Autechre. Live. Twentytwentytwo.

  On 10/8/2022 at 2:04 AM, eye said:

Yeah, was wondering whether the first set also had all these pretty straightforward hiphop beats and the scratching. Had a lot of groove to it.

 

Had someone in the back row doing some erratic random clapping for like ten minutes in the last part of the second set, pretty weird.

Haha fuck that might have been me sorry

The shrooms kicked in hard in the second set, the sound near the middle of the back row was amazing (we were further down and to the side for first set) and the set was like they just kept finding more and more incredible ways to do a backflip - every time they did one I would get excited and punch my open palm and grab my pal next to me.

Really genuinely sorry if it was distracting . Guys in front were chatting through the first set and that annoyed me no end.

This is probably partly down to the sound where we were but I found the first set to be pretty pummeling and somewhat slippery and dissonant. There was little to get a handle on a lot of the time and it seemed to be constantly mutating while being a bit static dynamically and I found it hard to pick up a kind of narrative through line if that makes sense.

Don't get me wrong, it's autechre so I'm not making any kind of final judgements on the material, the problem was much more likely my ability to process it in the moment. I have no doubt there is a future me (possibly in like 10 - 20 years) listening to a soundboard of it being like fucking hell how did I miss how good this was?

Perhaps conversely i think i would have enjoyed it a lot more in a warehouse rave setting.

But the second set, HOLY SHIT fellas. It was pure Al (that's me, Al) pleasing. It seemed way more dynamically varied and had a much more graspable arc, so while the middle section was as hectic as anything in the first set it worked a lot better for me (at the time, in that space) in the context of the entire set.

Then the last 20 minutes or so was like the funkiest ae boom bap I think I ever heard. Iirc Sean mentioned making a scratching patch in the recent AMA and that was all over it, by the end I was like panting and tearing up at how great a thing I just witnessed. It was everything I could hope for an autechre set to be.

I really really hope they got the recording. Sean Pls.

Afterwards we went round to the terrace and had a beer for a bit or at least until security asked us to leave . I made the mistake of taking a huge hit on my mate's vape. He told me after I finished coughing it was THC distillate so that made the journey home a bit of quest I would have rather not taken part in; had 3 separate encounters with apparently insane/incoherent coked up Londoners that very definitely harshed my already fairly harsh buzz.

On a personal note, this was my first time getting out-out after losing my old man about 3 weeks ago (and welcoming a new son into the world about 8 weeks ago - it's been a bit of a rollercoaster) and I'm so glad it was as mind blowing a time (the gig, not the unwelcome night bus odyssey) as it was.

Cheers Sean & Rob!

  On 10/8/2022 at 4:34 AM, commercial said:

Who's the best person on the forum currently for sorting out files?

I have recordings of both Barbican sets but they will need some subtle mastering attention and hosting somewhere, I don't have a mega account etc. I'd like W.A.T.M.M.ers to be able to hear them but don't want them splashing all over YouTube...

Mixed feelings about this lol

On the one hand, want to hear the second set again. On the other hand, don't want to hear my excitement spoiling it

  On 10/8/2022 at 5:31 AM, hello spiral said:

I sniffed that motherfucking merch table out. I am good at that.

Oh, I'm going to need one, too. Hopefully they'll have some in the shop after the tour.

  On 10/8/2022 at 3:00 AM, jaderpansen said:

wasn't even aware they'd play TWO sets today omg. would've srsly considererd the trip for that...

anyone able to compare both with the Helsinki one maybe?

dial and scratching? so was the second one more like a mixing set?

1st set was very close to the Helsinki set - seemed to hit all the same points with the same overall structure. It sounded harder and more aggressive but that could have just been the volume. 

  On 10/8/2022 at 11:08 AM, EXTRASUPER81 said:

Mixed feelings about this lol

On the one hand, want to hear the second set again. On the other hand, don't want to hear my excitement spoiling it

If whoever works on it could do some spectral/dynamic trickery to take me out of it it would very appreciated 

need to hear that second set asap

  On 10/8/2022 at 11:42 AM, kausto said:

need to hear that second set asap

I wasn't on anything, but there was that moment on the second set, three quarters in, before the groovy stuff...

It gave me orgasmic shivers, tail-bone to hair, as a sort of a dark oily resonant sea-wave crashed on me as i "was" an indoor cave beach on a cthulhuian planet.

  On 10/8/2022 at 11:57 AM, BoaufStroganoff said:

I wasn't on anything, but there was that moment on the second set, three quarters in, before the groovy stuff...

