IS IT WASHAPOLL? - ILM ARTIST POLL #57 - AUTECHRE - RESULTS thread

Would read.

Especially since yours and my Autechre tastes seem to occupy polar opposites. Always foudn the Confield through Untilted period hard going.

#1 vote for Go Sheep was mine and Envane was top of my albums picks.

I've sold two copies of Keynell; don't like it all that much, bit dour (LOL). The remixes on Warp are a much better thing IMO.

I had a copy of Cavity Job that I got for £4 in a Music & Video Exchange.

Apparently it doesn't even command very high prices now so I guess I sold that one at the right time! Would still be pretty funny in a hardcore set.

here's my pretty predictable top 5:

1. Tri Repetae
2. Confield
3. LP5
4. Chiastic Slide
5. Amber

I didn't get around to listening to the EPs aside from EP7, which was a near miss.

Ok -

6ie.cr is placed rather unassumingly third on Autechre's most anecdotally impenetrable record - neither a deep cut nor a lead-off track, it occupies a position one might expect (were this a rock album) of a single. Autechre are often described as 'intelligent dance music' - however misleading or reductive this descriptor, it does lead one to hope that occasionally they will bang - they will produce the kind of music that doesn't just suggest kinetics but demands them, triggers involuntary physical movements, appeals to the reptilian rhythm located in every avant-garde music fan's hindbrain. 6ie.cr is Draft 7.30's single, then, and it bangs - it bangs harder than more or less any straight 4/4 club anthem you could name (although don't forget that unlike some Autechre it's also 4/4 and doesn't really deviate from this). It piles in immediately with an extraordinary, raucous lightspeed cataract of drum sounds, in turns smudging into one another and then crisply demarcating the different edges of the beat, all while making the sort of unignorably vibrant sorts of noises that trigger instant synaesthesia in whichever listeners don't instantly reach for the skip button (if ever a first 3 seconds of a song must polarise an audience). Possibly key to it all is the infinitesimal silence between the very first drum sound and the rest of the song - you're hooked inside the first quarter-second, then immediately bludgeoned with the whole palette. This astonishing, futuristic beat makes me dance. It makes me bob my head, stand up and pull all sorts of fluid robot moves, body-pop, you name it. It's pure kinesis and I can't get enough of it. I'm familiar enough with the opening few bars to essay my own beatboxed attempt at imitation, although such is the precision of the sounds Autechre produce, it must only work in my head.

So then, almost immediately, the beat changes. Or rather, it keeps its overall structure, but initially minuscule amendments begin to creep in - longer blurs, quicker cut-outs, extra bleeps - mostly during the 'falling downstairs' second half of the cadence. It's tremendously appealing, but while I'm trying to keep up with this, the melody becomes apparent - what sounds like a sampled string instrument playing an extremely funky, minimal, off-kilter riff in the background. As the beat is manipulated towards greater heights of sensory overload, the sampled riff also passes through subtle changes, mostly truncations of the first note. Then, about a minute in, the riff drops out entirely, and returns a bar later in a different key - this commences Phase Two of the song, probably its most important part.

Except the riff doesn't quite return as before - it threatens to play out but then shifts a further key upwards. We now only hear it in snippet form, fragmented and unpredictable - Autechre's deconstruction of the beat is here applied to the melodic aspect of the piece, as the beat piles onward in thrilling style. Soon the timbre of the melody sample changes - it loses the stringy fuzz, modulates down to a more haunting synth pad tone - and then a more euphoric blare - one that will come to define the song's third movement. MEANWHILE, the beat if anything SIMPLIFIES - it loses some of its tricksiness and simply plunges headlong towards pure dance - it becomes a non-stop barrage of distorted snare hits, spilling in a demented, tone-shifted rush toward some moment where all is consumed in movement...

