the aphex twin destroyed my brain

luka

luka

Well-known member
mvuent said:
too late. none of the vocal skeptics here actually want to discuss autechre, they just want to repeat the same tired one liners and then get out. which is fair since they get overanalyzed enough elsewhere.

at risk of provoking (deserved) ridicule, I'd say I understand Autechre much better than anyone who's criticized them at length in writing. not that the ae lads are perfect or above criticism. the critiques are always really surface level, the same stuff I thought about them at 17. and if there's any artist that you can't rely on surface impressions for its them.
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Just write the thing ffs. I like reading good analysis regardless of the subject. Don't play coy please
 
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mvuent

Void Dweller
no one's playing coy as you probably know! I have 0 analyses in the works and of course if I did I'd post it. I will try to clarify what I meant though.
 
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mvuent

Void Dweller
what I'm saying is that the best music writing gets to the bottom of what makes an artist interesting and criticizes them from there, but no one's really done that with autechre. and that's surprising since a lot of very perceptive, knowledgeable people aren't too fond of them. that's all.

so if anything I think one of you skeptics should write out why they seem not so great to you. just let it out! no more "oh autechre? I hate them. anyway..."

the one such effort I’ve seen is Woebot’s review of Exai, but I'd respectfully disagree with how he characterizes them. he suggests that they think they're too smart for good old stupid dance music--but then he quotes a completely different guy as "evidence" of this! from interviews (and from their music) it's clear that they don't think that. he also suggests that they've struggled to balance their "dialectic" of “street and avant garde aesthetics”. but a) they're very open about being create first, rationalize later types who don't think of their next album as their next rhetorical move and b) they see electro and electroacoustic as connected, not as opposites. and as thirdform always says, you can listen to them as dance music, it just takes a few (ok, an admittedly annoying number of) listens to hear how everything's working together. but they have an amazing sense of groove once your ears adjust.
 
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mvuent

Void Dweller
this makes the case for them better than I could: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/autechre-nts-sessions-1-4/
It’s an idea that seems almost tailor-made for Sean Booth and Rob Brown who, together as Autechre, have been making highly confounding experimental electronic music together for the past 30 years. Not necessarily the part about convening with our alien forefathers, but rather the thought that sound and rhythm are learning experiences unto themselves, that our ears can adapt and evolve to new music and bring the rest of our being and consciousness along for the ride.
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The more time you spend in this world of sound, the closer you get to understanding its true origin—not the sound collages of Stockhausen’s day, but rather the American hip-hop and dance music that Booth and Brown grew up on. When Booth first heard the scratch-heavy electro of Los Angeles electro party rockers Knights of the Turntables in the mid-’80s it was still incomprehensible to him. “I was hearing it the way I heard Stockhausen,” he told Thump in 2015: “If you look at it purely in terms of the sound and science of it, it’s not that far from musique concrète. But there’s this cultural brick wall between the two things.”

The NTS Sessions, like so much of Autechre’s output, serve as deeply encrypted history lessons through which to tear down those walls. The duo was fortunate to come of age at a unique moment in musical history, that brief period from the late ’70s to early ’90s, when the sonics themselves were stacked higher than that wall. Advancements in production technology were rapidly outpacing their expected purpose and previously inaccessible music-making devices were suddenly attainable to kids from across all cultural and economic lines. Hip-hop and electro, house and techno, bass and freestyle grew out of this cross-pollination and quickly turned weird.

Autechre fully inherited the values of that era and they might be the only artists of our time to still live in them today. So much on NTS Sessions seems to offer a hypothetical alternate timeline to ’80s electronic music: What if it all just kept growing? What if each and every Latin Rascals razor blade micro edit was to re-edit itself violently? What if the stuttering vocals of Miami bass dubs were to develop sub-stutters? If all the acid house squelches grew into roars? If the extended DJ mixes lasted for entire days? And what if all the oh-shit moments that first came with these innovations were still central to the enjoyment of contemporary dance music? It would, presumably, keep evolving until it was no longer even recognizable as such.
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mvuent

Void Dweller
luka listen to Untilted. (even though I wasn't able to convince version, who actually likes autechre, that it's good.) pretend kurtis mantronik didn't release anything after music madness and then after 20 years came out with this.
 
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mvuent

Void Dweller
mvuent said:
luka listen to Untilted. (even though I wasn't able to convince version, who actually likes autechre, that it's good.) pretend kurtis mantronik didn't release anything after music madness and then after 20 years came out with this.
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or maybe 10 years. in the midst of jungle and idm.
 
chava

chava

Well-known member
If people want that complexity attitude I will recommend going for Vlad Delay.



Autechre should've focused making this sound their thing:

 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Corpsey said:
I'm being simplistic of course since I love "Vordhosbn"

But there's an ethereal beauty to that tune, too, to compliment the machineseizure.
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it's really not. look, afx can make music that sounds like cornwall and even early UK breakbeat hardcore but as soon as he goes for the detroit emotionalism he struggles to pull it off. something with ethereal beauty from that era is model 500 infoworld or even shotkey 7th path off that album. xtal is literally the blandest of his tunes.

if you want hardcore detroit emotionalism...

 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I don't even like his drill n bass stuff really but how is this anything other than an album opener. it's great to start or bookend but that's it. on its own its just a corney um-and-ahhing hippie wet dream. as an opener its fantastic for setting the scene. but it's by no means his best.

 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
literally luka and corpsey you're both cancelled now i can't ever respect your opinions on music ever again 🔫
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
mvuent said:
luka listen to Untilted. (even though I wasn't able to convince version, who actually likes autechre, that it's good.) pretend kurtis mantronik didn't release anything after music madness and then after 20 years came out with this.
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and of course weirdly enough it's the most inadvertent inheritor of the techno direction in jungle, far more than 00s drill and bass breakcore hybrid which was turning into an american frat bro monstrosity with death metal samples and all by then anyway. which shouldn't be surprising as the boys are fans of moving shadow and jumpin and pumpin...

listen loud and with headphones on.

 
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