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

I think Confield/Ganz Graf/Draft 7.30 is always going to feel like peak autechre to me, maybe it's just because that's when I started buying those albums on release, but that was when I really really got into them.

Ganz Graf, now there's one I forget exists from time to time. Even more than Confield (which I thought came out afterwards but apparently not), that one really felt like Ae pushing things to the outer limits at the time. It was definitely helped by the video, which seemed like the future at the time but now looks strangely dated.

I can definitely hear a direct link between Ganz Graf and the NTS Sessions. I might be in the minority when I say I prefer Autechre when they're not being overtly claustro and itchy, which might explain why I like LP5 and the most recent two from last year the most.

Gantz with a t

https://gantzmythsources.libs.uga.edu/
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3xoAEAAAQBAJ

a coincidence? i think not...

huh

my feeling these days is that elseq is the long-form masterpiece

Elseq is the overlooked middle child between Exai and NTS. I should revisit it

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?).

... 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?

This definitely resonates with me. When Confield came out, it was a bit of a shocker for me in terms of its heady experimentalism and dearth of accessibility. Yet despite this, there were a few tracks that really got me going - same with Draft, if not more so, but it felt as if "Autechre was dying or dead" or some such melodramatic nonsense. When Untilted dropped I was about done with the band - that album seemed to me them taking the piss, ditching all manner of melody and accessibility (outside of the opening track) nearing self parody. Indeed, I got into dubstep and the atmospheric experimentalism of that scene in addition to techno (Koze and Isolee were my gateway drugs there) around the same time (2005-2007). Just felt like experimental electronic music or "IDM" was out of ideas at that point - and dubstep a la Burial was the real "IDM", a club friendly, emotive, atmospheric vibe expressed with texture and abstract sounds in a new way.

Didn't take long for me to really reassess the "Mechanical Trilogy" of Confield through Untilted, and by 2010 I was really enjoying all of latter. My own tastes had evolved too, to appreciate less melodic, more textural, experimental and rhythmic music too. Wasn't too long that it became hard for me to listen to pre Chiastic era Ae. Amber and Quaristice are my least favorite Ae records now. Instead of them "falling off" I now feel like they've merely evolved and grown, simultaneously getting less and more accessible by simply ... being about as prolific as any musician or band on the planet

Elseq is the overlooked middle child between Exai and NTS. I should revisit it

Yes. Latentcall is a top 5 Ae track. Easily one of the most amazing, epic and uptempo tracks they've ever laid to tape. Shame it's digital only

Funny about Amber. It used to be one of my faves when I was getting into them, and I preferred it to Tri Rep and Chiastic. I don't know if it's cos I listened to it so much back int he day, but since buying up the first three reissues, it's the one I play the least. Incunabula has shot up in my estimation: I just wasn't into it when I was younger

Listening to Untilted right now, have always thought of as the weak link in their '00s catalogue but it's sounding pretty great on earphones. I need to go back to Elseq as well.

Funny, Untilted felt to me like they reached what they’d been heading for. I listened to it a lot and loved the drama of each track unfolding like a miniature story, e.g. Augmatic Disport and Pro Radii. Fermium is slithery and beautiful too, but being fascinated by rhythm I didn’t understand folks lamenting the loss of melodies, it seemed beside the point.
Anyone else remember the “mad day out” video for Fermium?

Amber is a pretty special album. I'm not sure where it slots in with the rest of their catalogue. It doesn't really fit in with anything else either. Like the end of "Silverside"...where the hell did that come from?

tbh it was Chiastic Slide that really made this group click for me. Tri Rep has some parts I enjoy very much but as a whole it's too...dry? Rigid? So much tick-tick-tick-clank-tick-tick-glorp-clunk. Too "industrial" as in "pulling a double shift at the metal door hinge factory and trying to come up with patterns in the machines". I actually think it's one of their uh...less good albums? I mean all 14 or whatever of their LPs are great but I think it would rank near the bottom. Once I got into Chiastic and started hearing those rhythms swing around I was like...yeah, that's what it's all about, I get it now.

of the "mechanical trilogy" the only one I really struggled with is Draft. the other two, as difficult as they are, are sonically thrilling. the sound design on Confield is still unlike anything else and Untilted is such a jam. Draft may be too strange even for me.

there are so many melodies on untitled tho

untilted*

best album title ever too

Agree with frogbs on everything there. I go back to TR for Clipper though.

Chiastic is definitely when they "became" Autechre if that makes any sense. The albums before are very special and unique but I can't think of anything that would have sounded close to Chiastic Slide when it came out - a total game changer.

