What Ae era was your favourite?

the confield, the draft, and the holy untilted 

I know some people who say Incunabula-Amber era and that is the only releases by Autechre they will ever listen to.
These people is mostly the same people who only likes Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and are into Depeche Mode or Soft Electro in spare time. 

What do these releases have in comon? Well there is Roland synths all over the place for the people who is familiar with that. 
It is very gently for the ear specially the Juno-Chords, Strings and Pad layers combined with Midiverb reverb effects. 

My advice for the people who can't listen to something else:

Life is filled with other sounds than just oldschool Roland synths and drum machines. Try explore more even if it's hard in the beginning! 

 

I’d be lying if I didn’t say 2000s. Confield-Draft-Untilted-Quaristice. My #3, #15, #2 & #20 from that decade respectively. And I got into them during that period as well.

autechre had a pretty good run from 1991-2021

for real though, amber got me into them and still cherish that album. confield and untilted completely enveloped me. quaristice-oversteps are just wild.

  On 2/4/2021 at 6:34 AM, zaizai said:

the confield, the draft, and the holy untilted 

+ gantz graf.  That was an impeccable run.  Not to undermine anything they've done since, but those four are damn near perfection to me.

  On 2/4/2021 at 2:13 AM, yekker said:

Pre confield. The more loopy stuff like

 

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This ep is probably my favourite of their early work. At least before LP5. 

the turning point, for me, is ep7, what happened before - even if already intense and full of very high moments ... laughing quarter is still a peak) I am inclined to see it as a preparatory phase for what would later be was a unique identity. And if it is true that the confield-draft-untilted phase is perhaps the one that has left an indelible mark in the history of electronics, AE_LIVE is for me the definitive jump in the elsewhere.

All of it through Gantz Graf.

  On 2/4/2021 at 8:11 AM, cern said:

Life is filled with other sounds than just oldschool Roland synths and drum machines. Try explore more even if it's hard in the beginning!

I like their more recent work too but I do miss the prettier sounds from their earlier days. One of the reasons I like SIGN so much is that it's sweeter to the ear than a lot of their late period stuff.

Im around Peel Session 2 and mighty Confield today!

As I can hear after all this listens from Lego Feet up to Confield it seems everything pretty changed on the music style with EP7.
It is a brilliant release because here it really shows what dirrection they were going.  

EP7 WAS THE GAME CHANGER! THIS IS THE DROPP! PERIOD
 

I'm overlapping with what a lot of people have already said here, but 1997-2001 for sure. Envane and Chiastic Slide are still two of my favorite releases ever and a total departure from what had come before. Then it seemed like they kept reinventing themselves with the frenetic angular sounds of LP5 and Cichlisuite, into the weirdness of the underrated EP7 (great to se it's a favorite here, I've grown to love it more and more as I get older) and closing with the completely out there for the time Confield.

Not to mention Key Nell and ISS:SA plus some of their best remixes. I love what came before and a lot of the stuff after, but that era was the right time and place to explore their discography at a young age.

I'm having a hard time thinking of any other artists that have had such a long run of consistently interesting releases. I'm glad to have them all.

  On 2/5/2021 at 5:30 PM, six said:

ISS:SA

Oh good call. I'd include this one in my LP5-Draft "era" run. Peel Session 2 as well - Gelk and Blifil are classics. 

Can't say I have favourite eras, but peak releases would be Amber, Anvil Vapre EP, Envane EP, & Exai. I choose these as their most consistent and engaging releases IMO. I haven't heard most of the live stuff or the Plus/Sign albums yet, too much music backlog to get through. Autechre are definitely the best at wowing me over the years, they don't seem to have gone into cruise mode at all, and they are the best at actually releasing music consistently over the years. 

Strangely I think my least favourite phase of theirs would be Confield, Draft & Untitled, which seems to be at odds with many opinions on here, I get the sense many on here see it as their peak phase.

  On 2/5/2021 at 1:25 PM, cern said:

EP7 WAS THE GAME CHANGER! THIS IS THE DROPP! PERIOD
 

 

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EP7 is flawless from start to finish. every cut on that record is unique and mindblowing. the final 1-2 punch of the angry, dark Netlon Sentinel followed by the serene calmness of Pir seals the deal. I don't know why EP7 isn't repped more.

EP7 is definitely one of their best and a big jump forward in their style when it came out. It kind of set the stage for a lot of what followed.