It gave me orgasmic shivers, tail-bone to hair, as a sort of a dark oily resonant sea-wave crashed on me as i "was" an indoor cave beach on a cthulhuian planet.

Wicked.

I've no doubt i would have been enjoyed it massively straight as well, it was so fucking good. It wasn't the shrooms doing it, it was definitely them.

  On 10/8/2022 at 11:42 AM, kausto said:

need to hear that second set asap

Tell Commercial you're good at mastering! I would do it but I'm really not very good at it, much better for someone with some chops in that area to do it.

@amni was the one who did a lot of “mastering” work on some of the live shows a few years ago 

I did the second set and found it really loud and abrasive. I might have been in a spot that had a particular mode cause my eardrums were rattling without ear protection.

  On 10/8/2022 at 1:59 AM, Shimon_Shimon said:

Not sure the Barbican is the right venue though, no atmosphere, though there was some whooping and a lot of clapping towards the end of the 2nd set. 

Hard disagree.
I've never heard them so loud and clean live. I thought it was great.

someone uploaded first show

Jealous of you Barbican lot, sounds like it was amazing. Had my first listen of the Helsinki flac this morning and it was unreal 

Rob dropped the ball a bit by shouting "I love you Paris" at the end

some parts of second set

  On 10/8/2022 at 2:51 PM, kausto said:

some parts of second set

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Love that ambient parts!!!

  On 10/8/2022 at 2:56 PM, xox said:

Love that ambient parts!!!

holy hell that sounds rad!

this twentytwentytwo makes my brain produce astonishment. Generally astonishment is an initial feeling, with a limited duration, and cannot be replicated on an acquired fact. In this case my brain secretes this thing in a constant stream for the whole duration of each exposure

  On 10/8/2022 at 5:31 AM, hello spiral said:

dude there were like 20 of us there (chatmmers rather than watmmers I guess) this was pregig at brewdog

Damn, thought there would've had to have been some sort of pre-show meet. Shame I didn't catch you man

One thing that I completely underestimated was the effect of the performance being in complete darkness (aside from a few pin point lighting from the ceiling rig electronics and a couple of dots on stage). It completely threw me time wise - I honestly had no conception of whether they'd being playing for 5 minutes or an hour, and that happened for the entire performance (however long that was!). I knew this was going to happen, but the reality and my expectation of how I would experience that was far removed. Like you look at a high building thinking: 'yeah bet that's a bit mad at the top' vs you actually standing on the ledge of said building and you mind is screaming 'FFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUu....'

Without trying to make it sound like I hated it (which I didn't - the whole experience was overwhelmingly good) the disparity between the complete darkness and the extreme sonics felt exactly like the sensation I have when I have an overnight fever: Rational parts of my mind occasionally pop in reminding me this is only a temporary thing, but the majority of the time I'm thinking 'Well this is me, here, forever then - stuck in some sort of infinite space where nothing really makes any sort of physical or logical sense. I am really not going to survive this'. God knows what it felt like for anyone that was on any kind of psychedelic - Hell I felt like I was on psychedelics ! As with my aforementioned feverish episodes, I didn't know whether to close my eyes or not, the sensation was the same but it seemed a bit less intense when closed !

Wild stuff. Would highly recommend: was exactly as intimidating as I thought seeing Ae live would be.

(ps. Have the boys ever mentioned how they can actually perform in such darkness, like how on earth can they see what they're doing on any of their devices with not even a screen to cast some semblance of light onto anything !)

The primavera set I attended, the Helsinki soundboard recording and the snippets from Barbican, all seems to indicate they have finally realized the  “live set as a complete real time generated album” concept. So much detail, so much ambience and naunce and variety on every set… I personally can’t wait for the soundboard recording for all these concerts, it’s already for me the most interesting Autechre period by far, they’re the Miles Davis or Can for this age. 

  On 10/8/2022 at 2:51 PM, kausto said:

some parts of second set

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what the actual fuck... guess that anwers my question what they were doing the last two years. they really got various versions of this set ready, now i guess we JUST NEED MOAR DATES to collect em all... *wink*

  On 10/8/2022 at 2:47 PM, oscillik said:

Hard disagree.
I've never heard them so loud and clean live. I thought it was great.

Yeah I love the Barbican. The whole estate is amazing, reminds me of Syndicate on the Amiga. Less guns/murder tho.

  On 10/8/2022 at 4:14 PM, EXTRASUPER81 said:

Yeah I love the Barbican. The whole estate is amazing, reminds me of Syndicate on the Amiga. Less guns/murder tho.

It's a common haunt for me, photographically speaking