Reynolds on planet-mu

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DJ PIMP

Well-known member
Where are Autechre now? They really painted themselves into a corner... not that I've kept up with the 'genre', but the only thing I've heard that really extends IDMs technical vocabulary past their sound design was the The Four Quarters, and that was as much because it tempered their dense abstraction with dub-minimalism and Vlad Delays jazz noodlings, making it smoother, less grainy and more 3D. The First Quarter still rocks me... it could simply be my imagination, but the track has such a live vibe, like you can hear him noodling about on keyboards and building up the layers - and it's that improv feel that stops it being processed nerd wank and makes it feel musical and nice.

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Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
DJ PIMP said:
Where are Autechre now? They really painted themselves into a corner... not that I've kept up with the 'genre', but the only thing I've heard that really extends
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About to release a new album and tour I believe. Don't see how they've painted themselves into a corner either.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Martin Dust said:
About to release a new album and tour I believe. Don't see how they've painted themselves into a corner either.
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I dunno, their last album was utter wank as far as I could tell. Totally unevocative, tired, dull sounds, formalistic technical tricks and a backwards step (the last two albums actually). Although the idea of jamming it al out live (which I believe they attempted on Untilted) is a sound one, the end results didn't really merit much attention.
 
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Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
gek-opel said:
I dunno, their last album was utter wank as far as I could tell. Totally unevocative, tired, dull sounds, formalistic technical tricks and a backwards step (the last two albums actually). Although the idea of jamming it al out live (which I believe they attempted on Untilted) is a sound one, the end results didn't really merit much attention.
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I've always enjoyed their work and I love their attitude, perhaps people think they have taken the wrong path but I'd rather struggle to understand than suffer the reworkings of something from the early Warp era. IMHO, they are vital. If it's not touching you then it's time to look elsewhere but I like to coldness of the music.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Yeah I'm not a hater of Autechre's abstraction (I loved Confield) but of their last two albums which seemed to be a retreat, a backwards step to some less interesting position. And their earlier more straightforward stuff fails to resonate. I wish they had gone even further into alien-concrete electro acoustics, like Xenakis' electronic music or something. The coldness always struck me as somewhat of a strange attribute to ascribe to autechre, for me they are utterly alive, fertile, teeming with life, not mechanistic or robotic or any kind of machininic metaphor. Absolutely vitalist, all those writhing static percussive effects...
 
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Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
gek-opel said:
Yeah I'm not a hater of Autechre's abstraction (I loved Confield) but of their last two albums which seemed to be a retreat, a backwards step to some less interesting position.
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I like the isolation of the new work - the deep sonic melody is really rewarding, I don't really see it as moving backwards at all and have never really understood why anyone would say so, I've often wondered what the are using to measure forwards/backwards.


gek-opel said:
And their earlier more straightforward stuff fails to resonate. I wish they had gone even further into alien-concrete electro acoustics, like Xenakis' electronic music or something. The coldness always struck me as somewhat of a strange attribute to ascribe to autechre, for me they are utterly alive, fertile, teeming with life, not mechanistic or robotic or any kind of machininic metaphor. Absolutely vitalist, all those writhing static percussive effects...
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There's a real coldness to their work for me, it makes a change from something soulful or uplifting. I don't visualise it as a empty factory or car-park in the rain more the cold steel of a Nord first thing in the morning :)
 
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mms

sometimes
Amplesamples said:
Yeah but you get the same thing happening with other genres - there's no reason IDM should be immune from that kind of fallacy.

I remember years ago when Luke Vibert was doing stuff under the Plug name, he did the album Drum & bass for papa. At the time a few Warp people were calling it 'speed funk'. This was just before the term 'drill'n'bass' which was used as much as an insult as much as a descriptor. I always thought speed funk would stick as a name.




Which americans? I'm just interested. I don't know that many American people, but I don't see why they are particularly seen as gatekeepers for the genre
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the clue to the genre for drum and bass for papa was in the title i think, the fact that anyone actually wanted to avoid that big clue and that amazing genre of music says it all.
so that just about covers that, can we stop talking about this subject though we've talked about it alot here and it needs to move the fuck on.
autechre - prepare for the next lp i'd say!
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Martin Dust said:
I like the isolation of the new work - the deep sonic melody is really rewarding, I don't really see it as moving backwards at all and have never really understood why anyone would say so, I've often wondered what the are using to measure forwards/backwards.
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In terms of their personal creative narrative I guess, rather than any innate progressive qualities within a given style. The last two albums just seemed banal to me at least. Perhaps its not a question of direction as much as skill of execution, (difficult to tell of course). The almost sound-art like stuff on Confield and the slowly progressing concrete loops of Chiastic Slide (with oneiric sounds half heard in the background) seemed a lot more beguiling than the dull Draft 7.30 and the resolutely uninspired cheapo sound design/ aesthetic incoherence of Untilted.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Martin Dust said:
There's a real coldness to their work for me, it makes a change from something soulful or uplifting. I don't visualise it as a empty factory or car-park in the rain more the cold steel of a Nord first thing in the morning :)
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I thought it was more alien than cold, and I like alien, it leaves room for creating new forms of beauty, rather than merely alienation, glistening and surreal rather than blankly modernistic.
 
