Neon Screams!

[0bleak]

Like I think you can basically dismiss his argument (whatever it was lmao) but still find interesting things about the music and about what he's saying about it

no doubt

 

[thirdform]

listened to two things on your list and its pure retro nostalgia so im even more confused about where youre coming from now

this is what happens when you think you can opine on music based on the opinions of other critics. it's a shortcoming of your own framework, but because you reject the dialectic you cannot transcend it.

There is actually nothing particularly new in barty music, there never was. that was my point earlier in the thread in 2021 when I said futurism is an imaginary.

 

[luka]

Are you denying that music is self consciously retro? Why did you send me a private message saying it sounds like a sheffield squat circa 1982 in that case?

 

[thirdform]

yeah i wa about to say the issue with what obleak has done (and hes done it really well obv) is that the ear immediately files it as weird shit and it does exactly the same things for the same reasons as the weird shit of the '50s and '60s. that is one of the things that makes it weird shit. its ahistorical, its outside the timeline, its an experiment with nothing riding on the outcome. it never evolves it never develops it is never in conversation with anything else its the ultimate dead end.

Outside the Hall of Mirrors: Autechre and the Politics of Withdrawal
By now, the story of Autechre has acquired the aura of inevitability. The early 1990s Warp-era material—Incunabula, Amber, Tri Repetae—still retained some semblance of sensuality, of connection to the decaying rave culture out of which they emerged. But at some point—Confield is the usual scapegoat, though the process is more gradual—the music retreated. Beats fractured, structure liquefied, tonality dissolved. What was left behind was something uncanny, alien, and increasingly, to many, impenetrable.
This is not the story of “coldness” that Simon Reynolds and others have tried to tell. That’s a libidinal panic—a fear that music might stop touching us in the ways we’ve been taught to expect. No, the real question is harder, more ontological: what kind of world does Autechre’s music presuppose—and what kind of world does it preclude?

I. The Labyrinth With No Exit
Late Autechre—by which I mean the post-Quaristice, post-Exai, truly disassembled works—no longer participate in any recognizable musical dialogue. Not with genre, not with history, not with the listener. What we hear instead are the outputs of systems. Generative logic machines whispering to themselves in sealed environments. The listener becomes a voyeur—granted access not to a narrative or a groove, but to an occult process unfolding according to rules that are never disclosed.
This is formalism of a particularly severe kind. Not the formalism of Modernism, which at least still clung to a utopian project of social re-configuration, but something more withdrawn. A formalism without external referents, unmoored from the cultural codes that once tethered experimental music to social space.
This is what Reynolds misses: it’s not that the music is too cerebral—it’s that it has exited the loop entirely. No cultural memory, no affective signposts, no irony or citation. It is asocial abstraction, machine thought without nostalgia or desire.

II. Withdrawal as Political Gesture
And yet—here we must be careful. Because in this very act of withdrawal, Autechre may be enacting one of the last possible forms of political resistance available in a culture where even negativity has been captured, commodified, and fed back into circulation.
What if this refusal of semiotic participation, this evacuation of content, this abandonment of the listener, is not apathy but strategy? What if the only way to resist the culture of algorithmic capture and emotional realism is to produce something so opaque, so systemically self-sufficient, that it becomes unassimilable?
In this sense, Autechre’s music resembles what Kodwo Eshun called sonic fiction, but one that has become entirely inhuman—fiction written by code for itself. A refusal of the libidinal economy of affect and identity. And in that refusal, a kind of utopia.

III. The Death of the Social, the Rise of the Structure
The shift in Autechre’s work coincides with the collapse of the conditions that once made rave, techno, and jungle socially and politically potent. In a world of permanent crisis and simulated connectivity, the dancefloor’s promise of collective intensification has given way to atomized streaming, predictive playlists, and the infinite archive. Music has become endless—but also predictable, performative, flattened.
Autechre reject this. But their rejection doesn’t look like rage or satire or even mourning. It looks like the construction of entirely new perceptual environments—zones where the familiar co-ordinates (beginning, middle, drop, climax) are no longer relevant. If anything, their work echoes Ballard or Burroughs more than Eno or Kraftwerk—not soundtracking the future, but building from within its wreckage.

