S/D Autechre - Confield onwards

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It seems that Autechre kind of half lost me on Confield and never released a classic album again. I'm sure there must be some great material from this period in their work. Please searcha nd destroy.

― dog latin (dog latin), Friday, 28 October 2005 00:13 (twenty years ago)

Search: their live show
Destroy: their albums

― Michael F Gill (Michael F Gill), Friday, 28 October 2005 00:38 (twenty years ago)

We reexamined their post-Confield work fairly thoroughly over here:

New Autechre album - April 2005

S: Granz Graf. I severely underated this when it came out. What an amazing hailstorm of twisted beats and sounds. I think it's the best thing they've done in the past five years.

I was very impressed with "Untilted" when it was first released, but I never listen to it now :(

I'm not sure if it just got lost in the shuffle of a busy spring for new releases, or if it was an interesting idea in theory but not in practice.

― MindInRewind (Barry Bruner), Friday, 28 October 2005 00:49 (twenty years ago)

i have had a similar reaction to untilted.

i loved the album for a grand total of one week and have to return to it. better than Draft.

― Grell (Grell), Friday, 28 October 2005 03:56 (twenty years ago)

Peel Session Volume 2 (release 2 months before confield, recorded a long time before that, probably)

the cover art of Draft 7.30 i also enjoy.

i like Gantz Graf too but wonder how much of that is to do with the video for it.

what is the Hafler Trio collaboration like?

― koogs (koogs), Friday, 28 October 2005 09:02 (twenty years ago)

Yeah I didn't like Gantz Graf until I saw the video, it made more sense then..

I like the track 'sublimit' on Untilted.. it's quite lengthy but has lots going on, even some melody!

― Bn1 (Bn1), Friday, 28 October 2005 10:53 (twenty years ago)

The first ae/hafler is standard drone-noise stuff - hard to detect any Autechre in yet. Haven't paid any attention to the second one yet.

Honestly though, I think Confield is perhaps their best album. It's a slow starter, but you can't deny that Pen Expers is full-on breakneck hardcore ae par excellence. And then there's an abrupt left turn to... somewhere else. I dunno, it almost feels like synaesthesia, it's so textured and image-provoking. And ominous. And cohesive, but if you wanna S/D, then maybe D Bine and Eidetic Casein; and S the last two: Uviol and Lentic Catachresis. Talking about image provoking... they go hand-in-hand for me: the first is transmission from a deep space probe, the second is the reception of transmission, garbled with intergalactic static, intercepted and infected by alien intelligence.

― ledge (ledge), Friday, 28 October 2005 10:59 (twenty years ago)

(in ~~yet~~ it)

― ledge (ledge), Friday, 28 October 2005 11:00 (twenty years ago)

was Chiastic Slide post Confield? This was an excellent album. still can't offer too much praise for untilted though. am in agreement about Gantz Graf, the video is fucking amazing and makes the song much more pleasant.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Friday, 28 October 2005 11:51 (twenty years ago)

the second track on Gantz Graf, "dial." is my favorite autechre track these days

― peter in montreal (spaces are allowed), Friday, 28 October 2005 14:20 (twenty years ago)

Whenever I listen to autechre these days, it's almost always either Confield, Draft 7.30 or Gantz Graf

― peter in montreal (spaces are allowed), Friday, 28 October 2005 14:24 (twenty years ago)

Gantz Graf is great. Peel Sessions 2 is my favorite. I like Confield, but haven't listened to it for a long time (mostly because I bought it in my "vinyl phase" and my turntable is broken).

I didn't like Draft at all and I haven't heard Untilted.

― Jordan (Jordan), Friday, 28 October 2005 14:36 (twenty years ago)

what's with this? they only got any good at all after "Confield" (save that stereolab remix they did which was one of the best pieces of music EVER)

― bob snoom, Friday, 28 October 2005 15:17 (twenty years ago)

Untilted £3.96 new on amazon.co.uk

― login name (fandango), Friday, 28 October 2005 18:47 (twenty years ago)

Track 3 on Gantz Graf "cap.iv" is the best.

I agree w/ ledge -- Confield would be the post-2001 aelbum that I'd enthusiastically listen to. It's probably because out of the last three, it's the one I've listened to for the longest, and it took a long time for me to learn how to listen to it and like it. Perhaps a similar phenomenon would happen with the next two, but I'm past the point where I have to do heavy lifting for 2 years in order to enjoy an album.

― Leeeeeeeeee (Leee), Friday, 28 October 2005 21:49 (twenty years ago)

Funny, I'm almost tempted to say that Confield is their worst album and that out of the last three Draft7.30 is the best. I never really understood the love for Pen Expers - I could listen to a hoover sucking up stones for six minutes and it would sound very similar.

what is the Hafler Trio collaboration like?
Not very good unless you like droning musique concrete.

