AE_2022－

  On 9/21/2023 at 6:15 AM, dcom said:

I've been listening to the live sets plenty of times, and I've repeatedly caught myself thinking "do I actually like this, or am I listening to it just because it's Autechre?"

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That's a feeling that I've often had with Ae (and still have from time to time) and that I don't really get with any other artist. Listening to other artists, I usually just hit the skip button and forget about it, but with Ae I somehow always keep returning to stuff of theirs that I didn't like initially. I listened to Quarsitice for maybe a decade before getting into it haha. (It's now one of my fav records of theirs)

  On 9/21/2023 at 5:28 PM, gnarlybog said:

I feel the same at times, but think thats ok. it's challenging music. 

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I don't mind challenging, it's just so stochastic that it's almost random noise, and that's boring algorithmic nonsense. It's different live, when it's an experience, but listening to the recordings becomes almost a chore.

  On 9/21/2023 at 5:47 PM, AnwarAutokino said:

That's a feeling that I've often had with Ae (and still have from time to time) and that I don't really get with any other artist. Listening to other artists, I usually just hit the skip button and forget about it, but with Ae I somehow always keep returning to stuff of theirs that I didn't like initially. I listened to Quarsitice for maybe a decade before getting into it haha. (It's now one of my fav records of theirs)

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I definitely get this with Autechre, but also the other big 'IDM' names. When you've got artists who've made some of your all time favourite music you're going to give their newer stuff a lot more of a chance, even if you're not feeling it at the time.

I've been listening to Splesh or TBM2 or something, grimacing my way through and not actually enjoying it at all. With Autechre though I'll often come back to it another time and find something interesting there.

it's different with, for example, Unreal Square by Squarepusher. That went from 'I think this song's pretty bad' to 'This song absolutely sucks lol'.

  On 9/21/2023 at 6:07 PM, danshoebridge said:

 When you've got artists who've made some of your all time favourite music you're going to give their newer stuff a lot more of a chance, even if you're not feeling it at the time.

 

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Yes, in part there is the awareness that by insisting, even things that do not initially strike me can hide the "secret", but there is also another fact: together with the initial rejection, even in those cases, there is something that piques my curiosity, that makes me think about it, regardless of the fact that it is Ae. This is in fact the reason that lead me to return to them often, the first times, when for me they were still one name among many to explore in the then new -at last to me - panorama of electronics. The other things then faded away, but autechre became a cornerstone. It must mean something I guess

  On 9/21/2023 at 5:49 PM, dcom said:

I don't mind challenging, it's just so stochastic that it's almost random noise, and that's boring algorithmic nonsense. It's different live, when it's an experience, but listening to the recordings becomes almost a chore.

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the first half is more hostile, but I don't find it stochastic. Once I get the hang of it, it works

2022 Helsinki was my third Autechre in-person live gig, and I've been a fan for 30 years, but I think it's starting to fade in a very similar way - but for different reasons - my RDJ fandom began to shrivel not long after Analord. I do love Autechre and they've been the longest constant in my extrapersonal music life; SIGN and PLUS are amazing and brought their more contemporary output back to focus for me, but I have so much other music in my life that I can't be arsed to listen to things that require way too much repetition for me to acclimate to. Don't get me wrong, I (mostly) prefer musical complexity over naivete (which minimalism is not), but I've never liked pseudorandom rhythmic noise. I'm glad that there are people who do.

these exchanges brought me back to listening to the entire bergen. I was probably in a particularly receptive moment.. what an immense journey. It's like getting on the Galaxy Express 999 and watching volumes and dimensions amalgamate and transform perpetually through the window. At 10.43 there is a moment of haughty peace, surrounded by slightly jazzy phrasing that is gold, and that moment of uncertain quiet at 16.52, which slowly loses balance and falls at 18.07 on harmonies that proceed and create reverse becoming alien breaths... and then the crazy (gamelanesque) accents at 22:40 while infinite tonalities and martian toads are added to the delirious march (the 4 front notes, obsessively repeated, distract a lot from the battle raging below... it took some time to ignore them). 25:35  .. At 29:57 the route turns towards darker scenarios, with that epic peak at 33:17, and then descends into that succession of nostalgia and echoes of childhood (yep, it has this effect on me) until the end.

honestly - for now - these sets put me on a much more sexy journey than london b, and I definitely prefer them to onesix

I totally love the complex sounds and odd noisy rhythms.. Most of it is very funky and the highlight for me Is still London B-side. It goes more into Ae's signature sound! 
But unfortunately I find most parts to be very "aggressive" like they have no other purpose than just bashing so much noisy Non-linear (More random) sounds as possible 

What I miss in general is tracks like "Bladelores" that has this huge depth and atmosphere combined with a fine rhythm. 
That stuff I can have on loop for days!
 