I'm listening to Untilted really loud in my headphones lads, and man there's so much going on in here I didn't notice the first 80 times I've played this album

And frogbs I agree with about Tri Rep. There are days when I'm in the mood for it and I really like Leterel, Eutow and Overand, but overall it's a masochistic grinding record. I guess it shares a lot of properties with Untilted in the way it's a "metal" textured thing, Untilted is all shiny, hard and spherical whereas Tri Rep is worn and gritty like when you try to unscrew something and the thread is all fucked

I often wonder how much the album artwork affects my perception of these records. As well as being one of my all time favourite groups, they've got some of my favourite sleeve art ever. (Although not sure about Exai or Confield - I need those explained to me)

Brad, if you're hearing lots of melodies, at least on the opening two tracks, we've definitely got different ears. Only towards the end of Ipacial Section is there a discernible bassline (although there is a LOT of sub bass on these tracks)

Also there are a lot of human voices and noises on Untilted which I'd never really paid much notice of before - not something they'd really done since Ccec on EP7 I think?

break

also by overwhelming demand, that Fermium video (official, btw):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doue-G-tun8

hard agree about trirep being a little dry. it still has honestly never fully clicked for me. and since that was the first one I bought, I sure have tried a lot. luckily it was the ++ edition with the garbage + anvil vapre eps as a bonus disc. I took to those instantly and kept going with the group.

with untilted, I also wasn't super into it when it came out. but weirdly, I had heard some of live bootlegs from that tour first, and although I dug some of it (esp "sublimit," hard to argue with that one), I found the album a bit disappointing as a whole in comparison to those live sets. that glasgow art school soundboard recording from 2005 in particular, which is still one of my favorite autechre things. but I got over it. untilted rules.

I've said this before here but Tri-Rep and the records around that time really could use a remaster. Also agree it's not aged well (I also still revisit for Clipper and Eutow/C-Pach (also don't discount the Japanese bonus track Medrey and that iconic Ae Juno-106 bass synth) and sounds tinny and brittle.

Untilted is definitely a jam, and especially a wild headphone listen. And yes there's melodies, but 90's Ae fans were blessed with vibe like atmospheres and melodies from tracks like Cipater, Cichli, Rae and Corc that had syncopation, progression and more traditional expressions of straight forward emotions like melancholy or swagger, rather than the autistic spasms of most of the songs on Untilted with some chords buried in the mix, discovered after a half dozen listens on nice cans. To describe that record as "full of melodies" is like saying Low's HEY WHAT is full of great drumming and percussion. It's there, mostly expressed up front in a single track (LCC), but not exactly the focal point, which was their intention.

if nothing else it would be nice to neuter some of those high pitched noises. "Stud" makes me feel like I'm eating a box of nails.

Listening to Untilted this morning I heard a lot of similar sounds and textures to Dots and Loops, especially between "Sublimit" and "Contronatura." They both sounds like (and I guess are) very programmed records built partly from vintage electronic sounds -- like you're listening to a hard disk (one that's occasionally unreadable, in the case of Untilted, though I think this especially because my copy skips in some CD players as I mentioned in another thread).

Got a replacement for my LP5 and it also skips on the first track on both turntables I own. I think it must be something to do with how hard and heavy that track must be mastered as it isn't so much skipping like it's damaged excpet the needle is being jogged forward

I also hear an actual glitch in both acroyear and rae on mine. Definitely feels like an issue with the master and not the physical pressing. Anyone else hearing this? Might try and record my copy. Otherwise it's a good sounding pressing. The analog format absolutely softens the digital textures in a good way

got the reissue on now and man I forgot how crunchy every track on this album is. every single beat is sick. I can't believe this LP wasn't sampled constantly. and people thought this was a step down from Tri Rep? get outta here. "Recury" alone is so far ahead of everything they'd done to this point.

Just found out that "cichlid" is a type of fish that includes tilapia

also krib https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelvicachromis_pulcher

My wearing autechre t-shirts to find other fans strategy had a near miss - someone wearing a draft 7.30 shirt walked past at high speed and went into the supermarket by the bus stop i was waiting at. i then saw him through the window in the queue, he caught my nts shirt and we exchanged a thumbs up, then the bus came. he looked like he was about 12 - ok maybe 18, idk - so not sure how i would have handled any potential conversation.

Xp no way. 25 years of Autechre lore fandom and I had no idea they were such big fish stans

(last week i crossed someone on the street wearing a uniqlo "Takiyasha the Witch and the Skeleton Spectre" t-shirt whilst wearing my uniqlo "Sudden Shower over Shin-Ōhashi bridge and Atake" t-shirt but he didn't notice and i didn't say anything)

xp All the tracks on Cichlisuite seem to be at least tangentially fish-related.

"Characi(dae)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characidae

"Pencha" is the Bengali word for "owl" and "Bhutum Pencha" the Brown Fish Owl specifically: https://en.banglapedia.org/index.php/Owl

"Yees Land" is an aquatic-themed level from the Sega Genesis game Space Harrier II where you fight enemies that resemble jellyfish, clams, and frogs https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Space_Harrier_II/Yees_Land

That last one is kind of a stretch but seems very on-brand for Autechre.