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 29 October 2005 06:49 (twenty years ago)

Pen Expers is great, its got the mutant hip-hop/electro thing going.

― latebloomer (latebloomer), Saturday, 29 October 2005 12:28 (twenty years ago)

yeh, but it sounds like someone throwing nuts and bolts into a bin. There's a hint of a melody that comes in towards the end but it never really makes itself apparent.

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 29 October 2005 14:24 (twenty years ago)

See for me, Draft7.30 is the best because it's actually a proper breaks album (yes it is). Listen to the beginning of the first track sounds like a stylus being dropped onto the most fucked up record ever made. I love track 9 (Vproc?) as well - it's like a funk record from another planet. I even mixed some Funkadelic into it once and it worked!

― dog latin (dog latin), Saturday, 29 October 2005 14:30 (twenty years ago)

seven months pass...

listening to confield again for the first time in years. It's still very hard to listen to although (maybe because I remember the tracks from before) it's making a bit more sense in my head. Still don't like Pen Expers beyond the first ten seconds of "Woah, it's a breakbeat but it's all fucked up". Eidetic Casein, the track everyone raved about when it came out, still sounds like two hundred broken keyring soundmachines playing "Merrily We Roll Along" at the same time and quickly joined in by a couple of pre-schoolers jumping up and down on an upright piano. Bine is still frightening to the extreme. Cfern - the beats are just two HARD for this kind of track, giving the impression of going over rough terrain in a Volkswagen Polo with no seatbelt. Sim Gishel is nice and droney but a bit long and boring. I quite like Parhelic Triangle - it makes me think of samurais or soemthink.. I've always loved Uviol - it's the only track I can stand. Like somekind of cousin of Piezo crepuscular moonchant to the stars. Lentic Catechresis is just a sort of extended aummary of the whole album.

And it seems like the following two albums were like variations on the Confield theme with very little progression. Whereas before Confield we'd always seen some huge jumps in sound (like the difference between Tri Repetae and Chiastic Slide, for example). Even the packaging layout feels the same on Confield, Draft7.30 and Untilted.

― dog latin (dog latin), Monday, 26 June 2006 12:05 (twenty years ago)

I've always thought of Confield as a Fourth World experiment. It reminds me a lot of that Hassel/Eno album, actually, trying to imagine a folk music from another planet. I think it's great but I lost interest after that for some reason.

― Mark (MarkR), Monday, 26 June 2006 12:36 (twenty years ago)

Still don't hear any similarity between Confield and the next two. Confield, beyond track 3 at least, is for me a soundscape, a collage, a seamless blend of textures... and the next two go back to the bog standard series of independent tracks. Draft did nothing for me, all beats and rhythm (or lack of), no melodies or textures. Untilted had more potential, I keep on meaning to go back to it.

Also why'd they stop releasing between-album EPs? Some of their best work...

― ledge (ledge), Monday, 26 June 2006 12:46 (twenty years ago)

its like, after confield...where do you go?

― latebloomer aka rap's yoko ono (latebloomer), Monday, 26 June 2006 13:04 (twenty years ago)

More of same! For a group who've been such paragons of change and progression, I'd be happy to let them rest on their laurels, at least for a little while.

Of couse dog latin thinks they've already done that...

― ledge (ledge), Monday, 26 June 2006 13:49 (twenty years ago)

"Untilted" was a huge disappointment for me. I loved "Confield" for its willingness to extend aleatoric, arrhythmic grooves, fractal-like, toward their breaking point. "Draft 7.30" was more controlled, but no less intense, developing the premise pioneered on "Confield" with a near-classical compositional vision. But the last one provides too little variation, and doesn't even manage to repeat past feats with equal rewards. I saw them live around the same time and they seemed a little tired. They need to experiment further... I love the idea of Autechre fiddling around with acoustic instruments, though it is unlikely.

― you will be shot (you will be shot), Monday, 26 June 2006 17:19 (twenty years ago)

When I saw Autechre live a year ago, I was very disappointed. SND opened, and were better. How is that even possible??

As for 00's Autechre albums, I'd rank Confield as the best, followed by Untilted, with Draft 7.30 in third place.

― CDDB (Dan Deluca), Monday, 26 June 2006 18:57 (twenty years ago)

SND were great on that tour, the Autechre set was a 2-hour feast of pummeling beats, which got tiring quick, especially considering they were playing in near total darkness so there was little else to focus on. I kept hearing fractured beats in my head for hours after that show.

― Jena (JenaP), Monday, 26 June 2006 20:25 (twenty years ago)

I really like Draft for some reason - I'd go so far as to say it's their best 00's album. There's something incredibly funky about the whole affair but also something very free, like a prog-jazz band jamming together.

