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

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

a lot of autechre songs do that trick though

yeah I was talking about eidetic casein there lol

6ie is like a lumpen idm brokenbeat sort of procrustean carcass around some quite interesting melodies

needs to be said that autechre are just supremely melodically gifted in a way very few others are, even though its a talent they have never tried to overplay in their augustan period

oversteps does sort of overdo it though

agree with all of that

electro + sound art nerds

yep

the way melody has to do battle with nxtlvl drumprogramming in the aforementioned period leads to its greatest triumphs imo but then this poll will hopefully introduce me to some stuff without that sphere

all of their best work retains skein linking back to electro

there was an interview once where they almost upbraided ricardo villalobos (this would be around achso time i suppose) for citing them as an influence, saying that he was a house producer so they were a little unsure why he would take after them, autechre still sort of see themselves as 'electro' in some intrinsic sense no matter how far they have wandered from that

Unreformed b-boys to the last.

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

OIC!

we getting the next five tonight btw? ;)

I was waiting for the current discussion to abate!

i've 'bated, your turn to issue

ok bb.

Is this what sexting is like?

I mean ILM-style?

in autechreland, yeah

never forget btw what do you think Autechre call their genitals?

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

43. Cfern - 77 points | 3 votes

only my #17 so it's not getting a write-up beyond that fucking bass and that fucking creeping space-age sonic development, obv an incredible piece of music and maybe THE sleeper hit on confield

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

― Ƹ༑Ʒ (imago), Tuesday, 30 September 2014 00:09 (41 minutes ago)

approve of this post except for

i) cardiacs reference
ii) the pop / classical is another false binary

re: ii, surely the falseness of that binary is inherent in its juxtaposition - i'd not call that a binary at all

Great to come back to some of these tracks. I'm now a 6IE CR convert.

Never realised how melodic Rettic AC was till now. Noise + ambient.

Slip is so pretty. Very Aphex Twin in its own way. Always think the name is apt, and next to Silverside on the album I always imagine it's the sound of rolling/running down those dunes on the cover.

Gaekwad - Never really paid this one that much attention but I'm digging it now. Amazed at how melodic all this earlier Autechre sounds now. It always sounded so atonal. Wow the amount of bass on this track is just insane... Reminds me a little bit of Drane2 on LP5 with those chimey dulcimer noises. Cor, this is superb on headphones..! A little mutley laugh towards the end. Whoever said Ae were cold and clinical? This is so fun.

Overand - Not a super fan of Tri Repetae but this just scraped my ballot. I like it for the same reason I like Kraftwerk's Radioactivity album. Just these minute squelches of radio-like interference spinning off into the galaxy. Transmissions being sent off into the vacuum, being picked up and interpreted. One of their few (and best) pure ambient tunes.

Second Peng - Don't dig out the Anvil Vapre EP enough really. It's good though - like a tougher, angrier Tri Repetae. Some of their bangingest material on here. This is a slow stomper but the beats are hard and heavy as fuck. Autechre always got their album art so right, and Tri Repetae-era always makes me think exactly of those radio-controlled robotic creatures in the video for Second Bad Vilbel - all moving parts whirring around menacingly. My only issue with this one is it goes on a bit long. Cool way to round off the EP though.

Eidetic Casein - Nope, sorry. I don't get it and never have. I've been wanting to like this one for a long time as, like imago says, it's supposed to be the 'pop' track on Confield. All I can hear is a thousand toy ambulances running out of batteries at the same time. I hear nothing in this I can lock onto at all. If there is a melody it's totally atonal with few repetitions or 'catchy bits'. Maybe that's the point, but in that case I definitely see it as one of their more abstruse bits.
In all my time of listening to this record I feel I never quite got Confield. And yet I still come back to it once or twice a year out of sheer morbid curiosity. There's something about the frequencies they used on this album that really gets to me - all the kick drums have an teeth-gritting high-end quality that makes them squish around like someone rubbing their fingers on a balloon.

re: ii, surely the falseness of that binary is inherent in its juxtaposition - i'd not call that a binary at all

― Ƹ༑Ʒ (imago), Tuesday, 30 September 2014 00:56 (1 minute ago)

theyre just terms that dont need to be introduced in relation to something like confield which is neither

xxposts Cfern is the other example of that - I like this song in theory but those kicks are too damn loud and plonketty for this kind of tune. A strange little track though I must say.

not really interested in anyones attempt to taxonomise autechre except for autechre themselves

fair xps

cfern settles at the end for a repeating pattern - quite a few of autechre's songs find their entropy this way, and it works

playing cfern rn, one of the least enterprising tracks on confield, thomas plinkettys crapital amirite

my problem with Anvil Vapre is that i have it on vinyl and listened to it at 33 for many years before hearing an mp3 of it. what a shock. it sounds immense at 33, i can't get my head around how it's supposed to sound.

one of the least enterprising tracks on confield

it's my 5th favourite so i almost agree, ha

yeah i do really like everything else about Cfern. Just the timbre of those beats do my head in. I'd like to hear a version with those taken out please.