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

ooh columnar jointing i was just learning about that

YES. Keynell 4 is a goddamned minimal masterpiece of a chord progression. Looking forward to finding who picked that as their #1

Was my #6

Never cared for Second Bad Vilbel much. Noisy fecker though, possibly better @ 33. I got the second 12" first and I don't think it was labelled so what I assumed was the lead track, and the one I've voted for here, turned out to be the last one.

Piezo and Keynell 4 at #9 and #8 for me. Two more excellent long drawn out endings. It's a simple trick maybe, fading out the percussion to leave the harmonic & melodic elements hanging there but damn it works well. Plus Keynell 4 ultimately drops out all the elements one by one, a mirror image of the beginning where they all get individually introduced.

I had 'Stud' at #3, that's one I really came around to while putting my ballot together - conjures up the image of some sort of tiny mechanical creature burrowing through layers of earth.

I like 'Leterel' but when the string melody changes at about 4:45 I always want to start singing the chorus of 'The Mercy Seat' over it.

'Piezo' was my #2, it's one of those classic 'whole album condensed into one track' songs.

This poll is wiping me out. I sit at work all day and nothing, then as soon as I leave it all kicks off and I end up staring at ILM all night as well. Oh well, can't be helped.

Piezo is one of my favourite early Ae tracks. A real highlight off Amber, and it's all about that wolf/owl/howling noise that rises and falls from over the sand dunes.

I don't know Keynell. How is this? I guess I never really invested in Gescom all that much. Really like Go Sumo though.

go sumo is ok but go sheep's where it's at

YES. Keynell 4 is a goddamned minimal masterpiece of a chord progression. Looking forward to finding who picked that as their #1

hi!

I guess most people didn't vote for non-AE tracks in the main poll seeing as there was a separate poll for non-AE stuff. So maybe I had a different voting strategy than other people (i.e. who didn't want to vote twice for non-AE tracks, even though the rules specifically allowed for it) but I honestly can't think of a better AE/non-AE track (or EP) than this one.

People have been praising LP5 for sounding so "clean", but I prefer Autechre when they're sludgy, foreboding and intimidating. "Teartear" was my #2 , the hyper-aggressive "Basscadet (Bcdtmx)" was my #3, and two tracks from "Anvil Vapre" made my top 10.

"Keynell 4" is a kind of successor to "Teartear" with its chunky, lurching beats and then the synth parts pile on and on, striking this odd balance between peaceful sounding church organs and horror movie sound effects. The beats drop out far too soon (the best tracks are always the ones you wish would go on for another ten minutes, and since they don't, you have play them on repeat endlessly) but it's just the start of the second half of the song -- the most beautiful coda they ever recorded. And despite what I said earlier, this track technically never ends btw (the vinyl finishes with a locked groove).

go sumo is ok but go sheep's where it's at

oh no, that's the kind of farty jazz I just can't deal with.

Keynell is far and away the most definitely ae sounding of all the gescom releases from that period and 4 is the obvious highlight, no question 4 wasn't going in my top ten.

the vinyl finishes with a locked groove

really, what with? the cd version ends with a kind of digital insect buzz that zooms off into a high pitch, and there's a tiny coda of piston effects.

Go Sheep sounds exactly like a screensaver or a level on a point and click adventure involving a sheep.

Ha, I think I might have got Go Sumo & Go Sheep mixed up earlier. Go Sheep is OK but yeah, Sumo.

I'm sure I wrote a track back in 2000 that ripped off Go Sumo note for note. Good techno!

really, what with? the cd version ends with a kind of digital insect buzz that zooms off into a high pitch, and there's a tiny coda of piston effects.

It's the same as the CD version, but with the piston effects in the locked groove.

So I can't help but indulge in some top ten speculation. Lack of incunabulera so far worryingly suggests it might dominate.

Hmmm, doubt it. Not hearing a lot of Incunabula love ITT so far. What are the standout tracks on there? I like the jazzier moments personally but it's the album I've listened to the least out of all of them.

I think LP5 will dominate - Fold4 Wrap5, Rae, Arch Carrier and UnderBOAC are bound to place, right?. Surprised to see some Confield dead-certs already appearing but Pen Expers for all its horribleness will no doubt make it. Uviol is my fave off that album though and it's the one people tend to ignore.

Would love to make an Autechre ambient playlist - Overand, Uviol, Vletrmx, VI Scose Poise, Rettic AC - could be gorgeous!

VI Scose Poise is a sleeper favourite of mine, regret not voting for it now.

UnderBOAC (my #2) surely up there, I agree; Sublimit & SURRIPERE also.

No Untilted would annoy me. Think there is one with a chance (partially because I gave it a lot of points)

One more Draft is a cert, one Confield (outside chance of two), two Gantz Graf (reckon one of these will do VERY well)

lol xp well that's the Draft one. Went for a different Untilted tho

Shit sorry, meant two Confield, outside chance of 3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04flJC_4pv8

just got three minutes into this

is that rn a fusion of chexy with some organic compound

dn even

Still some more early EP tracks to come I'm sure.

xposts to nakh - haha that guy. i'll be looking forward to watching that over lunch.

I work on the phones and quite often I come across some on-hold music that sounds remarkably like something off of Incunabula.

My picks from Garbage, Amber, Anvil Vapre, LP5 and Confield, as well as one from Incunabula have not placed yet. I haven't ignored Uviol.

Listening to some of those upthread. Leterel is v pretty but feels like a completely different band to the Autechre I love. The outro is way the best bit, when it starts fucking around with the prettiness

Drane 2 builds nicely, but it's not got its namesake's moves. Feels a bit like an extended Mogwai electronics exercise or something ;)

Goes without saying but Confield is definitely the watershed album for fans isn't it? Parallels with Kid A.