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Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
gek-opel said:
I thought it was more alien than cold, and I like alien, it leaves room for creating new forms of beauty, rather than merely alienation, glistening and surreal rather than blankly modernistic.
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Yeah, I can see alien working and I kinda like the word as well but I do think/feel that ae have consciously removed soulful elements of their work which is why I went with cold as a descriptor - to me it's just as rewarding as the uplifting strings of Detroit techno.
 
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Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
gek-opel said:
In terms of their personal creative narrative I guess, rather than any innate progressive qualities within a given style. The last two albums just seemed banal to me at least. Perhaps its not a question of direction as much as skill of execution, (difficult to tell of course). The almost sound-art like stuff on Confield and the slowly progressing concrete loops of Chiastic Slide (with oneiric sounds half heard in the background) seemed a lot more beguiling than the dull Draft 7.30 and the resolutely uninspired cheapo sound design/ aesthetic incoherence of Untilted.
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For the last 6 months or so I've been trying to get away from listening to my usual stuff while we completed the new album so I've been drawn back to albums that didn't have an immediate effect or are less musical, we made mixes of stuff to use in the studio and in the car because I have a really problem with being influenced by hooks/phrases and it can completely ruin a day/week of making music for me - even a TV advert can fuck me completely up. Untilted has go a lot of plays of late and I don't feel it's an exercise in sound design or incoherence as you suggest, the structure and melody is there and sometimes information/joy must be obtained rather than just given.

I'm very interested in where the new album will take us.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
I doubt I'll ever be converted to the charms of "Untilted", but I totally understand the problem of influence when writing/producing music. The number of times I've spent days refining a piece towards some (apparently) abstract end point, only to discover when I get there that its an exact rip of some other piece entirely... very irritating indeed.
 
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DJ PIMP

Well-known member
I'd love to be shocked by a new Autechre album. They're pioneers.

I find it interesting how they've become sonically flatter over time... the more processed and grainy, the narrower the sound. Still spatial and whizz bang, but thinner and thinner.
 
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Martin Dust

Techno Zen Master
You may "find" it one day :)

I don't tend to write things that sound like something else I've heard, just that it stops me in my tracks (pun) when all I can hear is something else when I sit down to write. Often I have little stories or research for tracks so that does help. We've just written one track where the melody appears only once because once it gets inside it just goes around and around forever :) Proper ear worm.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
DJ PIMP said:
I'd love to be shocked by a new Autechre album. They're pioneers.

I find it interesting how they've become sonically flatter over time... the more processed and grainy, the narrower the sound. Still spatial and whizz bang, but thinner and thinner.
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Definitely. Unlike the sound-design conscious works in minimal where the idea is to produce something lush, spectrum filling, ear-candy, Autechre got ever more thin and grainy, difficult to describe in words but very noticeable in the actual music. I don't view that as a bad thing per se either.
 
Gavin

Gavin

booty bass intellectual
gek-opel said:
Revisiting Draft 7.30 to see if it was as bad as I remembered now...
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Yeah, I like that one quite a bit... I remember it initially leaked as a rip of a cassette-only promo and I far preferred the strained sound and tape hiss and little volume modulations to the actual release. Sort of got me thinking about tapes again. I'll bet a fair bit of Autechre sounds kewler on cassette...
 
Mr. Tea

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
noel emits said:
Wasn't Braindance coined as a bit of a parody of the AI / IDM labels?
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It's the title of a Warp (EDIT: Rephlex, indeed) sampler CD I bought a few years back - had no idea people were using it as a name for a (sub-)genre or style. If so, it's a bit ironic, since half the stuff on the compilation was quite willfully silly*, as I recall.


*including Cylob's superlative 'Stephen Hawking Rap' track, Rewind. :)
 
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Dusty

Dusty

Tone deaf
Its a rephlex sampler, I don't think anyone uses it as a serious genre - its one big piss take. I love Rewind, one of the few dance tunes to actually make me smile.

I agree completely with Geks comments on the last two Autechre albums, I would love to hear another Confield from the duo. The track Pen Expers blew me away... more like that please. I can't get on with the newer, thinner sound. At one point I gave Untilted a good listening to over the course of a week, bits of it are good, but I couldn't love it in anyway - I felt no pull to return to it.
 
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gek-opel

entered apprentice
Hmm... on relistening to Draft 7.30 I am reminded of why its such a disengaging album- the lack of any particular atmosphere. I never heard Autechre as cold, inhuman, as they hooked into weird emotions and nameless psychological states in a way which made their music genuinely modern/post modern machine-psychedelic. Confield has that dank dreadful atmosphere of microscopic gloom, nameless techno-Lovecraftian things breeding and rising to walk on hideous crippled limbs... Chiastic Slide has a different ambiance of alien-industrial Oriental mechanical exotica, lush and wet and arranged at curious impossible angles like cubist jazz, with those unplaceable oneiric sounds building right at the edges of the perceptible sound field (and strangely early Grime-like at times with its palette of string stabs and wonkily syncopated funk)... Daft 7.30 never coheres into anything evocative, it fails to achieve any resonance in my imagination...
 
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