Autechre

[thirdform]

"I got to know Tom Jenkinson (Squarepusher), and I like Tom quite a lot."

OOF

tbh he's a great bassist and a synthesist.

The problem, and why I can't get along with a lot of his music, is because he doesn't always go fully into the electronic realm, where cluttered maximalism would make much more sense. This is an absolute classic



I also like it when he uses the format of jungle breakbeats to go on extended tb303 work outs, which was never really an explored possibility.


But yeah, not as keen on his double bass breakbeat things. Although I think they can sometimes be unfairly maligned, but also, sometimes its necessary to draw hard ideological lines, especially as square has a tendancy to lean heavily into the toilet humour just a bit too much, although so does Eminem, and most people wouldn't dream of reviling him as much as they do Autechre, which is telling. a white person who makes hip hop, quintessentially so, but manages to excise everything from rap as an art form which makes it good. If the choice is between showing tolerance for eminem and being a nerd, give me nerds any day! fuck liberalism!

 

[thirdform]

Also I feel that a lot of the I don't get Autechre is a willful surplus enjoyment, an attempt to claim that one is more faithful to dance music. I've never understood this because even dance music is a field of mutually contradictory contestation. 'it's just not dance music/music! in reference to jungle'

 

[thirdform]

Mark Burrows > Real Techno
People posting Jungle & D&B on here is ridiculous. Sorry but you may as well post Trance Choons too..! 😡
16 June 2020 at 20:06

Chris Howell-Jones
No-one has yet disproved my theory that it was a genre purely invented so folk who couldn't dance and those with no sense of rhythm, fitted in...😉
2 reactions, including HahaLikeReactReplyMore17 Jun 2020

Barry Grvs
Where does real techno begin and end though?
1 reaction, including LikeLikeReactMore16 Jun 2020
Mark Burrows
Barry Grvs jungle has no relevance to techno imo
2 reactions, including LikeLikeReactMore16 Jun 2020
Mark Burrows
Oliver Moon Benjamin why are they on here?
LikeReactMore16 Jun 2020
Mark Burrows
Oliver Moon Benjamin I remember Fabio & Grooverider playing at RAGE in 89-90. They weren’t playing techno there. Maybe the odd Mayday, Kevin or Juan track mixed in with all sorts of other house and new beat. Don’t really know what your point is mate?
1 reaction, including LikeLikeReactMore16 Jun 2020
Mark Burrows
Oliver Moon Benjamin well they didn’t cross over into ‘our’ scene ever really. I heard them early doors and they were playing the same records as everyone else. That scene broke up around 1990, and people found their own thing. I found techno because I was desperate to escape all the nobby handbag shit that was plaguing the London club scene! Great story about your parents btw..
LikeReactMore

Steve Nuw
Jungle techno? is that like bush techno? It's not really techno.
EditedLikeReactMore22 Jul 2020

of course he's called steve. typical southerner boomer. I mean it's hilarious because you couldn't even run a night with exclusively techno in 1990, but whatever. the point is people have always carved out their nitches and denied they at all had anything to do with the other which they invoke.

Also ohio techno heads were making jungle in 95.
But you know, the devil is never in the detail with dance music discourses.

 

[version]

I didn't know the live stuff from last year had been released.

AE_LIVE

The official Autechre Store

autechre.warp.net

There's at least one fan recording of this year's stuff knocking around too.

 

[craner]

Exquisitely sad Martian pop music. These pallid lads with their grey t-shirts and banks of computers secretly have the souls of poets.

 

[shiels]

Flutter is so beautiful

 

[chava]

Exquisitely sad Martian pop music. These pallid lads with their grey t-shirts and banks of computers secretly have the souls of poets.

A rare Autechre track I like. Still a little bit too sentimental

 

[shiels]

Nothing wrong with sentimentalism I’m the biggest sentimentalist here

 

[version]

 

[version]

 

[Corpsey]

Nothing wrong with sentimentalism I’m the biggest sentimentalist here

bull shit i am

 

[craner]

I am getting more lachrymose with age.

 

[Corpsey]

before i got back on citalopram i was weeping all the time

 

[version]

Ae with scratching feels like an outlier.

 

[craner]

Ae with scratching feels like an outlier.

This, however, is a work of majestic beauty:

 

[version]

This, however, is a work of majestic beauty:

I like the whole EP.

 

[version]

This one's a banger. I had it as a bonus track on Confield.

 

[craner]

What kind of bastard would you have to be to hate Autechre?

 

[craner]

You need to listen closer to Rae. There's a ton of weird musical shit going on there. Deconstruction & reconstruction, decay and rebirth. Not dissimilar to a lot of the EP work, but it begins in medias res, rather than building up - the drums have momentum, the melody is established and they just roll straight in. It makes me think of some bittersweet biographical montage, fragments of a happy life whizzing by at high speed and then when it drops tempo (seemingly without missing a beat - how do they do that?) we're suddenly in slow mo at a funeral, every detail lovingly and painfully captured as the drums concede defeat and retreat and that achingly sad refrain takes command, ushers the coffin into the ground and illuminaties every moment of grief of the mourners whilst soil slowly fills the grave.

A beautiful and profound work. Nothing like anything AFX has done in theme, approach or content, nor anything he's ever tried to do, to be fair.

This is very good. We should challenge @droid by picking random Autechre tracks and asking him to provide us with this level of textual analysis for each one. It could illuminate their oeuvre for those who mistakenly believe that it’s all about nuts and bolts and banging on dustbin lids.

 

[thirdform]

What kind of bastard would you have to be to hate Autechre?

good question Oliver, a very good question.

I find it ironic that Luke Davis' mind has been contaminated by the punk virus (I hate clever things) even though he despises punk music. @blissblogger on the other hand is a true punk believer, which totally makes sense. University, critical theory, etc, etc. what do you think laid you open here @luka ?