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

also his answers are p zingy. he'd be a brilliant ilx poster (sean i mean)

MastaN8, on 02 Nov 2013 - 5:03 PM, said:
Sure. How do you feel your music has been received over the years by fans/critics?

in various ways

yeah it was really muddy, like insanely muddy, and i was already somehow covered in mud, and i was really beyond drunk at that point cos we didn't have to play (our tent was flooded and cancelled) and i had already downed a couple of bottles of champagne - i thought it would be a really good idea to try and push mike paradinas into the mud (he seemed to be really concerned about getting any mud on him at all). anyway it failed and i ended up face down in a load of mud next to him, but he got pissed off about getting some mud on his wrist, so I WIN

someone stop me, I cd do this all day :D

half asleep and playing confield quite loud rn

some sick low end gently rattling the place

some coruscating synth motifs also

chef d'oeuvre

http://www.openculture.com/2014/09/jacques-derrida-interviews-ornette-coleman.html

As one example of this “democratic relationship,” Coleman cites the relationship between the jazz musician and the composer—or his text: “the jazz musician is probably the only person for whom the composer is not a very interesting individual, in the sense that he prefers to destroy what the composer writes or says.” Coleman goes on later in the interview to clarify his ideas about improvisation as democratic communication:

[ T ]he idea is that two or three people can have a conversation with sounds, without trying to dominate or lead it. What I mean is that you have to be… intelligent, I suppose that’s the word. In improvised music I think the musicians are trying to reassemble an emotional or intellectual puzzle in which the instruments give the tone. It’s primarily the piano that has served at all times as the framework in music, but it’s no longer indispensable and, in fact, the commercial aspect of music is very uncertain. Commercial music is not necessarily more accessible, but it is limited.

the end of pen expers is a sort of jig

i like the idea of ae as jazz musicians, in the sense of

When I attempt to describe Autechre's post-Chiastic output to someone I tell them they're an electronic jazz band. Jazz in the sense of intense improvisation, but along with melody, timbre, sonics, percussion, rhythm are improvised. In addition to this they often transition these attributes into each other (timbre becomes rhythm, melody becomes sonics, percussion becomes melody - at times all at once). There's even traditional melodic jazz elements, seen early on in Acroyear2 off of LP5, Stop Look Listen off of WAP100 (a fantastic and overlooked track, btw) and more recently on Irlite (get 0) off of Exai.

Exai to me feels more fluid in this respect and is by far and away my favorite "jazz" record of theirs in that it is so wonderfully balanced in its improvisations.

― octobeard, Tuesday, September 30, 2014 3:28 AM (4 hours ago)

but i would think about it not so much with an emphasis on improvisation (somehow in there yes) but in terms of vernaculars and conversations. i think it's interesting that for a group with two producers, working in such a traditionally auteurless/concealed-human-auteur medium, the tendency in talk about ae's music is toward emphasizing their total control, stage managery start-up-the-robots direction, or all the way to responding to the music (in very pathetic fallacy-ish ways?) as if it were humanized/alienized nature, behaving and transpiring as it were of its own accord. because a lot of ae's developments of the last ten years seem to me to have tried to make even more room for the elements of their music to be more responsive to each other in that jazz manner, of parts in a conversation (which is very traditionally musical - cf. the late-beethoven feel mentioned above, for vienna-school 'string quartet as a free but constrained development of a theme by partners in a conversation' -style thinking about music), voices. maybe it could be said more that ae withdraw / seem absent from their music, in that sense that encourages 'total control' narratives, because they're looking for new ways to allow these conversations among, and developed by, their distinctive musical elements (tone, rhythm, etc.) to take place.

the end of pen expers is a sort of jig

1) lol
ii) slight worry you've ruined the track for me but
c) yeah i love reading descriptions & reactions like this too. obviously reaction to all music is highly personal, don't wanna make like ae are in any way exclusive in that regard, but they are kind of ploughing their own path and maybe the lack of conceptual (lyrical, historical, whatever) baggage makes it easier for the brain to free associate.

not it is like a jig, it is a jig

yerright

jigs in experimental music: a poll (see also: mbv - soon)

Thought this was interesting in that AAA, from Booth:

tbh i think everything has some emotional element, but we're not really thinking about that when we do stuff
it's not that we don't feel like emotions are important, more that it's hard for me to imagine a sound that doesn't convey some sense of something, and quite often when people discuss emotions in music they only think of happy or sad as being emotions, when imo emotions are a lot more than that
e.g. if we put out a really angry track, then people rarely describe it that way. they would more likely say it was unlistenable or difficult, the emphasis moves from expression to design, maybe they just fail to recognise it as expressive if they think it's very technical

btw

Overand - [...] Just these minute squelches of radio-like interference spinning off into the galaxy. Transmissions being sent off into the vacuum

this is more or less how i picture uviol off confield.

i get eidetic casein and lentic catachresis mixed up. tend to really like their last tracks don't know if it's just because i'm paying more attention. "teartear" is probably my favorite on amber. rsdio brings to mind "metronomic underground" by stereolab probably because i was listening to both these albums heavily around the same time in the late 90s being motivated by post-rock and i guess the basslines and tempos are sort of similar.

