Autechre untilted piffle

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On Augmatic Disport, Autechre even try to out-do Squarepusher

lol

  mosca said:

having followed the Ae since the very beginning - i was full of the rapture and joys when i heard of any new material and would rush down to my local rekord shop on day of release and buy it (this was in the days before internets and leaks) - run all the way home and listen with glee to those crazy noises and be happy in the knowledge that these guys were 'on point'

 

than all of a sudden they released Confield and i thought - hold on, these guys are just fuckin at it - this is classic electronic music taking the piss music.

 

and yet here we all are 'spunking our jizz' at anything they do, no questions - just fucking accept it's Ae and therefor a work of sublime genius.

 

when in actual fact most of their output for the past few years has been (barring the odd track) utter shite* and Quaristice is nothing more than a collection of odd bits and bobs tarted up and polished with new technology and released to the gibbering electronic music fanboi masses (of course i bought the metal box thing, only as a completist measure mind you).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*my listening experience may differ from yours

wow, i am in complete agreement with mosca for once.

But yeah, Confield was the turning point for me, though I rate Confield and Draft a lot higher than Untilted or Quaristice.

Quaristice has been a bit of a blow to me, I thought Untilted was their "we need a break album" and they were going to roar back after the 3 year hiatus with a masterwork. Oh well. I found BoC's TCH to be less of a disappointment than Quaristice. Like you, I'm still a fan, bought the limited edition box and will be spending $850 or so to fly back from China to SF, largely to see them in concert (though also to take care of my taxes).

so weird that heads project personal disatisfaction with the more recent albums into some weird metanarrative about autechre's pisst and other people's spunk. i'm not any kind of pee-drinking spunker at all (got into them when cichlisuite came out and my favs are envane/lP5 if you need those kinds of references) but i think untilted and quaristice put an aggro spin on that classic electronic music sound that just isnt found on their other records, and that makes me psyched.

but i'm not gonna assume that you must love to wear pannies and run away from fistfights just cuz you don't feel those new jams, or that everyone who disses the new jams is actually a crybaby afraid of some aggro in their electronic music.

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so weird that heads project personal disatisfaction with the more recent albums into some weird metanarrative about autechre's pisst and other people's spunk. i'm not any kind of pee-drinking spunker at all (got into them when cichlisuite came out and my favs are envane/lP5 if you need those kinds of references) but i think untilted and quaristice put an aggro spin on that classic electronic music sound that just isnt found on their other records, and that makes me psyched.

 

but i'm not gonna assume that you must love to wear pannies and run away from fistfights just cuz you don't feel those new jams, or that everyone who disses the new jams is actually a crybaby afraid of some aggro in their electronic music.

can we have that in english?

what the fuck is an aggro spin?

and - ain't it great annoying fanbois!

Yea, I remember this review. Complete rubbish. To be fair though, it took me a long time to really love Untilted. And now I surely do. It is a brilliant album. But probably their least accessible.

I like pretty much all the ae releases.

I think it's telling that mosca attributes their decline to Confield, which is where I think their current sound solidified.

How could you think they're in any way taking the piss? Their interviews show they're obviously way into what they're doing and take it seriously. It's just the style of music they make.

I seriously feel really bad for people who don't "get" Confield or Draft. Whether you personally like them or not is of course just an opinion, but they are without a doubt two of the most forward thinking albums in contemporary music. I don't mean to be condescending at all, but they are seriously genius. And it seems so weird to me when people describe them as pretentious, cold, or noise. Again, I don't mean to be condescending, but it is very likely the case that they just make music outside of most peoples comfort zones.

I also don't really see the huge differences between autechre's style between release like other people seem to. The exceptions would probably be Incunabula and Quaristice and a little bit Untilted. But other than that, they all seem to have a very familiar (if that makes sense) quality to them which I can very easily identify as Booth and Brown. And even to a certain extent, much of Quaristice I can recognize as having correlation to earlier releases.

  Rook said:

Again, I don't mean to be condescending, but it is very likely the case that they just make music outside of most peoples comfort zones.

Well that's by nature condescending. Ae are cool and all but they aren't without flaws, one of which is turgid song structure. Yeah, we can call it "meditative" or "architectural" all we want, but the truth is a lot of their songs don't go anywhere. And sometimes when they do, it is still boring (see Untilted). I find Tri Rep largely boring. And one thing that really bores me is music that sounds too macho, and I feel Ae have been indulging that side more that I'd like, from Confield on. I prefer damaged, off-key, broken sounds, they move me more. Which is why I love LP5, Chiastic, Envane, EP7....Now they are moving from macho to "playful", but I don't think they do playful all that well.

It all comes down to personal taste, of course. If I wanted to be condescending, from my vantage point, I would say that it is telling that you like Confield the most of their work, as it is the most bellicose, and you seem like a hot-tempered guy with a lot of pent-up emotions.

Well I mean, when I first heard Draft and Untiled, they were well out of my comfort zone. I just wasn't ready, or maybe I lacked the capacity to "hear" them. This is what I meant when I said I didn't want to be condescending. Not everyone is ready for every type of music.

For example, if I were a writer of reviews and I was given say, a metal album. I would be ill equipped to review and critique it since metal is almost always outside of my listening comfort zone.

