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

my ballot:

1. Pen Expers
2. Cap. IV
3. Surripere
4. VLetrmx
5. The Plc ccc
6. Cfern
7. Arch Carrier
8. V-Proc
9. Eidetic Casein
10. Under BOAC
11. Zeiss Contarex
12. Dial.
13. Perlence
14. bladelores
15. Autechre Play At Drowning In A Sea Of Indiependance
16. spl9
17. pce freeze 2.8i
18. Ccec
19. recks on
20. Gantz Graf

I too am on the Cloudline bandwagon following mentions ITT. If I'd clocked it properly before it would have ranked quite high in my ballot. Puts me in mind of Funkadelic or something, that one and I'm a sucker for formant filter vocal effects or whatever it is. Otherwise Uviol is the latest released track on my ballot.

I only named 14 tracks on my main list. May well be some changes if doing it again. Thanks to the organisers and contributors, it's been fun!

Goz Quarter
Glitch
Corc
444
Uviol
Overand
Cichli
Tilapia
Secong Peng
Fold4, Wrap5
Draun Quarter
VLetrmx21
Cipater
Montreal

thanks for doing this Leee and ledge. I had a lot of fun rediscovering autechre. the tracks that didn't make the top 50 are in bold.

1. Rettic AC
2. Ccec
3. Recury
4. Eutow
5. Acroyear2
6. Clipper
7. Leterel
8. Sim Gishel
9. Rae
10. Nil
11. Bine
12. Liccflii
13. Rsdio
14. Gelk
15. Simmm
16. Basscadet
17. Pen Expers
18. Dropp
19. Pir
20. Foil

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

This was a really interesting rollout to follow as a non-voter, esp since the work is on Spotify and I could drop in and listen along when the comments really piqued my interest. Favorite new discovery - Vletrmx.

Yes, many thanks for all your efforts Leee and Ledge.

Autechre newbies following this are also recommended to checkout the individual LP/EP poll threads that Leee organised a few years back. First one is here: IncunaPOLLa -- Autechre :: LP1 :: Incunabula and I think each thread has a link to the next somewhere in the posts, so you can follow the trail all the way to Oversteps/MOT.

I credit those threads with reviving my interest in AE, which had flagged a bit. They inspired me to try again with Confield and pick up Draft 7.30 / Quaristice, which are now some of my favourite albums, by anyone.

lol the world is only now ready for the early noughties shit

was continually consulting those threads fwiw, they're a useful resource

lots of ballots with plenty of later stuff, three of us with both cap.iv and surripere in the top 3

Great poll! Thanks guys... I'll be back with a few thoughts on the last few entries - particularly Arch Carrier, my #1.

Looks like most of my choices made it in. Whoop!

Still, I was listening to Zeiss Contarex, which has to count as the most evil insidious track they've ever made (WTF are those scratching, cackling noises at the beginning?! Mummy!!) and sad it didn't place higher. Netlon Sentinel could have made an appearance too - pure apocalypse.

Arch Carrier
Cichli
Pir
Rae
Maphive 6.1
Piezo
Fold4, Wrap5
Netlon Sentinel
Garbagemx
Zeiss Contarex
Under BOAC
Slip
Gelk
Vose In
Krib
Eutow
Milk DX
Leterel
d-sho qub
V-Proc

Last four tracks of EP7 all on your ballot - that run of tracks is probably my favourite discovery of the poll, they're all superlative. Maphive and Netlon especially may have troubled the upper reaches of my ballot. More even than LP5, those tracks may represent the most balanced moment of transition between Autechre and Autechre 2.0

Agree. EP7.2 is my favourite run of any autechre

Thanks Lee and ledge -- I've listened to more Autechre in the past two weeks than I had in the past couple of years. My opinion on the post-Gantz Graf stuff has been slowly shifting over the years so it's always nice to have a reason to revisit that stuff.

#1 was a big surprise -- is this the first ILM poll where the winning track didn't get a single #1 vote? I thought that "Arch Carrier" was a shoo-in, seeing that LP5 won the albums poll and most of the tracks from it finished in the top 50.

I sort of regret splitting the "Basscadet" vote by voting for one of the remixes, if I'd voted for the original then it would have finished somewhere in the low 30's.

I think this was the "purest" ILM poll that I've participated in. With most polls, there's a subtle bias in the ballots depending on how voters feel about the established canon, where people leave out some obvious hits for somewhat challopsy reasons so they can get a few of their secondary faves into the poll (obviously I am guilty of this as well). I think with Autechre, the canon is established for albums but not so much for individual tracks (or even EPs), and I think it's reflected in the final results. People voted for their favourite songs without really caring about what other voters would do. This is how it should be!

