Having listened to Autechre's latest offering, the so-called "LP5", I must
say I am getting more and more tired of their naive attempts at creating
Emotions Through Melody. I have been following their work ever since
Incunabula was released (which I consider their weakest release, by the way,
but I digress), and although this tendency towards banality has been kept
'under control', so to speak, during their previous releases, it seems to
have turned into full-fledged kitsch on LP5.
Their shimmering bytes are right up there with the best of
electroacousticians/ acousmatics (Francois Bayle, Randall Smith, Jonty
Harrison, Dennis Smalley et al), but I really wish they'd stop using what
sounds like a random chord+melody generator to sprinkle their work with
Feeling; their chords have been repeated for such a long time now I would
think they would get rid of them soon. Their melodics can be done so easily
with something like Cubase's Chord generator (I thought this one was for the
easy listening crowd, but I must have been wrong), and it's so pretentiously
emotional that even I am attempted to paraphrase Stockhausen's contempt for
"vanilla melodies". Listen to track 10 for an excellent example -- it sounds
like a very outdated Jean-Michel Jarre, and there aren't even any interesting
sounds or rhythmic extravaganzas to cancel out the terrible boringness of
plug-n-play presetry. Their worst track ever?
Autechre's use of strings and other similar sounds work perfectly when they
are understated, subdued, oppressed, almost not there...when they are just
laying around to remind you of an aftermath of something that never existed.
The kind of overstated emotionalism that is crowding the digitalia on LP5 is
making me kind of depressed, because, judging by the standards set by Cichli
Suite and Chistic Slide and Tri Repetae (although they are guilty of the same
banality on quite a few tracks on these release, too) I thought they were on
their way to another dimension, where the blippery-bloppery of short-cut,
arpeggiated melodism were long forgotten.
I wish Autechre would 'take it all out' and go for complete abstraction.
There are some truly great moments on LP5, but they are too short and too
few; they are intersections or break(downs) where Autechre finally forget
about representation (i.e. "feelings") and go for wild rides on whatever
piece of software they have at their disposal. I always thought acousmatic
Academia could learn a thing or two from Autechre, and, while they still can,
I now definitely think Autechre has a thing or two to learn from acousmatics
regarding the non-representational aspect of music.
Whatever happened to monotony? Have they become afraid of it?
Disappointed.
-sadmanbarty