Autechre

M

mvuent

Void Dweller
i already regret writing this.

the first and by far the most important thing to note about “acroyear 2” is that it’s named after a robot action figure from the 70s. which is fitting. it’s a fun track. (you won’t find the ghostly, lovestruck luminescence of "rae" here.) sure, it's aggressive, gunmetal gray, a kind of nanobot attack—but in a way that’s really cartoony and playful. and as with so much electro/techno/hardcore, the name, probably just a quick in-joke, reveals a sort of boyish infatuation with cool sci fi shit underlying the more obtuse avant garde aspects.

on tri repetae, loops were slowly and evenly stacked on top of each other like lego blocks. but after that they developed an approach that was still rooted in repetition, but way more fluid. here—instead of easing you in, turning on the machine’s constituent parts one by one—there’s a brief intro and then you’re thrown into an already fully formed, busy sound ecosystem. in medias res. and you just sort of… stay there for the next seven minutes.

that’s not to say the music doesn’t change. it's constantly shifting. new additions surface amidst the flurries, like debris getting pulled into an increasingly intense tornado. the lab physics simulation’s running its course. the ae boys have said that they like how “flexing the structures but not quite breaking them . . . creates a kind of tension”—and that’s very much what you can hear happening.

all this makes “acroyear 2” sound really abstract, but it’s not. all these erratic darting fragments of sound are dancing around a simple, groovy (albeit very fast) two bar drum pattern. the way the snare hits at the beginning of the second bar is a bit weird, but if you’re used to jungle it’s a familiar trick.

another, somewhat more nebulous anchor is the track's baseline: a low pulsing resonance that seems to move in and out of the foreground (surfacing, for example, at ~2:22). structurally, it’s very straightforward, jumping notes once every couple of measures in a way that suggests a pop music-style chord progression. but it’s faded in and out so that you seem to imagine it as much as actually hear it—an early example of their interest in “implied music”, i.e. invoking conventional musical structures… but in ways that make you feel as though you’re hallucinating them.

the most important structural shift happens after the beat drops out around 5:30. when it kicks in again a moment later, it’s coalesced into something more streamlined, more obviously funky. not as much erratic nanobot motion. if you skip back to an earlier timestamp after hearing this part, it retroactively makes more sense musically. it's sort of counterintuitive to me, but this is something they seem to like doing a lot, throwing you in somewhere disorienting and then gradually stabilizing things.

at the very end, the structure finally breaks. chaos ensues. glimpses of unfamiliar sounds—snippets of (post?)human voices, etc. come and go in a flash. up until this point, all the actions’ been compacted into the dead center of the stereo field, coming from “across a different dimension” by their explanation. but now it explodes outward, escapes the bounds that held throughout the rest of the track. something comparable (but more dramatic) happens at the end of “pro radii”—it's another signature trick of theirs.


tl;dr “acroyear 2” is just “nuts and bolts and banging on dustbin lids” but it’s banged out very artfully. no one needs to bother coming at me with "hahaha nice essay, too bad their music sucks"
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
mvuent said:
i already regret writing this.

the first and by far the most important thing to note about “acroyear 2” is that it’s named after a robot action figure from the 70s. which is fitting. it’s a fun track. (you won’t find the ghostly, lovestruck luminescence of "rae" here.) sure, it's aggressive, gunmetal gray, a kind of nanobot attack—but in a way that’s really cartoony and playful. and as with so much electro/techno/hardcore, the name, probably just a quick in-joke, reveals a sort of boyish infatuation with cool sci fi shit underlying the more obtuse avant garde aspects.

on tri repetae, loops were slowly and evenly stacked on top of each other like lego blocks. but after that they developed an approach that was still rooted in repetition, but way more fluid. here—instead of easing you in, turning on the machine’s constituent parts one by one—there’s a brief intro and then you’re thrown into an already very dense, busy sound ecosystem. in medias res. and you just sort of… stay there for the next seven minutes.

that’s not to say the music doesn’t change. it's constantly shifting. new additions surface amidst the flurries, like debris getting pulled into an increasingly intense tornado. the lab physics simulation’s running its course. the ae boys have said that they like how “flexing the structures but not quite breaking them . . . creates a kind of tension”—and that’s very much what you can hear happening.

all this makes “acroyear 2” sound really abstract, but it’s not. all these erratic darting fragments of sound are dancing around a simple, groovy (albeit very fast) two bar drum pattern. the way the snare hits at the beginning of the second bar is a bit weird, but if you’re used to jungle it’s a familiar trick.

another, somewhat more nebulous anchor is the track's baseline: a low pulsing resonance that seems to move in and out of the foreground (surfacing, for example, at ~2:22). structurally, it’s very straightforward, jumping notes once every couple of measures in a way that suggests a pop music-style chord progression. but it’s faded in and out so that you seem to imagine it as much as actually hear it—an early example of their interest in “implied music”, i.e. using conventional musical structures… but in ways that make you feel as though you’re hallucinating them.

the most important structural shift happens after the beat drops out around 5:30. when it kicks in again a moment later, it’s coalesced into something more streamlined, more obviously funky. not as much erratic nanobot motion. if you skip back to an earlier timestamp after hearing this part, it retroactively makes more sense musically. it's sort of counterintuitive to me, but this is something they seem to like doing a lot, throwing you in somewhere disorienting and then gradually stabilizing things.

at the very end, the structure finally breaks. chaos ensues. quick glimpses of unfamiliar sounds—snippets of (post?)human voices, etc. come and go in a flash. up until this point, all the actions’ been compacted into the dead center of the stereo field, coming from “across a different dimension”, by their explanation. but now it explodes outward, escapes the bounds that held throughout the rest of the track. something comparable (but more dramatic) happens at the end of “pro radii”—it's another signature trick of theirs.


tl;dr “acroyear 2” is just “nuts and bolts and banging on dustbin lids” but very artfully. oh and no one needs to bother coming at me with "hahaha nice essay, too bad their music sucks"
Click to expand...