...except then, at the moment of highest tension, just before it becomes unbearable, the beat falls apart completely and an absolutely gorgeous pair of synth textures take over. One's hollow and plays some simple, beautiful chords as a backdrop; the other is that aforementioned blare - muted, but stark and vibrant - harplike - as it spangles an unplaceable swathe of rising ecstatic sound over the whole song, like a silken, gilded cloth draped over a clinking treasure chest. There's still a beat - a muted, hesitant (how Autechre can program hesitancy is beyond me, but they do), thinned-out iteration of what came before. As this third section progresses, sonic elements of the former beat - snippets of the raucous distorted snare, rhythmical alterations, counteractions to hesitancy - creep back in, but discretely rather than all in a rush. It reaches the point where the giddy rush of the song's opening is fully implied, but it does not actually have to be spoken - it's all present in absentia, except now with an ecstatic, emotionally-pungent melodic overlay - the hindbrain AND forebrain are being seduced in tandem - beauty, nostalgia, kinesis, funk - all together - and THAT is when you realise that a THIRD synth element has snuck in almost without you noticing - a frankly ASTONISHING synth bassline, fatly tying the rhythmic and melodic elements together. It actually doesn't creep in until about 30 seconds into this section, and fades in as if it had always been there - it's such an incredibly good fit that it feels subliminal, elemental to the piece, but it hadn't existed until nearly 3 and a half minutes into the song. It represents Autechre at their most inspired, most devastatingly architectural - to hold it back so long, then deploy it so subtly, so artfully, takes my breath away. It emerges from the very drum sounds, modulating INTO melody from rhythm. And so the song reaches apotheosis - pure listenability, pure engagement - with the introduction of this bassline. At which the drum sounds are permitted to fall apart, grow hesitant once more, falter, wither...

...and die. But what's also been happening is that the edges of the bassline, the moments of hit and fade, have taken on a life of their own, a sort of thin, membranous cycle that in the same instant the drums fall out swooshes over the remainder of the song like a rewound cassette, cycling ever-slower into oblivion, the end of rhythm, the ultimate settlement into reflection, melody and death. (This song, a synaesthetic metaphor for the life of an IDM fan?) Suddenly, the synth blare is gone, and only the hollow chords are left, playing their delightful waveforms on some simple (yet still almost impossible to predict) cycle, surging peaceably as the final rhythmic clicks fade, and then losing will, slipping into atonality, developing schizophrenia - the lower tones RIGHT at the last become a sort of moaning, whalesong bassline, stumbling and wavering to a toneshifted, uncertain close, and the higher tones play out maybe a couple more times, retaining their melodic integrity but first to die, as everything falls into the softest and slowest, most absent sort of chaos imaginable. It's an absolutely inspired way to end a song that has contained, FOR ME GARY, all of life and all of music. Stick this one on my all-time C-90! It's pop music, really. More so than much Autechre, but more demandingly so, more intricate and complex, more sophisticated in its unspoken thesis. It makes me move, and it makes me think. It eventually equates kinesis with repose. Incredible song. You should all go and listen to it right now.

just sounds like a load of robotic insects to me.

jks - thanks for that imago. i'm listening to it now and it's great to hear outside the context of the album while reading your right-up. you're right, this is pretty rockin'. my track of choice off Draft is V-Proc though.

Uh, delete "probably its most important part" coz the third bit is, or rather the whole thing is - it's all interrelated development, symbiotic narrative. o and ty dl! v-proc is also on my ballot, don't worry ;)

hehe, that outro is pure LP5.

Everyone has to do this for their #1 btw. I command it

we should have polled the album covers. I've love to read an interview with Ae where they simply focus on the album artwork. I love a lot of it. Others (Confield, Untilted) I can't work out whether there's a concept or not.

I didn't end up voting for 6ie.cr. Great track, but I already had 2 other Draft songs on my ballot.

6IE.CR made 8th place for me. Doing this ballot made me realise Draft is my 2nd favourite LP proper, which I didn't see coming.

How did I forget about Envane when I voted??

^ envane wuz robbed, possible culprit

my albums:

1 Confield
2 Tri Repetae
3 Envane
4 LP5
5 EP7
6 Amber
7 Anvil Vapre
8 Cichli Suite
9 Untilted
10 Incunabula

maybe coulda/shoulda squeezed gantz graf in there, still hoping exai will reveal itself in its full majesty but hasn't happened yet - more headphone listening required perhaps. draft would be right at the bottom of my list but hey i haven't read louis' screed yet.

and the top 3 remixes are pretty cool n all but seriously that stereolab mix is one of the nastiest & scariest things they've done.

It's also one of the funkiest & most recognisably pop things they've done.

The saga continues.

http://i.imgur.com/gBskxHy.jpg

49T. Slip - 64 points | 4 votes

http://i.imgur.com/DxcT9T1.jpg

48. Rettic AC - 65 points | 2 votes | 1 #1 vote

Two fantastic tracks to start the poll. Rettic AC is a great precursor to Gantz Graf. Slip is just gorgeous, my favourite from Amber I reckon.