Key Nell 4
Teartear
Basscadet (Bcdtmx)
Piezo
Stud
Recury
Cap.IV
Second Peng
Chatter
Second Bad Vilbel
Arch Carrier
Cipater
Cichli
Lentic Catachresis
Garbagemx36
Silverside
Eggshell
VLetrmx
Flutter
d-sho qub

Loved this poll. I voted without relistening and revisited the albums during the roll out (and I loved how long the roll out was cos it resulted in some great discussion). Having heard everyone else's pics I could conceivably vote for 20 different tracks, but this is what I went for

Drane
Vlertrmx
Doctrine
Garbagrmx
Second Bad Vibel
Further
Kalpol Intro
Windwind
Yulquen
444
Eutow
Silverside
Arch Carrier
Foil
Montreal
Melve
Bladelores
Slip
Glitch
Nine

"Chatter" is a jam.

I think with Autechre, the canon is established for albums but not so much for individual tracks (or even EPs), and I think it's reflected in the final results.

Along with what nakh said about canon-building being equivalent to entombing them, I think that the clear divisions in their discography (melodic/pretty vs. throbbing noise) sets up a few camps of listeners, and the different perspective that each camp comes from reveals a novel understanding or appreciation of all the work. I think a lot of us have gotten a new appreciation onto tracks we'd dismissed or hadn't even heard of before, so that instead of a sepulchre (or even the vivisepulchre), this top 50 is explicitly a snapshot of taste at a specific time, and that if we were to do this again in a couple years' time (considering my history of doing such things, not out of the question!), the results would look pretty different ("Cichli" would still probably win though!).

I kinda always knew Cichli would get #1, yet no one actually voted for it as their own #1. Interesting. Also, outside of Arch Carrier, no other song had more than 1 vote as #1. I love how so many people can latch onto and love different facets of this band in very different ways. Speaks to their talent, diversity of output and staying power. My ballot:

Song poll
1 Cipater
2 drane2
3 Psi-Onyx (Psix Million Dollar Myx Oscar Goldmans Bonus)
4 Eutow
5 C/Pach
6 Key Nell 4
7 d-sho qub
8 444
9 Clipper
10 Goz Quarter
11 Cichli
12 are y are we
13 jatavee C
14 Inhake 2
15 bladelores
16 Pir
17 M39 Diffain
18 Simmm
19 Second Scout
20 Surripere

Album/EP Poll
1 Chiastic Slide
2 Exai
3 Tri Repetae
4 LP5
5 Untilted
6 Envane
7 Incunabula
8 Draft 7:30
9 Anvil Vapre
10 Cichlisuite

Remix Poll
1 Psi-Onyx (Psix Million Dollar Myx Oscar Goldmans Bonus)
2 Aveugle & Sourd (Autechre Mix)
3 Viral Rival (Rmxd By Ae)
4 Keynell Mix 1
5 Tunnels Ov Set Autechre Remix

Non-AE poll
1 Gescom - Key Nell 4
2 Gescom - Go Sheep
3 Lego Feet - Leaves on the Line
4 Gescom - Key Nell 1
5 Gescom - Go Sumo

Oh and thanks Leee for putting this together! I had been anticipating this poll for quite a while now and it's been showering me in nostalgic musical bliss all week.

favorite remix is of d'breez "crazy for love"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1bTis9ee3U

Along with what nakh said about canon-building being equivalent to entombing them, I think that the clear divisions in their discography (melodic/pretty vs. throbbing noise) sets up a few camps of listeners, and the different perspective that each camp comes from reveals a novel understanding or appreciation of all the work. I think a lot of us have gotten a new appreciation onto tracks we'd dismissed or hadn't even heard of before, so that instead of a sepulchre (or even the vivisepulchre), this top 50 is explicitly a snapshot of taste at a specific time, and that if we were to do this again in a couple years' time (considering my history of doing such things, not out of the question!), the results would look pretty different ("Cichli" would still probably win though!).

― cichleee suite (Leee), Saturday, 4 October 2014 19:43 (3 hours ago)

yeah, i like things from everything they have released (note that solitary vote for accelera) so it was good to see partisans for all of those

i didnt realise cichli was quite this popular, i guessed eutow might get #1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr3CCv6OvDo

I really thought Leterel would place higher. It was my number one and I'm a proud mf for voting for it despite it getting some disrespect upper in the thread. Its a great tune but really I didn't know whether to put that first or Clipper so its nice to see the latter place high.

Listening to Confield again now and it is fckn magnificent.