IV. Beyond the Human: The Sublime of the System
This is why Autechre remain important—not despite their abstraction, but because of it. They have followed formalism to its terminal point: not an art of forms, but an art of procedures. They are no longer making "tracks"; they are producing environments in which emergent sonic behavior unfolds. In a culture obsessed with expression, they offer exposition—of systems, of processes, of rules not made for human comprehension.
And yet, for all their indifference, something leaks through. Not warmth, exactly, but sublime affect—the vertigo of encountering something utterly Other. Not artificial intelligence, but alien intelligence. In that sense, Autechre are not anti-human. They simply show us what it might be like to listen beyond the human—to perceive complexity without narrative, sensation without recognition.

V. Epilogue: Outside the Loop
Autechre’s music doesn’t speak about anything. That is its power, and its danger. It does not represent the world—it exits it. Or at least, it exits the world as culture currently imagines it: continuous, emotionally legible, socially networked. In this way, Autechre become spectral cartographers of a future that may already be here, but which we still lack the tools to hear.
It would be easy to call this retreat.
But what if it's escape?

Wish people still wrote like this.

 

[luka]

Thats exactly how i reviewed woops music

 

[thirdform]

Are you denying that music is self consciously retro? Why did you send me a private message saying it sounds like a sheffield squat circa 1982 in that case?

no, I'm saying barty music is even more retro as it sounds like iphone 2009.

Sheffield squat 1982 can be reclaimed as a path to be explored because it's so in the past. iphone 2009 is the definition of retro nostalgia nowadays, just like 80s kitsch was nostalgia in early 00s.

 

[thirdform]

I'm not even talking about just "weird shit" either.
Almost everything I listen to is a form of some kind of dance music, or very influenced by dance music, it just happens to generally use more different sounds. The stuff I like generally listen to really isn't that abstract. It's generally still tied to conventional music forms. I just ask for more interesting sounds, timbres and textures within those forms.
Like, why does so much of the music discussed in Neon Screams have to have those same kind of 808 subs, those same trap style snares, and those same lawn sprinkler hi-hats.
and never mind bringing Autechre into it - That is setting up an opposition that I didn't even set up. It's a bit of a straw man.
When I posted a list of favorites from the last three years, you could say that hardly any of it sounded like Autechre:
¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U - Bedouin Voyager
33EMYBW - Symbiosis Codes/Mandala
3phaz - DrumTraTrax
Christos Chondropoulos - Relics
D.K. - Gate Of Enlightenment
DJ Smiley Bobby - Dhol Tasha Drum Exercises from Maharashtra
Emptyset - Ash
Gabber Modus Operandi - PUXXXIMAXXX
Grim - Therianthropy
Alex Zhang Hungtai - Young Gods Run Free
Makossiri - Juicy Juicy
Ninos du Brasil - Antro Pop
NKISI - The Altar
Nze Nze - Adzi Akal
Raja Kirik - Rampokan
Safa - Ibtihalat
Senyawa - Alkisah/Once Upon A Time In Avon
Saint Abdullah & Eomac - Chasing Stateless
Slikback - Slikbackl
Takkak Takkak - Takkak Takkak
UKAEA - Birds Catching Fire in the Sky
Use Knife - Peace Carnival
Zaliva-D - 孽儿谣 aka Misbegotten Ballads
ZULI - Komy

he is right though. just like UK drill got submerged by it's own pianos a lot of trap got submerged by the overload of 808s. dancehall with the saturated production. that music sounds good on iphone speakers. That's why it's not futuristic anymore. It can't be. iphones aren't the future.

and I think I said this before, but it actually doesn't sound good in clubs or in any kind of collective environment. too solipsistic. too autistic (in the psychoanalytic sense.)

This would actually be a good defence of Barty music that it is autistic, but people are scared as coming across as ableist. I think barty would be really down for this idea.

