For the record I entertained that autechre as sub-concrete thing for a while. despite being a fan of them unimpeachable as droid says, i can still have sympathy for that criticism, it's the most thoughtful one I've heard. it just doesn't add up to me through sustained listening, but I do like electro.
Autecher- Xylin Room
- Thread starter sadmanbarty
- Start date
but danceability and shit like that is so subjective, especially as drugs don't make you more in tune with the rhythms of the music but less so. I mean there's a reason why the shift from MDA to skunk happened in 94-95, ultimately dancing for all its communal nature is a respect for the privacy of individualised spaces in a communal environment. if you go to a lads lads warehouse party, most people don't dance, they jump around on the spot because getting on the sesh and mdma is so wide spread the aim isn't really a recalibration of the psychic coordinates of body uplift but a half hearted attempt to obliterate consciousness, but within the bounds of the university lifestyle.
The take on Ae that resonates most with me is the one mvuent suggested when trying to get luka into Untilted:
The idea that they're still just making hip hop and electro, they've just followed the original trajectory to its logical conclusion whilst everyone else got off that particular line decades ago.
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well this goes back to funk is cancelled doesn't it. except like jungle or even miles davis autechre are infrafunk or metafunk. I'm not sure personally how you can just erase a 20 year (if we stop at late 80s) genre that had a huge influence on black american and even most european music. if not *the key influence.* I'm just not sure how it can be done.
luka
Well-known member
What's the point I'm pushing? What does it mean to call it projected? In what sense is it anti-intellectual? In what sense am I anti-intellectual? When did I say they were 'against jungle'? What does 'minstrelry' mean in this context? Define it. When have I lauded black queers automatically? What does any of this have to do with me? Why is it directed at me? It's a list of nebulous complaints about online dance music media with me somehow standing in for everything that's ever annoyed you.
I don't like this. I don't enjoy it. I don't find it productive.
luka
Well-known member
The autechre haters thread was there to poke fun at the deification of autechre on this forum. It was just a bit of fun stirring that could only happen while you were taking a break from the forum and we had a chance to let our hair down a little and breathe again. It was a pressure valve thread.
everyone enjoyed playing their appointed roles. Had a bit of banter. Barty goaded everyone for not having as much sex as he does. It was a nice bit of regression to the classroom. Good laugh.
everyone enjoyed playing their appointed roles. Had a bit of banter. Barty goaded everyone for not having as much sex as he does. It was a nice bit of regression to the classroom. Good laugh.
luka
Well-known member
The question of whether autechre are good is not a matter of great importance, in the scheme of things. I can be friends with people who like autechre. It doesn't break up families. I can respect the opinion and trust the judgement of people who like autechre. I can even enjoy listening to what they think about autechre and why they like it. It's ok. There's no blood being split. Version and mvuent always have great things to say. We all like them. They're not being excommunicated for being autechre fans.
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
i'm not saying it's a bad thing. i'm not offering any value judgements when talking about this music.
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
i do think it's interesting that some of us have got the impression that the music is asocial and then when we come to analyse it, we find that it's absent of body-signifiers. an incredibly subtle subconscious process at work. it's amazing how much information is coded in the music.
luke once had a thread about this process (i can't remember what it was called) in which we spent the whole evening talking about my boy lollipop.
luke once had a thread about this process (i can't remember what it was called) in which we spent the whole evening talking about my boy lollipop.
sadmanbarty
Well-known member
the fact they use strange sounds has given rise to this mistaken notion that the actual rhythms in their songs are novel, difficult or avant-garde.
those tracks version’s posted are bog-standard backbeats, just a done with crumply sounds. the track that this thread is about is normal tresillo-derived rhythms (which answers version's question as to why it’s my favorite). there are bits that switch between straight time and triplets, but you get that with mitch mitchell or in afrobeats and trap; it’s not a wildly left-of-field rhythmic device.
those tracks version’s posted are bog-standard backbeats, just a done with crumply sounds. the track that this thread is about is normal tresillo-derived rhythms (which answers version's question as to why it’s my favorite). there are bits that switch between straight time and triplets, but you get that with mitch mitchell or in afrobeats and trap; it’s not a wildly left-of-field rhythmic device.
they have admitted as much. they aren't actually making avant-garde music. it's a projection detractors put on them. it's just spectral electro.
most of the music you release - while being rather 'abstract' and always innovative - is still clearly rooted in popular music genres like hip hop, electronica, techno etc. do you ever produce stuff that tends towards a more rigidly 'experimental' or 'academic' tradition of electronic music (like GRM, dockstader, xenakis etc)
Sean: lol rigid see that's the problem innit, all that freedom and they go and buy a strait jacket
Sean: lol rigid see that's the problem innit, all that freedom and they go and buy a strait jacket
chava
Well-known member
Masterpiece. His finest moment after he went solo.
Early SND is surprisingly dub/even earthy/bodily and still the greatest stuff they did.
it's the idea of following fashion trends dressed up as cultural critique. yeah autechre is unfashionable. so what? why does music need to be fashionable? If the bord made similar contentions about Cecil Taylor they'd rightly get a right bollocking. why does music have to always reflect the outside? most literature doesn't, at least not accurately. why can we accept modernism in literature but when it comes to music everything has to be some bait postmodern pastiche?