This is a truly excellent description of the minutiae of sound @mvuent but is there anything that connects 'Acroyear 2' to the world of human emotions and experience?

I mean, I like this track just for the way it sounds too (the metallic, aggressive playfulness you talk about) but the atmosphere and feeling is a completely different thing for me. It's full of tension and suspense. It makes me feel wary, expectant, unsettled, restless. It sounds a bit like you feel when you're having a panic attack: you can feel your heart rate starting to race as it clatters and crashes and surges on. The skittery, urgent, unstable pace is the sound of things getting out of control. It's the moment that you realise a situation is beyond your reach and you may not be able to get it back again.
 
V

version

Well-known member
luka said:
That's what's so unappealing about their music in my opinion. It's what stops it qualifying as actual music. It sounds more like a soundtrack for a claymation short film.
Click to expand...

The kind of comment that ruins an artist for Corpsey.
 
craner

craner

Beast of Burden
luka said:
That's what's so unappealing about their music in my opinion. It's what stops it qualifying as actual music. It sounds more like a soundtrack for a claymation short film.
Click to expand...

The fact that you wrote "in my opinion" suggests that you're in a mellow mood today.
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
luka said:
It sounds more like a soundtrack for a claymation short film.
Click to expand...
3200f48aaa59cb4049cee584bab268db-1200-80.jpg
 
M

mvuent

Void Dweller
craner said:
This is a truly excellent description of the minutiae of sound @mvuent but is there anything that connects 'Acroyear 2' to the world of human emotions and experience?
Click to expand...
well thanks, but to my mind i described the track purely in terms of human emotions and experience. yeah, absolutely, it's intense, overloading, even nerve-wracking. but there's a fun, visceral exhilaration to it all that i only feel when i'm really tuned in to the "minutiae of sound". i guess that's what talking about snares, structures, etc. can ideally get at. how, if you're dialed in, it's not out of control; there's groove, and exerted on the groove there's this sort of dramaturgy of balance, with an increasing sense of balance emerging towards the end. it's almost psychedelic, in a way. if that makes any sense. i think a lot of the skepticism of autechre comes from people not accessing it in this way. they're observing the proceedings from a distance but not along for the ride.

anyways, trying to win over the autechre haterz always feels like a charlie brown and the football situation around here. droid's got it from here.
 
plexitmind

plexitmind

Member
mvuent said:
i already regret writing this.

the first and by far the most important thing to note about “acroyear 2” is that it’s named after a robot action figure from the 70s. which is fitting. it’s a fun track. (you won’t find the ghostly, lovestruck luminescence of "rae" here.) sure, it's aggressive, gunmetal gray, a kind of nanobot attack—but in a way that’s really cartoony and playful. and as with so much electro/techno/hardcore, the name, probably just a quick in-joke, reveals a sort of boyish infatuation with cool sci fi shit underlying the more obtuse avant garde aspects.

on tri repetae, loops were slowly and evenly stacked on top of each other like lego blocks. but after that they developed an approach that was still rooted in repetition, but way more fluid. here—instead of easing you in, turning on the machine’s constituent parts one by one—there’s a brief intro and then you’re thrown into an already fully formed, busy sound ecosystem. in medias res. and you just sort of… stay there for the next seven minutes.

that’s not to say the music doesn’t change. it's constantly shifting. new additions surface amidst the flurries, like debris getting pulled into an increasingly intense tornado. the lab physics simulation’s running its course. the ae boys have said that they like how “flexing the structures but not quite breaking them . . . creates a kind of tension”—and that’s very much what you can hear happening.

all this makes “acroyear 2” sound really abstract, but it’s not. all these erratic darting fragments of sound are dancing around a simple, groovy (albeit very fast) two bar drum pattern. the way the snare hits at the beginning of the second bar is a bit weird, but if you’re used to jungle it’s a familiar trick.

another, somewhat more nebulous anchor is the track's baseline: a low pulsing resonance that seems to move in and out of the foreground (surfacing, for example, at ~2:22). structurally, it’s very straightforward, jumping notes once every couple of measures in a way that suggests a pop music-style chord progression. but it’s faded in and out so that you seem to imagine it as much as actually hear it—an early example of their interest in “implied music”, i.e. invoking conventional musical structures… but in ways that make you feel as though you’re hallucinating them.

the most important structural shift happens after the beat drops out around 5:30. when it kicks in again a moment later, it’s coalesced into something more streamlined, more obviously funky. not as much erratic nanobot motion. if you skip back to an earlier timestamp after hearing this part, it retroactively makes more sense musically. it's sort of counterintuitive to me, but this is something they seem to like doing a lot, throwing you in somewhere disorienting and then gradually stabilizing things.

at the very end, the structure finally breaks. chaos ensues. glimpses of unfamiliar sounds—snippets of (post?)human voices, etc. come and go in a flash. up until this point, all the actions’ been compacted into the dead center of the stereo field, coming from “across a different dimension” by their explanation. but now it explodes outward, escapes the bounds that held throughout the rest of the track. something comparable (but more dramatic) happens at the end of “pro radii”—it's another signature trick of theirs.


tl;dr “acroyear 2” is just “nuts and bolts and banging on dustbin lids” but it’s banged out very artfully. no one needs to bother coming at me with "hahaha nice essay, too bad their music sucks"
Click to expand...
I really hope there is more to come. I'm here for this!
 
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