 

[thirdform]

it all sounds 40+ years old. it's antique.

this is the most hilarious defence of autotune because someone could argue with your logic (I won't) that Roger Troutman talkbox hasn't been surpassed.

 

[luka]

Pretry sure iphones are stil ubiquitous

 

[luka]

But remember we're arguing about musuc that is almost 10 years old now

 

[thirdform]

Anyway, since this has devolved into attacks, let's get back to my original point and I will maybe try to rephrase a little better, and maybe people could also stop setting up strawn mans.
Otherwise say no criticisms of the premise is accepted.
I also said congrats to whoever wrote the book for getting published, and I apologized in advance for my criticisms.
I guess if you could boil down what I'm saying, it's that autotune is doing a lot of heavy lifting to the point where the rest of the music doesn't matter, and to me that's unfortunate because the autotune isn't so interesting to me that it makes up for it.
Now continue to devolve into ad hominens and continue to personally attack my own music tastes...

yeah this was my argument in 2021 as well. For Mackintosh pop music is the be all and end all of possible experiences. It's a very cultural position, something which is far too new labourite for my liking.

It is necessary to be anti-scholastic and anti-cultural. Workers do not need to take courses in revolution, they just need to fight. First act and do then understand.

Autechre at least still have the aspect of intuition in them. the truth arises within the process of cognition.

 

[thirdform]

Pretry sure iphones are stil ubiquitous

that's why they aren't futuristic. Like it or not but ubiquity is the enemy of the futuristic sonic fiction.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Why wouldn't music with 808s not sound good in a club or collective environment? I bet it sounds great!

 

[mvuent]

For some reason, I read this whole thread last night.
First, I want to say that I get the impression that the writer is somehow either from this board, and that this written under a pseudonym, or there is something else about the writer that somehow, in some way, kind of makes them part of this board in some way.
Secondly, I should state that I haven't read the book, so keep that in mind with what I have to say because I'm basing what I'm going to say from having read this thread.
Sincere congrats on getting published, but, my apologies, I feel like this is very much a case of the emperor having no clothes
#1 The fact that so much of the premise rests on the idea of music having vocals is a big negative. It's basically like saying the instrumental music has nothing to offer.
#2 I haven't listened to every track, but the few tracks that I listened to, they weren't NEAR as wild and extraordinary, psychedelic and otherworldly as claimed.
#3 How is autotune superior to other techniques of altering vocals? How is it so much so otherworldly than other methods of affecting vocals?
I'm just an amateur tinkerer that has only really been properly investigating what I can do for just a few months, but I don't hear what is so "far out" than what I've done with just a bit of messing around:
vocoder:


or cut-ups:


or with a chain of affects applied to a sample to actually produce something that really does sound psychedelic and otherworldly:


#4 Every example I've heard still just sounds just like vocals through autotune, and it's a rather trite sound at that at this time in popular music, while the author tries to earlier claim that "Techy timbres are trite." - is this a pre-emptive excuse for the rest of the music being discussed having such "stock" cliched sounds? Is autotune really all that most of this music has going for it as far as sounds?
#5 With so much focus on vocals, I get the impression that the rest of the music is allowed to be uninteresting when it comes to timbre and texture to the degree that, I guess what was supposed to be provocative statements like "Synthesisers and samplers have been sucked dry and now they’re completely depleted, they have nothing left to give you." just seem really funny since all of his hype about autotune has, to my ears, significantly failed to deliver on its promise and also make up for the use of "stock" sounds elsewhere in the music.

i've read the book and i don't agree that it's a case of the emperor's new clothes at all.

#1 if you do read it you'll find that it's very complimentary of the instrumentals in uk and brooklyn drill. and other forms of mostly instrumental music that came before that. (iirc the author has a long background in jazz drumming.) taking stock of the musical landscape and concluding that the most exciting ongoing developments are concentrated around vocal processing isn't to say that instrumental music is categorically worthless.