Cheers all and especially Leee for reigniting my love for this weird and special music.

1. GoSheep (Gescom)
2. Bronchusevenmx
3. Yulquen
4. Arch Carrier
5. Cichli
6. Fold4, Wrap5
7. VI scose poise
8. Overand
9. Maphive 6.1
10. VLetrmx
11. Krib
12. Further
13. Goz Quarter
14. Rotar
15. Flutter
16. Under Boac
17. Drane
18. Lowride
19. Nil
20. Clipper

yes this was really great thanks lee and all for the kewl write-ups, also the roll-out pace was great as it allowed me to bitch

ty Leee

Leterel
Clipper
Eutow
Drane
Cichli
Gelk
Cipater
Krib
Basscadet
Dael
Stud
Rpeg
Gantz Graf
ylm0
pt2ph8
d-sho qub
Hub
M62
Milk DX
Inhake 2

also the roll-out pace was great as it allowed me to bitch

lol ur welcome. I don't follow these results threads much -- was this on the slow side?

can't find an autechre remix thread so am bumping the most recent ae thread as that'll be the one people have bookmarked.

anyway, ae remix article in this month's wired.

You mean the wire.

yes, i do (bought both this morning)

disappointingly the magazine is nothing like the tv series.

if there was a magazine called Wired all about the show the Wire it would make life even more complicated than it already is.

So it appears that a bracing immersion in the top half of this poll was the best way to get into Autechre after a couple of failed attempts. I suppose I made a mistake starting with Incunabula and Amber, both of which did very little for me bar one or two tracks, and I never had the interest to explore further into the supposedly more 'difficult' records. This is partly because the discourse around Autechre is almost uniquely terrible - cf their supposed shift from warmth to coldness throughout their career, when to these ears something like Confield sounds way warmer than Incunabula. All those crackling and purring noises and emberish melodies, it's like watching a fire.

I'd always liked Cap IV but assumed that was an outlier, but the run from Chiastic Slide to Confield, once they start playing more with meter and texture, is just so great. And their melodies get better as well. Been taking it one album after the next and I'm about to plunge into Draft and onwards. But yeah, good work all concerned here.

I still think LP5 is the best way to get into these dudes

The idea of Autechre as having ever made 'cold' music is one of the biggest misnomers around their music. If it were so I'd probably not be a fan. Glad you got into them Matt DC. The run you mention is my favourite era. Found things a little bumpy from then on up until the Quaristice era, but as this poll proves, there are plenty who will rep for Draft and Untilted.

X post yeah LP5 was my introduction to them.

I've been re-discovering my love for "Leterel," well done, voters.

The idea of Autechre as having ever made 'cold' music is one of the biggest misnomers around their music. If it were so I'd probably not be a fan

I do think that the gap between "what they sound like if you like them" and "what they sound like them if you don't like them" is about as big as it could be for any group

there is cold as shorthand for the emotional froideur that people find in neutral abstract forms that do not go out of their way to engage them....

that might be a misunderstanding, though there is something in it too, neutral implacability and indifference is integral to the sublime

then by the same measure, sean booth has said that when they make violent and choleric music, that directness is misread or not read at all and it gets described as just 'complex' as if it is that were an end in itself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_JCt0jv86I

the exai bonus track, never got around to this before but its got a chimey mid 90s feel to it

wow yeah. their japan bonus tracks often feel a bit throwaway but that is lovely. a few untilted era sounds hidden in there.

that was gorgeous

yeah id agree with both parts there ledge

the untilted trebly electro sound is gorgeous although compositionally its not quite up to confield or draft

where can i see the full recap?

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

"Nuane" is one of my top 10 faves i think, so satisfying in every department

that whole album and especially that track gives me this vibe of abandoned missile silos in siberia

i love the way it descends into that final outro of chattering teletype noise and the way they let it run on

been in a real Autechre mood since it turned out my housemate has had a vinyl copy of Draft7.30 stashed away and didn't tell me. Man, that album did nothing for me when I first heard it but it's taken this long to really show its colours. I always heard it as an extremely rhythmic, monochromatic album with few melodies, but listening to the record in the kitchen on my battered old portable turntable somehow made the basslines and more melodic textures jump out loads. There are at least 3 tracks on there that I'd consider putting in my top 10 or 20 tunes now, whereas before I'd written it off as a dud.

This is an interesting poll. If I'd have put money on it, I'd have expected Arch Carrier to win outright but it got beaten by a good few places. Funny that Cichli, the winner, didn't get any number 1 votes. Also strange that Cap.IV, the third track on a relatively obscure stand-alone single made it right into the top 5 - not a track I'd have expected to place so high.