Great images too. Did you make these Leee?

albums

Tri Repetae
Exai
Chiastic Slide
Untilted
Confield
Amber
Garbage
EP7
LP5
Anvil Vapre

closest to octobeard's maybe. agree with amber being a rough draft, should have left it off. don't care for draft.

rettic ac was my no. 1. It sounds like footsteps in the snow with the faint remnants of a gorgeous little melody underneath. I pushed it up to no. 1 a few seconds before sending the ballot.

Talking of pop, Slip is quite traditionally melodic as well. At some point I had the idea that the tune is a bit like "Come Back And Stay" by Paul Young. I even made a somewhat shonky pre-Live mashup to prove the point.

ledge did the images iirc

cajunsunday that's at least 600 words too short ;) nah it sounds like something I want to hear, and will :)

xp 'chiastic slide' is a crucial winter album for me.

Needs to hear the Paul Young / Autechre mash-up

Great images too. Did you make these Leee?

imago is right, images are (c) ledge! And they're all awesome. He even did tracks that didn't make it, so maybe I'll dump them out somewhere because some of them are straight lolz.

rettic ac was my no. 1. It sounds like footsteps in the snow with the faint remnants of a gorgeous little melody underneath.

Totally get this now that you mention it.

rettic ac got my vote too. and yeah it sounds like snow.

Others (Confield, Untilted) I can't work out whether there's a concept or not.

I've read that at least for Confield, the cover image is actually a still from a (short?) animation one of the boys created (and around when it was released, it was floating around the webz as a .mov file).

http://i.imgur.com/dyYB7dL.jpg

46T. Gaekwad - 66 points | 2 votes | 1 #1 vote

http://i.imgur.com/B0CPuKm.jpg

46T. Overand - 66 points | 3 votes

http://i.imgur.com/Rru5IJN.jpg

44T. Second Peng - 71 points | 3 votes

http://i.imgur.com/cfQ3OS6.jpg

44T. Eidetic Casein - 71 points | 3 votes

^^ one of my favorite track titles

a bit hectic lately and ultimately didn't vote but I just wanted to say that...

No Amber for me, either. I fact I was surprised at how little time I have these days for the albums prior to LP5 ... Still like 'em, just never seem to listen anymore. I would say it was down to over-familiarity, but I play the contemporaneous EPs all the time. Anti - Garbage - Anvil Vapre - Envane - Cichlisuite - Peel Session is a pretty formidable run.

... is basically exactly how I feel except I'd push out the timeline to include lp5. the earlier albums clicked pretty quickly (esp. amber) but I do find them a bit played-out at this point. but I never really stopped listening to the eps, particularly garbage. couldn't really tell you why, the albums are also v solid too.

feel like the ep has been autechre's best presentation format. sometimes the album sprawl works when the material is up to it but more often than not i feel like it's been a weakness.

^^^ yes, I think that is probably why I still play thos early EPs so often.

You could definitely argue that most, if not all of their 70+ minute albums could stand to lose 15 minutes or so.

I always thought that Tri Repetae would have been nearly perfect if it was just the first half, and an EP rather than an LP.

Then you'd be able to dump "Overand," which I've *never* been able to warm up to.

tri repeatae is the one I've actually struggled with the most of the years. ultimately, I think it's... pretty good.

but generally, I like the albums as a whole and don't feel like they have much filler. but the eps do seem more focused, even longer ones like garbage. keeping things at 3-4 tracks prob helps there. each track gets to shine.

*over the years

Probably a controversial opinion but "Stud" is the one I could do without; it feels like nails on my brain

IMO Amber is the best of that early period - surprised that not a lot of y'all voted for it.

amber always struck me as perfectly composed but emotionally flat

images are (c) ledge

Except I outsourced the boring gruntwork of adding the text back to leee, as if running the poll wasn't enough of a chore already.

Overand pic is the hidden link between hot chip and ae, fyi.

xpost

Re: Amber, for me it's the opposite: it's visceral and emotional but sometimes sounds primitive compared to what they'd be able to conjure up later

Amber was my top album pick - they arguably took their sound to more interesting places later on but that's the one that works best as a complete piece for me. The Garbage EP (which I didn't actually hear until a year or two ago) makes a nice companion piece.

Hi-five to whoever had 'Gaekwad' at #1 by the way, I was the other voter for that, glad it made it in.