I do like isolated bits from the early material heaps. Nakh turned me onto the aforementioned Drane (not 2) and it was crazy intense, gave me the similar mind-expanding buzz to the later stuff (while obviously being much simpler in composition). Looking forward to getting into more Chiastic Slide stuff as well.

Also, apparently the Gantz Graf EP was from the same period as LP5 and Chiastic, but was held back because they didn't know what the hell to do with it - soon all their music was at that level, though

But yeah, I think that most voters' ballots will reveal a strong preference for either earlier or later stuff

(earlier + oversteps/exai, I could add ;))

Wonder how many Quaristice songs got any votes at all...

I think comparing pre-Confield Autechre with post-Confield Autechre is a bit futile, imago. There's a definite change in what they were doing. It's hard to compare an album like LP5 with later Autechre because for one something like Drane2 was pretty-much unimaginable when it came out, and secondly I don't believe LP5 is trying for the same synaesthesiac effect as those later records. Something like 6IE CR makes me imagine THINGS - quite solid images, landscapes, caverns, icicles, geometric shapes or what have you, but LP5 - it's like listening to pure code. For the most part it's music for the sake of music and that's why I like it so much because I really can't think of anything else that does this. Arguably all music is supposed to be evocative of a setting or emotion or a time whereas LP5 doesn't really do this much at all.

lp5 segues nicely into confield, has the same glossy software sound and pellucidity deployed with different musical languages

xpost: I voted for Perlence. I've really warmed to Quaristice, more as a collection rather than specific tracks, voted it 7th on my LPs/EPs ballot ...

well yeah it works much better as a suite

I also voted for perlence. Perlence is my cell phone's ring tone.

lp5 segues nicely into confield, has the same glossy software sound and pellucidity deployed with different musical languages

― C21H23NO5 (nakhchivan), Thursday, October 2, 2014 1:58 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's true to an extent - there's not a lot of difference on the surface, but I feel as though Confield's tunes harbour a sense of narrative that (especially LP5 and to an extent EP7) don't.
It's hard for me to describe the way I feel towards the two albums, but if you take VI Scose Poise, it draws from a similar sine-wavey palate as Drane2. However the former song has always evoked, for me, some sort of glittering underground cave replete with rose-tinted crystal formations. Cfern represents the surface atmosphere of whatever planet these caves belong to - all bumpy rocks and barren landscapes. Uviol is a night marshland with amphibious fauna around it.
I get these highly-subjective 'visuals', if you will, from a lot of latter-Autechre whereas that mid-period is more about 'phwoar that chord sequence makes me feel emotions I didn't know I had' or 'how do they do that speed-up/slow-down thing on Fold4,Wrap5?' or 'Did he just say 'Is it washable?'.
In essence LP5-era Ae is 'pure music', with very very few moments actually making me visualise anything more tangible than a light pattern or geometric shape.
This might invite accusations of LP5 being a clinical record or lacking in emotional heft, but for me it's the opposite. The dearth of visual stimuli (the CD packaging is 100% charcoal grey with no artwork at all) amplifies those moments of emotion for me - like suddenly breaking down infront of an algorithm, a literal eureka moment.

xp Was tempted to vote for Altichyre off Quaristice (versions) - gorgeous fat synth chord progressions a la Leterel, untainted by any beats, but it's too slight for serious consideration.

I'm guilty of xposting ITT

Yeah there are no real standouts on Quaristice, it's just a bunch of great, relatively short, relatively lighthearted tracks strung together and it made a nice change after the onslaught of Untilted for me.

The one from the quaristice era that I voted for very high in my list is "The Plc ccc" off of Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae. The way the song just completely opens up a couple of minutes in is an amazing trick and is something that I can't really figure out. It's one of those things that autechre have done that I've never heard anywhere else.

I don't know how many people actually listened to quaristice era eps (I myself only got to them a couple of years after they were released), but I think they are actually better than the album. The reworked versions of the quaristice tracks give them a lot more depth and intensity.

Maybe I'm looking for something that isn't there but I always found "Is it washable?" to be hilarious because the music at that point sounds like a brick thrown in a washing machine.

VI Scose Poise is a sleeper favourite of mine, regret not voting for it now.

Yeah, me too, I regret not voting for this, something from "Envane", and maybe "Drane2".

I will be surprised if one or two more "Incunabula" tracks don't place. Maybe "Basscadet" or "444"? I voted for "Basscadet" and "Eggshell".

lp5 segues nicely into confield, has the same glossy software sound and pellucidity deployed with different musical languages

This is a really nice description. It took me a while to appreciate that "Confield" wasn't as big a departure from their earlier work as I thought at the time. The melody in "VI Scose Poise" could have appeared on "LP5", but the complicated interplay between the melody and the rhythms (and the subtleties of the rhythms) are nothing like what they'd done before.

by the way, where is the list of upcoming polls??

Maybe I'm looking for something that isn't there but I always found "Is it washable?" to be hilarious because the music at that point sounds like a brick thrown in a washing machine.

― Maggie killed Quagmire (collest baby ever) (frogbs), Thursday, October 2, 2014 2:45 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's such a great WTF LOL blink-and-you-miss-it moment on this otherwise ostensibly austere record. Actually UnderBOAC is one of the few that does make me think visuals, but I'll get round to that once it appears, if it does appear.

xp Was tempted to vote for Altichyre off Quaristice (versions) - gorgeous fat synth chord progressions a la Leterel, untainted by any beats, but it's too slight for serious consideration.

― If a job's worth doing it's worth doing, Horatio (ledge), Thursday, 2 October 2014 14:21 (34 minutes ago)

this is a stupid post, exquisite miniatures are quite as worthy as anything else

voted for both altibzz and altichyre