

And ohmigod some of the tracks on NTS go on for sooo loooong without really doing anything. I don't know how they can justify something like bqbqbq being 11 minutes. It's interesting for all of the first minute

super disagree on that, it's a maximalist piece which asks "what if this, but played out to its fullest extent" and I could listen to that all day. So many tracks mutate, or splinter into tangents, and the length basically forces you to work past your first impressions and listen for other things.
and re: all end, sure there are other works of similar magnitude and concept, sure it's just a timestretch of a simple noise piece, sure there's any number of ways you could criticise it, but lukas is right that it's a ganzfeld on which I hallucinate my soul. I listened to it cranked, a few times in full, during a phase of my life where my emotions were basically unbearable and unprocessable, and it felt like being suspended as a cloud of atoms and was immensely healing to me. So I don't really care if it's clever or original or whatever, it's just wonderful. This kind of art is equally about selection as creation, and putting that up as an hour-length block was clearly an aesthetic decision. Wouldn't matter if it was a field recording of an electric fan.

I agree with dog latin - I get that the length and drawn out patterns are part of the appeal but certain tracks on here just don’t do anything for me and they just go on soooo long. I love a good 3/4 of it though. Including “bqbqbq” (which you gotta admit is pretty funny to have as the 2nd track)

I think we can all agree that … we want more AE in 2022, though, right? 🙂

mattt otmfm

I’d be down for more Autechre sure

Every time this thread comes to life I get a PTSD shock that the band might have dropped another 8 hours of music.

I still want a physical 5CD box of Elseq. I know it’s never coming but I hold out hope.

fwiw the individual NTS Sessions on vinyl are actually pretty cheap, you can get them for like $25 + shipping even though they are 3xLPs. I guess too many people (correctly) decided this was ridiculous to have on wax. but they're wrong. it's awesome on vinyl even changing a record and flipping a side in "all end"

because of the activity on this thread I am listening to PLUS and honestly I think it's as good as anything they've released, at least on a per minute scale. and it's probably the most accessible thing they've done since LP5, outside of Oversteps/Move of Ten. pretty much all the things they do well are on it. and it's got "lux 106 mod" which is arguably prettier than anything on SIGN! can't help but wonder how it would've been received had it been released first.

also its nice to hear Autechre making music that sounds funny again. "TM1 open" is like Hobbit disco

because of the activity on this thread I am listening to PLUS and honestly I think it's as good as anything they've released

been meaning to make this exact post all day

anyway now that I'm done I will be listening to Cluster, who in many ways were the original Autechre. no I will not elaborate on that

@unperson yes! My NTS Sessions CD set gives me warm wibbles and it's a shame we can't have the same with Elseq.

Listened to Plus yesterday, aside from a track or two it still mostly passes me by, possibly because I was never so much into "beat based techno in the classic era". Love the lush and pillowly Sign; I also think of NTS as a career peak and a monumental achievement that transcends its own few longeurs. What I go to most often for a quick and easy hit of ne plus ultra ae though is elseq 1 tracks 2-5.

I bet they press elseq on vinyl for the 10th ann in 2016

*2026

Fuck, just realised that's not far off

Unperson, that’s something I want too.

Speaking of which, I got notified today that my Copies of Chiastic and LP5 have been dispatched and OMG I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR LONGER THAN BQBQBQ

Good news! Hopefully that means mine are en route too. I typically prefer Autechre on CD but I'm very excited to get these.

yeah i don't know why i even own Autechre on record, but these are very impotant albums for me and it will be a nice way to rediscover them

Just another voice on the Internet saying "I'd like an Elseq CD set" (was even considering some Russian boot but now all I see on Ebay is a thumb drive in a box).

Is "buy it and burn it" not an option? or unsatisfying without artwork?

the lack of a physical copy means that despite Ae being one of my favorite musical acts ever I'm barely familiar with elseq relative to the rest of the catalog

xp -- probably mostly the latter for me, plus CD-Rs being more likely to degrade over time than factory-pressed discs (Russian boots in my limited
experience have been factory-pressed)

but lukas is right that it's a ganzfeld on which I hallucinate my soul. I listened to it cranked, a few times in full, during a phase of my life where my emotions were basically unbearable and unprocessable, and it felt like being suspended as a cloud of atoms and was immensely healing to me.

I recently programmed some LED lights to create a visual ganzfeld while in a sauna listening to All End for 20 mins, and this description feels like it matched my experience a bit

my soul sibling

picking this up again after a year and I never realized how symphonic a lot of this album is. you could almost envision an orchestra playing it. guess I missed a lot of that because I'm not used to hearing stuff like that out of Autechre.