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 27 June 2006 07:50 (twenty years ago)

I loved Confield, but all post-Confield stuff has been a drastic case of diminishing returns: Draft 7.30 is just dull, nothing very beautiful or baffling or impressive here... and Untilted is a grotesquely lazy piece they must've knocked out pretty quickly, without even bothering to stamp it with their usual distressed audio signature... The snare on the first track is the shittiest thing ever... They've got no sense of where to go I think.

― gekoppel (Gekoppel), Tuesday, 27 June 2006 17:18 (twenty years ago)

I think track 1 on untilted is really really good, including the snare.

― CDDB (Dan Deluca), Tuesday, 27 June 2006 18:25 (twenty years ago)

gekoppel, how can you diss that track when confield is full of shit drum noises (CFern springs to mind)

― dog latin (dog latin), Tuesday, 27 June 2006 21:29 (twenty years ago)

track 1 = (probably) best track on untilted

cfern = best track on confield

The drum sounds on these tracks are great!
How is it that you guys listen to those tracks and think that the percussion sounds so terrible?!

― CDDB (Dan Deluca), Wednesday, 28 June 2006 00:26 (twenty years ago)

Both of these tracks have thick, aggressive drum sounds. Perhaps that's why they stand out for me?

You guys must be really into clicky minimal percussion?

― CDDB (Dan Deluca), Wednesday, 28 June 2006 00:28 (twenty years ago)

yeh the drums just sound really hamfisted on Cfern for me. It's got this pretty melody and it's punctured by the sounds of a range rover crashing into a big block of marble.

― dog latin (dog latin), Wednesday, 28 June 2006 07:21 (twenty years ago)

When I saw Autechre live a year ago, I was very disappointed. SND opened, and were better. How is that even possible??

I saw ae on the Confield tour, and DHS (w/ help from Jack Dangers) were triumphant. The crowd were whooping and giving a standing O and screaming, and Jack (I think) left with a celebratory double-fisted pump of triumph.

Then boothbrown came up and everyone sat down trying to figure out what they were doing. INTELLIGENT.

― sLeeeter Kinney (Leee), Wednesday, 28 June 2006 16:28 (twenty years ago)

I've posted before on this, but I loved the Oakland show on that tour. 70 minute abstract beat pile, no melodies, no tempo. If you were within 50 feet of the stage, the kick drum would literally cut your breath in half , the sound in the room was a living, competitive thing. Changes were very slight and slow in coming, but things really got deep about 40 minutes in.

Right before they went on, overheard: "All they have to do is play one thing from Amber, and I'm happy." The room went from 800 people to about 150 within 20 minutes of them taking the stage. I need to hunt down some boots from that tour.

― milton parker (Jon L), Wednesday, 28 June 2006 18:20 (twenty years ago)

Autechre started listening to Bernard parmegiani around 96, after listening to 1967's Capture Ephémère, Confield onwards makes a lot more sense

― milton parker (Jon L), Wednesday, 28 June 2006 18:50 (twenty years ago)

Texturally and in terms of how said snares interact with the other drum sounds Confield's snares make sense, they work in context, whereas track 1 on Untilted's snare is so ungainly, and not in a deliberately fuck-you manner, merely in a lazy can't-be-arsed-to-eq-this-properly one. All the sounds on Untilted sounded like they were pre-sets, and asides from a bit of edit-fuckery the whole album sounded like it had been jammed together in a week or so (which given interviews around that time, may well have been the case). I loved that murky, timestretched grainy sound they had on Chiastic Slide and Confield, so inimicable and teeming with diseased life.

― gekoppel (Gekoppel), Wednesday, 28 June 2006 19:03 (twenty years ago)

Untilted does sound a little quickly-thrashed-out, less tinkered with. Rhythms still complex but with a lot more repetition. I don't hear presets but the sounds are a lot cleaner, simpler, upfront.

I'm not returning to it as often as Draft / Grantz, but I get a sense of total fun here (the soccer-goal sample, that 80's electro hit), and even now that they're consolidating previous gains, each album still sounds slightly different, I look forward to every release.

― milton parker (Jon L), Wednesday, 28 June 2006 19:23 (twenty years ago)

yeh untilted is a fun album for the reasons you mention milton. also there's that one track that repeats a (quite catchy) aphex twin-style melody for ages and hardly does anything. I can't quite rap my head around it.

I just find Confield painful to listen to on the whole but the other albums I can listen to all the way through just fine.

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 29 June 2006 07:09 (twenty years ago)

anyone have a ny good interviews with Autechre from the post-Confield era?

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 29 June 2006 07:17 (twenty years ago)

The one in Sound on Sound was pretty good. Linkage.

― jng (jng), Thursday, 29 June 2006 07:53 (twenty years ago)

cheeers. it's an interesting article!

― dog latin (dog latin), Thursday, 29 June 2006 09:14 (twenty years ago)

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