#2-3 whether or not the vocals in 2010s rap and dancehall sound weirder than previous stuff, they do sound different. you can argue that 80s drum machine hip hop was more mind blowing than jungle, but either way, jungle did establish a different sound world. i mean you can still hear older sounds in jungle, but you wouldn't mistake a few seconds of 95 dillinja with 85 davy dmx (or 75 the meters). the same holds true with this stuff. and beyond that, if you compare the turn of the decade vybz kartel the book covers to the dancehall it covers from a few years later, you can hear this decidedly 2010s sound-world evolving, expanding. but maybe i can come back to this w/ some examples later.

#4 i think the book's case that you can achieve a lot of different perceptual effects with autotune (and autotune, ofc, just being a convenient shorthand for everything going on with the vocals) is quite convincing. again, there are examples, but i need to finally get to sleep rn.

#5 are "stock" sounds necessarily a sin? a lot of techno, for example, uses them very deliberately and very effectively. shared stylistic qualities can create a shared sense of musical style that can magnify and highlight other idiosyncracies.

but in a way by talking about it this way i feel like i'm losing the spirit of the book, what makes it easily one of my all time favorite music books. it doesn't definitely prove that all new music that uses autotune is brilliant and all new music that doesn't is shit. what's great is that it can intensify your experience with the music it covers, if you listen with open ears, and get your imagination spinning about new musical paradigms and possibilities. that you'll inevitably find yourself arguing with its intentionally provocative claims in your head is a feature not a bug.

 

[thirdform]

Why wouldn't music with 808s not sound good in a club or collective environment? I bet it sounds great!

why are you hesitant to defend the autism of modern popular music?

 

[thirdform]

(iirc the author has a long background in jazz drumming.)

remember the time me and @luka showed him darbuka riddims and he was like oh they are just texture the western drum kit is superior lmao.

Still angry about that, racism against asian riddims.

 

[luka]

I remember that! And he said african drumming is rubbish!

 

[0bleak]

#5 i don't think "stock" sounds are necessarily a sin. a lot of techno uses them very deliberately and very effectively. shared stylistic qualities running through a musical style can magnify and highlight other idiosyncracies.

I also don't think stock sounds are a sin, but it also depends a lot on other factors like how they are used in combination with other sounds.
I don't know if you've noticed, but I generally avoid "purist" techno, too. I'm far from something like a Mills worshipper.
but, really, I'm just surprised at how it is that practically everything can be stock almost all the time, and I'm just surprised how much that is the case considering how incredibly easy it is now to pull sounds from elsewhere or create your own new sounds.
I'm really arguing for a wider sound palette in general.

 

[0bleak]

not that this is related to autotune, but I think what "broke me" (that phrase is a bit over the top, but I can't think of a better way to put it right now) was when @Murphy asked me to do this "remix"

so I ended up having to listen to that Kendrick Lamar composition several times in order to make the "remix", and I just became so disappointed with where we are with music in terms of range of sounds.
Even those little samples from Milton Higgins don't seem to be affected in any interesting way, just sped up.
I guess the fact that "everyone" is satisfied enough with a track that was "produced in about 30 minutes" and sounds like it, and that it became such a huge hit, well, I guess I'm just asking too much for music in the 2020s!

 

[mvuent]

I also don't think stock sounds are a sin, but it also depends a lot on other factors like how they are used in combination with other sounds.
I don't know if you've noticed, but I generally avoid "purist" techno, too. I'm far from something like a Mills worshipper.
but, really, I'm just surprised at how it is that practically everything can be stock almost all the time, and I'm just surprised how much that is the case considering how incredibly easy it is now to pull sounds from elsewhere or create your own new sounds.
I'm really arguing for a wider sound palette in general.

seems like pretty much all music is built on a bedrock of accepted wisdom about what's musically satisfying. along a lot of parameters. and the farther away from pop music you get, the less bedrock you tend to get. so do i get sick of trap drum sounds, or c major? absolutely, i think they've been used to death at this point, like those huge gated reverbs in the 80s. but yeah, i don't think their use is damning or disqualifies music from being good or interesting.