POLLhelic Triangle -- Autechre :: Confield :: LP6

Confield is great reviewer litmus, btw: http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/a/autechre-confield.shtml

Surprisingly enough, the NME kinda gets it: http://www.nme.com/reviews/autechre/4997

Long shot: but does anybody happen to have the fake version of this album which was floating around before it came out? It featured what was ostensibly a Bola remix of "VI Scose Pose"; I think all the tracks were other people mislabeled - Kit Clayton maybe? But I think the moment when I realized that I liked the fake better than the actual album - which I dutifully tried to care about - was when I got off of the Autechre pony.

Is this album the point at which IDM ran out of steam? That might have been part of my problem with this record; but listening to it a couple months ago, I still couldn't hear anything. I don't doubt that other people could, of course, but it stopped working for me.

I think IDM already started to lose its momentum around Drukqs, but Confield may have killed it for good.

I can't put my finger on Eidetic Casein. Apparently there's something to be gained from this track, but it's like listening to those cow-moo-box toys all droning away out of unison. People at the time were saying stuff like it was the most accessible track with the strongest melody.

Dog, listen to "Eidetic Casein" next to "Arch Carrier," and you'll hear why it gets upped as the easy song on Confield!!!

Weird; I've always admired "Uviol" for being smooth, but having relistened this week, I'm actually particular to "VI Scose Poise" a lot now.

cool Leee

xpost
I've always seen 2001 as the "great glass ceiling" year for IDM. Lots of people had said it was dead already, but this wasn't true. Warp and Rephlex were at the peak of their powers: Druqks, Double Figure, Confield, Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, Go Plastic etc were all released around that time and all felt like momentous albums in their own ways. I'd venture the thing that killed IDM wasn't Confield, but rather Kid A.

but Bine is a journey at breathtaking speed, still underground, tunnel walls flashing by, brief glimpses of vast caverns and extraordinary formations, the earth still heaving and booming.

this is a great image. lots of them in this thread.

anyway, the percussive stuff on this album ("Pen Expers," "Bine," "Lentic Catachresis") is really quite intense. "Lentic" in particular edges towards harsh noise territory towards the end. it just builds up to this huge, dense, oppressive blast of sound. but an immaculately rendered blast of sound (of course) that is very much working in the lower registers. (no masonna skree here.) reminds me of some of some of kevin drumm's more digital work in that respect.

but that stuff is a little too unpleasant for me to vote for. went for "Parhelic Triangle". a dense, throbbing banger and I love the chimes that drift throughout the track.

and despite the queasy, uneasy sound on many of these tracks, I found confield immediately more palatable than draft 7.30. I've listened to that one many times throughout the years and have retained absolutely nothing.

Listening to Confield will no doubt remind one of the unbelievably annoying pseudo-intellectuals who frequent museums spending hours showcasing their impressive lexicons as they ponder over the meaning of the most elementary of works.

popmatters review is pretty dumb, huh?

Tried to sit down and listen to this again last night and just wasn't feeling it. I figured my time would be better spent listening to Draft, Untilted or Oversteps - if only because I still don't feel like I've discovered those fully yet (Draft was 2003?? Yikes!). Sim Gishel is the track I think was the one I've been overlooking the most, but really it sounds like a holdover from EP7.

Eidetic Casein still sucks - the melody just sounds random - not melodic or generative or amelodic, just a mess of noises. It's really unpleasant, and nothign like Arch Carrier. Sorry.

I would understand if you called it less interesting or emotive than Arch Carrier, but it's not random, there's definitely order in there. Both the string-like and ehrm soft glockenspiel-esque parts are basically repeated descending patterns, although the latter skips around more than the former.

Yeah, it's those out-of-tune harpsichord-y noises I don't like. They sound like a three-year old got hold of a cheap keyboard. Without those noises and the later bleating siren noises it would be a cool track. I like the quasi-disco strings and the rumbling sub-bass though.

Eidetic Casein is like a detuned Cardiacs - i.e. magnificent - and I'd consider voting for it if it wasn't parenthetical to the album

fairly sure it's on the album

strange thinking how old this album....seemed a pretty monumental release at the time when i'd barely begun thinking about music

tho i seldom play it, rather icy and obviously requires some attention, i'd still rate it near their best

lentic catachresis, probably

(Draft was 2003?? Yikes!)

signs that you are getting older

btw massive cheers to Leee for reviving my ae interest. Yesterday I spent the whole day with Oversteps/Quaristice/Chiastic Slide and had a wonderful time.

One more thing: My perpetual gauge of musical quality is what Geir thinks how many listens an album requires to hit its peak. Confield took about 40.

This was the first Autechre album I bought so I still have a lot of fondness for it even though pretty much all the others I've heard since surpass it in one way or another. I love the brittle prettiness of 'Bine' and 'Uviol' but in my heart I know I've got to vote for 'Pen Expers', such a striking track, it really did mess with my head (in a good way).

My first, too! Perhaps that's why I'm so fond of it.

damn! i didn't even have to ponder this. first track.

totally their best album, hands down.

after a couple of relistens, went with Pen Expers, though I love pretty much every track on this album

I think this remains to this day the album I worked the longest and hardest to really "get". I remember Draft 7.30 being released and thinking it was way too soon, like I'd just gotten my head around this album and they were already releasing another one.

I was pretty patient back then, I can't imagine spending that much time with an album waiting for it to click these days.

there hasn't really been an album quite like confield since.....something with that level of formal difficulty that a lot of people were prepared to persevere with

no matter how much avant/noise stuff i listen to, confield still seems pretty severe...

i mean, this was an album probably a fairly significant proportion of those who bought kid a also tried to like! and mostly failed, but i remember ppl discussing it on the teletext music pages

lol stuart braithwaite used to send messages to planet music, 'the ghetto internet', lol him

confield >>>>>>>>>>loads>>>>>>>>>> kid a obv

the only track i like is VI scose poise so that.