  On 9/21/2023 at 5:49 PM, dcom said:

I don't mind challenging, it's just so stochastic that it's almost random noise, and that's boring algorithmic nonsense. It's different live, when it's an experience, but listening to the recordings becomes almost a chore.

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Stochasticism isn’t in a spectrum 

Note to self 09-2023: I'll never get into their AE_LIVE stuff. Lots of kinda algorithmic beats with no transients, like recorded in next room, filtered... lots of other frequencies output. I'm old. I need hand-crafted music. (Glimpses of) Melodies. Music theory. Kontrapunkt. Great ideas. Not noodling. Did I say "noodling"? Oh.

Last good stuff was NTS. Sign/Plus was mediocre. I prefer ABBA "Lay all your love on me" over AE_LIVE rn.

They went out of ideas if you ask me. Hiding that behind some max/msp mystery, fans like things they don't understand.

Sean said in an interview that the newer live stuff was "more curves than points" or something like that. It's true. So no Kontrapunkt, sorry. I don't think they ever had ideas, it has always been "fuckery" from day 1

u folks mental, shit slaps.

  On 9/22/2023 at 1:01 PM, WurstPLUS said:

They went out of ideas if you ask me. Hiding that behind some max/msp mystery, fans like things they don't understand.

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but you got it all figured out, aye? grats.

definitely curvey. perpetually undulating heaviness. difficult to penetrate but that's because the uninitiated cannot enter. and maybe that's for your own protection

aside from london b which is its own thing and awesome.

concur shit slaps

  On 9/21/2023 at 5:44 PM, YELLOW said:

Yeah and there's no rush to understand the music or feel like you need to enjoy it. Some of their records I don't listen to very often because I just let them unfurl for me over the years. Some click instantly, some take a while

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yellow wins the internet

what i (stil) struggle with is that orchestra pit timbre cloud that lasts since oversteps tour. i miss fermium and sublimit's stabs times. everything else is fine.

It could be that they're doing their interpretation of Xenakis' percussion works and stochastic synthesis, we discussed Xenakis at length after their first gig in Finland in 2006.

Everyone loves some Stocha Acid 
 

  On 9/22/2023 at 7:39 PM, cern said:

Everyone loves some Stocha Acid 
 

 

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Fav+ release / track.

I can smell the Gaussian probability distribution on teh beatz with my eyes closed, Ae not good no more. Shame.

  On 9/22/2023 at 5:17 PM, trying to be less rude said:

definitely curvey.

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oh shit..... It all connects

classic Autechre:

Wow, I am looking at this amazing organic robot!

new Autechre:

Wow, I am moving through this amazing robot forest!

Both have my love

listen harder. there's patterns in there. 

or just come back to it in a year and see if you have the ah ha moment.

  On 9/23/2023 at 12:39 AM, ignatius said:

or just come back to it in a year and see if you have the ah ha moment.

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If they keep this up, the ah ha moment will start occurring post mortem...

  On 9/23/2023 at 12:39 AM, ignatius said:

listen harder. there's patterns in there. 

or just come back to it in a year and see if you have the ah ha moment.

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just to avoid any confusion, even if ignatius' post wasn't for me - I was being silly in my previous post.

there are patterns in there indeed, and they are reproducible across the different live sets. The music suggests that the algorithms are very carefully confined so as to be specific yet offer interesting variations. What's amazing about this 2022 live material is how varying the dynamics also are; I don't think this degree of dynamics fluctuation was present in previous material. The intro is one evident example of this, and throughout the set there's an incredible amount of dynamic layering, causing me to shift focus from one sound to another. Ae have always been amazing when it comes to messing with people's music perception and cognition eh.

well said about the "leave it for a year and come back later".

  On 9/22/2023 at 5:04 PM, jaderpansen said:

u folks mental, shit slaps.

but you got it all figured out, aye? grats.

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Yes. I know things. All the things. Even more.

Fettecke still isn't working for me. I leave it for a year and come every next year since 1982.

The underlying question is: Is it impossible the seanpls produce garbage? (not saying AE_LIVE is garbage). I mean, let's be honest, the shoanplease can start up FL studio, put a 1 of 4 kickdrum on it, add some noise every few bars, create a 21m minute file of it... WATMM will find an explanation why it is great.

That "leave it for a year" quip is condescending bullshit, elitist truehead bragging that you "get it" while others don't ("I didn't mean it like that" defence notwithstanding). You can habituate and acclimate to anything with enough repetition; I know this because I've done it numerous times, and some of it has been Autechre - but it doesn't mean that I actually like something, it's just become familiar enough for me not to dislike it.