HI DERE.

http://i.imgur.com/oQ3etLp.jpg

39T. Vose In - 80 points | 4 votes

39T. Bladelores - 80 points | 4 votes

http://i.imgur.com/2ppgAFS.jpg

didn't vote for that but it's great

wish I had the technical knowledge to respond to j.'s posts properly :(

bladelores is modern polished autechre at its best. Ended up at #14 on my ballot.

http://i.imgur.com/zvtGRr2.jpg

39T. Bladelores - 80 points | 4 votes

Copy paste disaster!

Bladelores pic = Wesley snipes. Vose in = vosene. I'm not one to shy away from the obvious. Goz is Turkish for eye and the only thing that shows up in an image search.

Vosene shampoo, I should say.

B'oh!

http://i.imgur.com/zvtGRr2.jpg

37T. Goz Quarter - 81 points | 3 votes | 1 #1 vote

Goz quarter is great but still only the third best on envane.

I was looking for images of gauze to use!

I.e. thank dog you found something better.

My #1 in this poll. Was sent this and Anvil Vapre on promo (vinyl), those were the days. Perhaps slightly arbitrary placing but it is a fave. I think it's the most well rounded of the tracks on Envane. Lots of nice elements that work together and I always really liked the dolorous "burning" string pad that comes in for the main slow melody for some reason. Works @33 as well IIRC. "Jam like Autechre"

Playing Latent Quarter now and it is filth.

That one's never stuck with me, can't recall it at all.

enjoying this thread. I only really know&love confield but having dug out the cd it sounds superb & I'd forgotten how fond I was of it even though I'd never got into anything else

confield was my introduction too :)

obviously my advice would be to listen to the albums that came immediately afterwards before regressing but others may disagree

Jump straight to exai.

yeah I got tri repetae but it wasn't as immediately beguiling so I didn't spend much time with it. ganz/draft sound good though, autechre bring out audiophile tendencies in me

http://i.imgur.com/2RJCVDW.jpg

37T. Foil - 81 points | 4 votes

cool. have a soft spot for their brutalist 4/4ish bangers

goz was the quarter i voted for.

Three-way tie coming up!

Goz Quarter is the song, and Envane is the EP that got me into obsessing about Ae as much as (if not more than) RDJ. I also ended up meeting one of my best friends because of Envane. I had only heard Tri Repetae++ at the time, and he tossed Envane my way to borrow after only meeting me once (he later told me I was the first real life person he met who had discovered and listened to that style of music on their own), and I was blown away by Goz Quarter in particular because of how simply groovy it was, and how gorgeous the lead melody was toward the end. Very Cichli-esque. I couldn't quite ignore my nostalgic influences, otherwise I'd have put Draun Quarter up there instead.

And come on, who doesn't want to "Jam like Autechre"?

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

34T. Corc - 83 points | 3 votes

Sad I didn't vote for Vose In. Went for Fold4, Wrap5 instead. They complement each other so well on the LP5 album. Love how the synths sound like they're being turned up and down like that.

yeah i love the way vose in sets up 4/5

Corc is glorious. I didn't vote for it though.

Oh wait I did vote for Vose In.could have sworn I also voted for Bladelores too but apparently not. Don't know why I didn't cos it's such a great standout on Exai.

Corc always feels like the least memorable track on LP5 but I'm always pleasantly surprised when it comes on.

Most overrated track on LP5. Possibly most overrated Ae track ever.

http://i.imgur.com/B3EfWfR.jpg

34T. Lentic Catachresis - 83 points | 4 votes

This is sort of the archetypal Confield track but not necessarily the best I think.

this is the legit & unassailable sound of lentic catachresis occurring

IMO it's one of the three or four strongest on the album, but yeah, it's got a very Ur-Confield sense from it. The frenzied end is where it makes its money.

also my #9

the melodies in the first two minutes are absolutely sensational, some of ae's best songwriting. the rest...is the end of history

As much as I have grokked later Ae after initially disliking it, I have never really enjoyed Lentic Catachresis. The pure wall of sound, lack of overt textural/sonic progression, and missing beat has made this always a non-starter for me. Can someone give me a compelling reason to like this track or possibly explain how they got into it?