Autecher- Xylin Room

[version]

"For me it's just messing around with a lot of analogue sequencers and drum machines."

Yeah, they are (or became) a wanna be jazz impro outfit. This is not the MO when Mark Fell gets in the studio. Or Wolfgang Voigt. Or Mika Vainio (RIP). The real deal don't 'mess around' or goes into jam mode. They know exactly what they're doing.

Vainio was ridiculously boring though. Every tune was a dreary, po-faced dirge or humourless grey pummeling. I also find it difficult to believe that there's any musician who doesn't mess around, experiment and go through trial and error in the studio.

 

[version]

yes, mate, it's better to have 10 high quality threads than 30 unproductive ones. that's not being spiteful its just truth. in fact I'll say that barty likes to artificially electrify the bord a bit, and I did playing into that weed is cancelled shtick. I'm saying let's move beyond that model.

I think a situation where people just throw stuff out and see what sticks is preferable to everyone fretting over it, worried about making a thread which goes down like a lead balloon or comes off as silly. If there are 40 threads, 10 of them high quality, 30 of them low quality then the 30 will disappear soon enough anyway.

 

[pattycakes_]

"For me it's just messing around with a lot of analogue sequencers and drum machines."

Yeah, they are (or became) a wanna be jazz impro outfit. This is not the MO when Mark Fell gets in the studio. Or Wolfgang Voigt. Or Mika Vainio (RIP). The real deal don't 'mess around' or goes into jam mode. They know exactly what they're doing.

Nah. Years and years of jamming leads to what you're talking about. But those early jamming years are often a musician's most creatively fertile period and produces their most visceral and interesting works. The more knowledgeable you get the more conservative, precise and repetitive you become.

 

[sadmanbarty]

I think a situation where people just throw stuff out and see what sticks is preferable to everyone fretting over it worried about making a thread which goes down like a lead balloon or comes off as silly. If there are 40 threads, 10 of them high quality, 30 of them low quality then the 30 will disappear soon enough anyway.

don't worry versh, the board's been loads of fun this week thanks in no small part to you.

 

[version]

Some of the silly and uninspired ones go off anyway, like who thought a thread on a Joker film nobody had seen would spiral off into what it did?

 

[sadmanbarty]

interesting to think about those criticisms in relation with what you (and barty, I think) have praised about drill:
.

just to clarify, not much i've said about autecher has been a "criticism". even the rude stuff i've said shouldn't be taken particularly seriously.

corpsey once compared drill to mid-90's aphex twin which i remember being really impressed with him for at the time. sonically my whole schtick about drill is that it's the hardcore continuum reimagined in a quasi-ambient context which isn't entirely dissimilar to autecher.

likewise there are similar social qualities to the music. for example luke's "north face jacket" jokes are similar to what you'd read in youtube comments on drill videos; they all wear north face. when i was talking about this autecher's need not to assert yourself and not be noticed, i say the same about drill (masks, non-descript vocal deliveries, code-like monickers like c1, formulaic instrumentals, etc.). blending into the crowd. the aesthetic of anonymity.

 

[luka]

interesting to think about those criticisms in relation with what you (and barty, I think) have praised about drill:

cause I read this and think “wow I guess autechre were ahead of their time”

in fact a lot of the criticisms leveled at autecher seem to my clueless perspective like they could be leveled at drill: asexual, emotionally repressed, impossible to connect to.

actually I thought there was a similar dynamic in energy flash in the part about autechre: they get criticized on the same “rockist” terms that are declared to be ill-suited for electronic music later in the book. (the later passage is especially great, probably my favorite one.)

point is there’s a weird magic around autechre where qualities that would be intriguing in other music suddenly become unforgivable offenses. you can say “no it’s not really the same” but I still say it’s down to the number of listens it takes to click more than anything. of course it is weirdo music but everyone here can handle that.

As I said in this thread, this is what scares me. I might at any time, with any listen, cross the invisible threshold, something will click with a terrible finality and I will be an autechre fan.

 

[luka]

don't worry versh, the board's been loads of fun this week thanks in no small part to you.

That's true. Dunno about that water filter though mate.

 

[version]

I'll just keep talking about water filters until you buy one.

 

[luka]

I don't believe the fluoride conspiracy, I don't think, but it has given me a residual, irrational paranoia. I drink tap water but often I get a bottle of mineral water to offset the calcification of my third eye.

 

[pattycakes_]

Protect Ya Amygdala, yo

 

[version]

Corpsey said something a while back about Dissensus putting him off certain things he used to like and I can see what he meant. I still think Autechre are wicked, but it's not as though I can't see where the criticism comes from and I find if you sit and absorb it for a while it can taint the music for a brief window. Like if I read something about how dry and acultural they are then listen to something like Gantz Graf then yeah, I can totally hear that, but equally the stuff muvent and third say about them makes me wanna jump right back in.

The Mantronix comment in particular has me going back to Untilted and might be my way in to that particular album.

 

[Leo]

As I said in this thread, this is what scares me. I might at any time, with any listen, cross the invisible threshold, something will click with a terrible finality and I will be an autechre fan.

yeah, highly doubt that'll ever happen.

 

[chava]

Nah. Years and years of jamming leads to what you're talking about. But those early jamming years are often a musician's most creatively fertile period and produces their most visceral and interesting works. The more knowledgeable you get the more conservative, precise and repetitive you become.

I regard this as a rockist notion, and therefore false.

 

[chava]

Vainio was ridiculously boring though. Every tune was a dreary, po-faced dirge or humourless grey pummeling. I also find it difficult to believe that there's any musician who doesn't mess around, experiment and go through trial and error in the studio.

Vainio was from Finland. They do not make music with 'humouristic' elements (although Autechre is hardly much better).

Although he did this with Jimi Tenor :

 

[pattycakes_]

I regard this as a rockist notion, and therefore false.

So you think they went into the studio knowing what they were doing from day one?

 

[luka]

They grew up a graph and a list of parameters

 

[luka]

Based on strict mathematical laws

 

[chava]

So you think they went into the studio knowing what they were doing from day one?

Classical composers do somewhat. Alec Empire did use classical notation once, or so goes the story anyways.

Wolfgang Voigt says he knows what do to and never 'jam around'. But of course you experiment and wander around, but that is not the same as 'jamming'. It also very much about setting artificial limitations on your setup. Mark Fell is often good as describing this.

All I am saying is there are different approaches and hard to say which one's best.

 

[pattycakes_]

They grew up a graph and a list of parameters

Not from day one though

Classical composers do somewhat. Alec Empire did use classical notation once, or so goes the story anyways.

Wolfgang Voigt says he knows what do to and never 'jam around'. But of course you experiment and wander around, but that is not the same as 'jamming'. It also very much about setting artificial limitations on your setup. Mark Fell is often good as describing this.

All I am saying is there are different approaches and hard to say which one's best.

OK so what you call experimenting and wandering around, i.e. not knowing what you're doing, I call jamming. And it takes a lot of that to get to the much more purposeful stage which they are famed for.