As for the songs not going anywhere. I would think that there are more cases of the music dragging on in Quaristice and in one or two places on Untilted than in any of their earlier work. (with maybe one or two exceptions.)

  lumpenprol said:

Well that's by nature condescending. Ae are cool and all but they aren't without flaws, one of which is turgid song structure. Yeah, we can call it "meditative" or "architectural" all we want, but the truth is a lot of their songs don't go anywhere. And sometimes when they do, it is still boring (see Untilted). I find Tri Rep largely boring. And one thing that really bores me is music that sounds too macho, and I feel Ae have been indulging that side more that I'd like, from Confield on. I prefer damaged, off-key, broken sounds, they move me more. Which is why I love LP5, Chiastic, Envane, EP7....Now they are moving from macho to "playful", but I don't think they do playful all that well.

I disagree on pretty much every count. When you say their songs don't go anywhere, do you mean they are repetitive? When I hear a beautiful sound, I don't want it to just stop. I want it to hold that position a bit so I can sit an appreciate the mood of it. VI scose poise and uviol are perfect examples (well pretty much anything on confield). They are very repetitive tracks, but I want them to keep going. It's like a roller coaster ride. Pretty much every loop is the same, but you don't want to just go on one and call it quits. You want to take that roller coaster mood and hold it for a bit.

Also, these tracks slowly evolve. Uviol develops more and more groaning noises, lentic catachresis slowly decomposes into a tortured scream. I'm not saying you need to love this slow evolution, but I definitely do. So, even if you don't like it, it is definitely not just wank.

Untilted is less repetitive as you said; the whole album is loaded with breakdowns. Maybe you think that they're boring. I see all the breakdowns as logical, and intuitive developments. Fermium is probably the best example of logical and intuitive breakdown. Maybe you don't think of it as logical and intuitive, but all that proves is that you don't like the track, and regardless or whether or not you like it, it is a thoughtfully constructed track. Definitely not ae "taking the piss".

  Root5 said:

  lumpenprol said:

Well that's by nature condescending. Ae are cool and all but they aren't without flaws, one of which is turgid song structure. Yeah, we can call it "meditative" or "architectural" all we want, but the truth is a lot of their songs don't go anywhere. And sometimes when they do, it is still boring (see Untilted). I find Tri Rep largely boring. And one thing that really bores me is music that sounds too macho, and I feel Ae have been indulging that side more that I'd like, from Confield on. I prefer damaged, off-key, broken sounds, they move me more. Which is why I love LP5, Chiastic, Envane, EP7....Now they are moving from macho to "playful", but I don't think they do playful all that well.

 

I disagree on pretty much every count. When you say their songs don't go anywhere, do you mean they are repetitive? When I hear a beautiful sound, I don't want it to just stop. I want it to hold that position a bit so I can sit an appreciate the mood of it. VI scose poise and uviol are perfect examples (well pretty much anything on confield). They are very repetitive tracks, but I want them to keep going. It's like a roller coaster ride. Pretty much every loop is the same, but you don't want to just go on one and call it quits. You want to take that roller coaster mood and hold it for a bit.

 

Also, these tracks slowly evolve. Uviol develops more and more groaning noises, lentic catachresis slowly decomposes into a tortured scream. I'm not saying you need to love this slow evolution, but I definitely do. So, even if you don't like it, it is definitely not just wank.

 

Untilted is less repetitive as you said; the whole album is loaded with breakdowns. Maybe you think that they're boring. I see all the breakdowns as logical, and intuitive developments. Fermium is probably the best example of logical and intuitive breakdown. Maybe you don't think of it as logical and intuitive, but all that proves is that you don't like the track, and regardless or whether or not you like it, it is a thoughtfully constructed track. Definitely not ae "taking the piss".

Yeah, I didn't say it is "just wank" or "they are taking the piss," but I often find their song structures less than engaging. Have been since Incunabula. Untilted mixed things up a bit, but for a while there most of their tracks were following one of three templates: 1) burble along with minor variations; 2) tempo slows, song decays, chaos introduced; 3) song speeds up to outro. The times when that doesn't happen are more notable. They have a few songs with pop structures, meaning a pop-like build towards a climax (netlon sentinel, drane2, nuane minus the outro), a few that go through really interesting changes (maphive 6.1 is the one that springs to mind), but a lot are kind of predictable once you know Ae. When I first got into Ae back in the day, I always felt they came up with cool sounds but lacked in terms of song structure when compared to say, Orbital. I know it's a bit apples and oranges, and I do appreciate the variations they play with in various otherwise static tracks, but I still think the crit is valid. Since their music takes some real investment to adjust to, the listener needs "musical events" that are interesting enough to keep drawing them inward. For me, sometimes there just aren't enough. For example, first time I heard Draft, I loved the sound design and fuzzy analogue crunchiness, but started to go "meh" halfway through, about the time Surripere started to decay. "Heard that before," I thought. Ae shouldn't be a band that makes you go "meh." First time I heard LP5 I was blown away. First time I heard Confield I was repulsed. I want a strong reaction, not been there done that. I mean, with Quaristice, as soon as Simmm started to decay, I'm thinking "$50 says this just continues to sound like a washing machine with a lopsided load on spin cycle" and sure enough, no new melody or anything came in. It's too bad, Ae should be anything but predictable.

"this time the electronic music crowd might well call their bluff."

I get a kick out of people saying things like this. I just picture the artists thinking, "Yesssssss everything is going according to plan. They still think that i'm on the level. For my next album i'll compose something so bad they won't be able to resist. They'll never know what hit them. Gwa ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!!"

i read the first paragraph and then got annoyed

Geeky fanboys detract from the music.