Pen Expers is an audible representation of rape in my opinion. The way the high pitched noises get silenced by the lower register noises which get more and more violent. It is a piece of art and I enjoy listening to it (2nd fav track).

I think this remains to this day the album I worked the longest and hardest to really "get". [...]

I was pretty patient back then, I can't imagine spending that much time with an album waiting for it to click these days.

My experience exactly.

btw massive cheers to Leee for reviving my ae interest

Also, the chance to make stupid puns.

Pen Expers is an audible representation of rape in my opinion.

wtf? sounds like a fuckin jam to me. ecstatic even.

i dunno how to pick here but might have to do parahelic. i like the underwater carousel image upthread but i always thought it sounded like something digging and digging

Does anyone know from where the drum sound in Pen Expers is sampled? For some reason I think it's an early hip hop track but icbw.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

forgot to vote :(

would have probably given lentic the win although sim gishel was certainly in consideration

I ws the lone "Sim Gishel" vote I guess.

Can never remember if I'd voted for something at the start tho, which wd perhaps have been "Lentic"

the two songs with 0 are both pretty good - bine especially deserves more

Voting for individual tracks is a bit pointless for most of their albums,

yeah

so subjective

on the other hand - the top two winners are my two favs from this album so I finally became a part of an autechre majority here

Reniform POLLs -- Autechre :: Draft 7.30 :: LP7

yeah bine deserved more but it was never gonna get it. quite surprised at the vi scose poise love though.

I've always seen 2001 as the "great glass ceiling" year for IDM. Lots of people had said it was dead already, but this wasn't true. Warp and Rephlex were at the peak of their powers: Druqks, Double Figure, Confield, Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, Go Plastic etc were all released around that time and all felt like momentous albums in their own ways. I'd venture the thing that killed IDM wasn't Confield, but rather Kid A.

― The Great Cool Lulu who sleeps in Riley... (dog latin), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:49 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this ended up being a really fun thread: IDM in 2001

2001 was an interesting year for all this. The main thing going on the experimental front were the new sounds / structures being afforded by the new software. There are a lot of names I wish had come up more on this thread that were shoring up the abstract side of what software enabled from 98-01, every single Kit Clayton 12", Phoenecia, Phthalocyanine, OST. On the noisier front, Venetian Snares, Lesser. And minimal was moving out from BC to Vladislav Delay, Panasonic, Ryoji Ikeda, Sutekh. You could easily go on; it was a wide landscape. Those were the edges moving at the same time BOC was shoring up the nostalgic front and everyone else was going unashamedly conservative & emo tuneful.

if you'd been paying attention to those records, this felt less like the edge than a statement of affiliation. it was almost hard to tell if it was a good record, it followed so much in the footsteps of what a lot of other people had been working out, and what a lot of fans had already decided they didn't like. as it is an incredibly good record, I worry it's kind of paved over the narrative a bit -- it's not their fault the Kit Clayton 12"s are out of print, but I spent last week going back to at least as many records by those people that came out the three years before 'Confield' and they belong in the thread

Autechre 2001 show in Oakland: OST's noise set audible from the street and already making my guts turn over as I walk up the stairs, not even in front of the speakers yet; overhearing one person say 'as long as they play one song from Amber, I'm fine, that's all I ask'; watching everyone get the dancing out of their system to the DHS set; then watching the huge ballroom go from 800 people down to 100 over the course of 20 minutes, and the sound of the applause at the end of the night, half rabid, half confused.

it was a divider, the kind of spectacle you never see at a major venue that was written up in all the weeklies as 'must-see'. the buildup was huge and the stream of people was a physical experience, not just the motion but the way the echo audibly kept expanding as the bodies left the floor. and the way so many people were convinced, the only explanation was that this was being done as a joke, specifically to anger them. and the change in the mood of the room at the 30 minute point as the music, which was minimally staying in place, each 15 minute track using largely the same drum kit; the music really started doing its work, the people who stayed kept moving closer to the bins and to that ridiculous freefloating kick, it just kept getting more interesting

kinda hard not to like these guys

I saw them in 2001 at Brixton. I have no recollection ;_;

Got the mp3s tho, will see if they jog a memory.

Autechre 2001 show in Oakland

I was at this show! Really dug DHS (w/ Jack Danger!), stayed for the whole Autechre set and was, yes, befuddled. Interesting watching dude in dreadlocks dancing to Ae though.

listening to the brixton show. appears to have been recorded by someone standing at the bar.

"and they played voodoo ray by a guy called gerald"
"i can't get jack shit to work on my mac at the moment"
"and he never turned up to my birthday bash!"
"i had the best set up ever. but i never got to dj."

"when's mouse on mars?"
"WHAT?"
"when's mouse on mars?"
"the mean fiddler i think"
"... next month?"

sounds nothing like the oakland show for all i know, but track 2 is brilliant, over the inane bar chatter. starts off with a quite dancefloor friendly pulsating, driving beat, backing some confield-esque underground scraping and revving, which only takes over and dominates the track for the last terrifying 5 of its 17 minutes.

yeah that was the most user friendly track in the set.

Draft and Untilted have massively massively grown on me since they first came out. I really didn't think much of them at all and for a long time figured Ae had lost the plot.
They're among my favourites now

How have I never seen this before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tiVmPXNzdM

Watching this, it dawned on me that Cfern is conceptually very similar to Miles Davis' Nefertiti, a modern jazz tune which is notable for the melodic instruments (the horns) staying anchored to a similarly-repeating cycle without any solos while the rhythm section (bass, drums, piano) improvise around them