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

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.

Thanks for the 6ie.cr screed, imago, definitely helps in understanding the appeal to have the individual elements brought into focus like that. Although a raucous lightspeed cataract of drum sounds sounds to me more like a raucous walking pace cataract of drum sounds.

Didn't recall which one rettic ac was till I read cajunsunday's excellently apt description.

Gaekwad was my #1, will try and write something about it tomorrow.

rettic ac just missed my shortlist. enjoying 6ie.cr even though i haven't listened to draft since it was released.

whoa gaekwad just performed a rhythmic switcharound about 2/3 through that complete did me. amazing

dont think i voted for any of these
eidetic casein maybe

eidetic casein was my #4 and is about to get a mini write-up

"mini."

idk how to approach that long lj post
its not one of the tracks on d730 that i care for, or their 4/4 tracks in general or their sort of meta pop tracks but i appreciate the effort to break it down
ive never thought about their tracks in that sort of song-construction way, tend to prefer the abstraction and the more formless tracks (else the more formal-programmatic ones like drane)

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

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y267/v_ralson/emot-colbert1.gif~original

hahaha oy

yeah sorry lj i'm tl;dr-ing anything you post that is longer than 5 sentences, b+ for effort though

basically it's the sound of elves deconstructing, a very autechre christmas

really tho it's autechre's rhythmic principles - complexity, recombinations, entropy - applied to melody. now yeah melody & rhythm is a false binary esp where autechre are concerned but this track is almost all melody - intersections of tone, (dis)harmonic explorations, phrases you'd maybe expect of fucking cardiacs - it's absolutely beautiful, shows that not only can autechre write a tune but compose melodically up there with pretty much anyone you can name. it's pop, it's classical music, it's sheet music for computers & it all falls apart at the end in one of autechre's best denouements i mean what's there to hate

doesn't have remotely their most sophisticated drum programming but it doesn't need it. that one moment exactly 4:19 in where the beat suddenly stutters for one bar is the perfect framing device for its melodic collapse, demarcating the edge of descent, the victory of drone over tune. stunning