  On 2/5/2021 at 1:33 AM, kuniklo said:

I like their more recent work too but I do miss the prettier sounds from their earlier days. One of the reasons I like SIGN so much is that it's sweeter to the ear than a lot of their late period stuff.

I think Oversteps is my goto for the softer side of AE, but SIGN has some amazing tracks for sure, and I did welcome the shift in sound.

This is a bit of rambling, but I think one thing that happened to me over the years is my taste in terms of sonic elements got readjusted such that lush/sweet melodies or sounds moved from occupying a central focus to to just one crayon in the crayon box if you will. More than any other work of music, deep listening sessions to Draft 7.30 many years ago helped to open up my expectations about sonic possibilities.

Having said that, I still instantly fall in love with tracks like Metaz form8 and gr4... but it's actually stuff like the Onesix recordings that I find the most satisfying.

First one I bought was Draft 7:30, which was my first Autechre, so perhaps in the never-to-be-underestimated "You attach to what you hear first" way, I like Draft (loved it right away), Untitled (loved it right away), Quaristice (was super confused... listened to Versions as the 'real' album at first. There was too much material, to sort out. Now overall, love it, but it took a long time to get over all that confusion). And Exai, which feels like an extension to me with a detour for Oversteps on the way. In other words, the Draft->Exai run feels like the most complex composed run for me, and I'll listen to those albums straight through, and that's kind of their aesthetic I like best. Obviously I like things all over the place. With the explosion of your AE_lives etc., I no longer have such a detailed relationship to the material. I know 'I like that track at the start of NTS 1'. I can't remember the names or places of things as well, there's too much. I was amused Autechre joked about classical track names being unhelpful. Theirs are bloody unhelpful!

But yeah - Draft->Exai for me.

-Wade

  On 2/6/2021 at 12:22 PM, djimbe said:

First one I bought was Draft 7:30, which was my first Autechre, so perhaps in the never-to-be-underestimated "You attach to what you hear first" way, I like Draft (loved it right away), Untitled (loved it right away), Quaristice (was super confused... listened to Versions as the 'real' album at first. There was too much material, to sort out. Now overall, love it, but it took a long time to get over all that confusion). And Exai, which feels like an extension to me with a detour for Oversteps on the way. In other words, the Draft->Exai run feels like the most complex composed run for me, and I'll listen to those albums straight through, and that's kind of their aesthetic I like best. Obviously I like things all over the place. With the explosion of your AE_lives etc., I no longer have such a detailed relationship to the material. I know 'I like that track at the start of NTS 1'. I can't remember the names or places of things as well, there's too much. I was amused Autechre joked about classical track names being unhelpful. Theirs are bloody unhelpful!

But yeah - Draft->Exai for me.

-Wade

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draft->exai was the era of micro details to be identified and related in matryoshkas of possibility, which is the cornerstone of "oh! i get it!" after a year of ear work... AE_LIVE is the eruption of Krakatoa, stop running and surrender to the lava river that is overwhelming you. I conceive Elseq and NTS as a rationalization, which presents a series of scenarios in which to be in contemplation, although this is clearly a simplification: there are many cases in which the evolving "narrative" plays a dominant role, such as 13ctrl or latentcall

Today Im on the Untilted + Live at Glasgow and Quaristice + EP + Versions Including IOS & Digits amazing recordning of the legendary AE 08 Live set.

In this 05-08 era as you know it all seems to be produced with Elektron Machinedrum, Monomachine, MPC and Nord Modular stuff! The sounds and tunes are really playful here! Probably the most playfull time ever in their career! You can here different melodies just come and go as Quaristice got short tracks "snippets".

I still wish they had recorded more stuff from that time! It is like like a kid just spreading all the lego around in a room.

So the conclusion is no matter how our individual 's are wired there will be a specific AEngineered pathway for everyone to enjoy.

That's quite incredible. 

This thread motivated me to go back and listen to Oversteps again. Like a lot of Ae records I'm enjoying it much more in hindsight. I think I just really hate the 3rd track but the rest of it is right up there with their best work.

  On 2/8/2021 at 1:55 AM, kuniklo said:

This thread motivated me to go back and listen to Oversteps again. Like a lot of Ae records I'm enjoying it much more in hindsight. I think I just really hate the 3rd track but the rest of it is right up there with their best work.

I skip known(1) every time I listen to oversteps

the rest of the album is good but that track is just annoying (mostly because of the skipping-cd sound) 

The Tri Repetera