It's a shame Dropp and Outpt ranked so low - two peas from the same pod that rely on a very simple idea executed really well on EP7.

The top ten is a jumble of my all-time faves and ones that just never really registered or moved me (VletRmx, Clipper, Pen Expers, the latter which I find actively horrible).

I also wonder, if we were to do this again with the latest album included, would more late-period Ae place? Much as I love Cichli and Arch Carrier etc, it's interesting to hear how some of their music has aged. LP5 sounded like the most complicated, futuristic, impossible music ever at the time and now it sounds relatively flat-pan, poppy even. I can't even listen to Amber any more although strangely Incunabula sounds better than ever these days

'latentcall' would have a shout of making the top ten i think

c16 deep tread would be in there too i'd hope

LP5 sounded like the most complicated, futuristic, impossible music ever at the time and now it sounds relatively flat-pan, poppy even.

hah I know exactly what you mean. I still think their pre-Confield material holds up quite well (Amber still sounds great to me), but yea LP5 sounds a bit gimmicky now, though my opinion there is probably colored by the fact that I too thought that was probably the pinnacle of IDM and maybe electronic music in general at some point

would be interesting to run this again, especially given that Ae's stuff generally tends to run through a three-year cycle of "This is hardly music!" -> "It's actually pretty good, just different" -> "Absolutely classic". As great as they were in the past, every time I want to listen to them I wind up playing something from the last 10 years. "d sho qub" would be my #1 if I were to take it again.

a three-year cycle of "This is hardly music!" -> "It's actually pretty good, just different" -> "Absolutely classic"

Or even 15 years in some cases (fuck, how did Draft come out FIFTEEN YEARS AGO???)

Anyone else think of Autechre in terms of 'eras' above albums, a bit like console generations? For fear of starting yet another Ae poll, this is how it's organised in my head:

1st era - Incunabula, Amber, Tri Repetae
This is the trickiest to define really since each album sounds quite different from the last, but it's kind of them starting out, finding their sound etc. Incunabula and Amber were groundbreaking and full of great ideas, but in retrospect slot nicely in with the Warp/Artificial Intelligence roster. Tri Repetae certainly points to the granular, mechanoid sound that would come to define them.

2nd era - Chiastic Slide, LP5, EP7
This is the 'classical' period for me. They've worked out who they are and are making a completely unique sound away from most. I still go back to these albums all the time. Chiastic Slide still sounds challenging. LP5 is actually a little more accessible and has fantastic flatplan melodies for days. EP7 is just a chocolate box of great ideas.

3rd era - Confield, Draft7.30, Untilted
I guess I'd call this a 'wilderness' era. Confield was so hyped at the time but compared to the (relatively) accessible sounds of LP5, I always found it an abstruse and awkward listen. I treid and tried with that one, but I felt like there was something I wasn't getting, and that any attempt to 'enjoy' it felt a bit like I was eating my greens. I've come around to Draft and Untilted in recent years, but at first I was disappointed by the focus on pure beats and lack of pretty hooks. It also felt like this kind of music was losing its cachet around this time - Aphex was to all but stop releasing new music in the 2000s, Plaid were in a creative dead-end, and dubstep and minimal house stepped in to fill the 'home listening electronica' hole (except you could dance to it).

4th era - Quaristice, Oversteps
I'm not sure what you'd call this period, maybe the 'First Data Era'? Often overlooked, I see it as a creative (if not commercial) bounce-back. A bigger focus on melodies and the kind of playfulness heard on LP5 and EP7 rather than the po-faced hyper-intelligent rhythmic overdrive of Untilted. Quaristice is an outlier in that it seems to be made up of short vignettes that keep things moving along. Oversteps is a really enjoyable 12-track album you can listen to in one sitting without getting a headache. But conversely, it's also the start of Autechre proliferating multiple accompanying albums which bulked-out their output considerably. No longer was it about a handy collection of tracks but a huge sprawl of sounds that would only multiply as the years went on.

5th era - Exai, elseq, NTS Sessions
I remember reviewing Exai and wondering at the time whether a double album of Autechre was really necessary, expecially when I was struggling to catch up with quaristice.quadrange and Move of Ten. Were I to know exactly how much material they'd go on to release in the 2010s, I would have kept quiet. The Second Data Era is defined as much by the medium as the message: the format being one of the most remarkable things about it. The fact they were able to release the whole of the NTS Sessions on vinyl (whereas they'd stipulated that MP3 was the preferred format on previous releases), was interesting but not surprising. Autechre have always stayed firm about being a breaks-based act and it would make sense that their music is playable on a vinyl format.