Autechre Here we go

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feat...erview-autechre

That's a nice interview there. I wish Aphex was anywhere near that informative/interesting in interviews.

That was a really nice interview.

  Quote

I have just settled down and listened to Incunabula and Amber and realized, in retrospect, how cheesy they were, and how contrasted our newer ideas are.

Great, Rob admits that Incunabula and Amber were cheesy.

I like how 'Pitchfork' is in bold, but not 'RB' or 'SB' :-p

  Quote

Some of our earlier albums, like Confield, are almost all implied music. But it's cohesive because we spent long enough fashioning the idea down-- to a shape, if you like-- that actually resembles music.

That's an interesting way to think of it!

Thanks for posting that.

e

nice one. the incunabula and amber being cheesy comment stood out. so i think it's pretty safe to say that they are not going to explore those avenues anymore.

pictures of them always look like they're straight from a clothing catalog

  azatoth said:

nice one. the incunabula and amber being cheesy comment stood out. so i think it's pretty safe to say that they are not going to explore those avenues anymore.

yeah...i'm really glad Notwo and Outhouse from the new album are such vastly superior ambient pieces to anything on either of those albums. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

  ieafs said:

incunabula sounds pretty dated to me... whether that's a bad thing is up to you (i don't really like it personally apart from kalpol and basscadet), but the use of standard drum machine sounds, the melodies and even the cover art... it does date it to a particular time. beatles album are also dated very squarely in their time too, but that's not a bad thing like i said.

 

whereas to me, amber is pretty timeless in a lot of ways... maybe it's just because i like that album a lot more, but it just sounds a fresher and less contrived. more like they were going for their own thing, whereas incunabula sounds an awful lot like a lot of the other melodic techno stuff of the time for me.

I could not agree with you more, sir!

  ieafs said:

well considering most of both of those albums isn't very 'ambient' at all. apart from perhaps kalpol introl, incunabula has no ambient tracks at all... amber has a few beatless things like yulquen and nine, but it's not really ambient either?

 

incunabula sounds pretty dated to me... whether that's a bad thing is up to you (i don't really like it personally apart from kalpol and basscadet), but the use of standard drum machine sounds, the melodies and even the cover art... it does date it to a particular time. beatles album are also dated very squarely in their time too, but that's not a bad thing like i said.

 

whereas to me, amber is pretty timeless in a lot of ways... maybe it's just because i like that album a lot more, but it just sounds a fresher and less contrived. more like they were going for their own thing, whereas incunabula sounds an awful lot like a lot of the other melodic techno stuff of the time for me.

thats funny i feel pretty much the exact opposite. All the low frequency pass and high cut and softended reverb on Amber really screams to me of cliches from the time. I could see how incunabula's techno aspect could sound cheesy though, i just happen to like it a lot.

  Root5 said:

  ieafs said:

incunabula sounds pretty dated to me... whether that's a bad thing is up to you (i don't really like it personally apart from kalpol and basscadet), but the use of standard drum machine sounds, the melodies and even the cover art... it does date it to a particular time. beatles album are also dated very squarely in their time too, but that's not a bad thing like i said.

 

whereas to me, amber is pretty timeless in a lot of ways... maybe it's just because i like that album a lot more, but it just sounds a fresher and less contrived. more like they were going for their own thing, whereas incunabula sounds an awful lot like a lot of the other melodic techno stuff of the time for me.

I could not agree with you more, sir!

+1

What rating do you think Pitchfork will give Quaristice? They can't seem to make up their minds on Autechre.

And then there was that bizarre review for Untilted with the college kids in the dorm. I hate Pitchfork.

  DMWalles said:

I hate Pitchfork.

Best opening post ever.

But yea. To be fair to them though, in the case of most AE albums, it is really hard to judge things without months of listening. (which may explain such a low rating for Draft, which took me many good listens to recognize it for the practically perfect album that it is.)

But yea, they are still retarded.

Incunabula and Amber are awesome kthxbye

  vodor said:

pictures of them always look like they're straight from a clothing catalog

^This

  DMWalles said:

What rating do you think Pitchfork will give Quaristice? They can't seem to make up their minds on Autechre.

And then there was that bizarre review for Untilted with the college kids in the dorm. I hate Pitchfork.

I really am kinda hoping they rate it a 10.0 and proclaim it as absolutely amazing. I really really want them to rate this highly for whatever reason, I think Quaristice was really good and deserves at least an 8 from them.

  Quote

What rating do you think Pitchfork will give Quaristice? They can't seem to make up their minds on Autechre.

And then there was that bizarre review for Untilted with the college kids in the dorm. I hate Pitchfork

The review from Untitled was a fucking embarrassment and the reviewer should have been sacked from Pitchfork for his failed attempts to think outside the box. Fucking woeful. Anyone would think that review was concocted by some fucking dork, college kid playing it for laughs.

Totally cringeworthy.

The Pitchfork review of Untilted draws upon the stupid paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, put forth by ancient Greek dude Zeno. The paradox goes that if the tortoise is given a head start, Achilles can never catch up to the tortoise, despite being a wonderfully athletic half-God, because you can break down his approach into smaller and smaller halves from where he is to where the tortoise was before Achilles ran to that spot, such that you keep halving the distance between him and the tortoise during his approach, which means he'll never truly catch the tortoise. Oh fuck it, Wikipedia has it better:

"Achilles graciously allows the tortoise a head start of a hundred feet. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run a hundred feet, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point; during this time, the tortoise has "run" a (much shorter) distance, say one foot. It will then take Achilles some further period of time to run that distance, in which said period the tortoise will advance farther; and then another period of time to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, Zeno says, swift Achilles can never overtake the tortoise. While common sense and common experience would hold that one runner can catch another, according to the above argument, he cannot; thus the paradox."

And picture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Zeno_Paradox.PNG

Therefore, the Pitchfork reviewer, by characterizing the tortoise as the Untilted fan and Achilles as the guy that's like "meh," is characterizing the Untilted fan as someone who is actually quite slow and who is a sophist that revels in obscure philosophies that are completely retarded, while people that are like "meh" are actually quite fast and understand that despite these cheap tricks, there's no real merit.

But then he gave it a relatively good 7.4.

In short: Pitchfork = pretentious bullshit.

  Rook said:

  DMWalles said:

I hate Pitchfork.

 

Best opening post ever.

 

 

But yea. To be fair to them though, in the case of most AE albums, it is really hard to judge things without months of listening. (which may explain such a low rating for Draft, which took me many good listens to recognize it for the practically perfect album that it is.)

 

But yea, they are still retarded.

Pitchfork is the only website to have given a great score to Confield. They rated the album 8.8 out of 10.

I think you have to factor in deadlines when moaning about reviews. Personally, I love Untilted; it's a work of genius, but there's just no way I could've offered any insights into the album after just a few weeks of listening. That particular review was a bit of a cop out, yeah, but at least he admitted (albeit indirectly) how uncertain he was about the album, rather than taking a wild stab in the dark. I've searched through that particular writer's previous reviews, and I think this is a pretty brilliant write-up of a "difficult" album, but whatever.

Oh, and I'm new. Hi.

Hi, Dominique Leone.

It has to be Mr. Leone, no-one else would defend such a pompous review :laughing:

leone went into hiding shortly after that review. The verdict was "sheer embarrassment".

Nah, I'm no Pitchfork writer, just a guy who knows how long it can take to get into Untilted. Does anyone even trust them on electronic music anyway?

Nah, I'm no Pitchfork writer, just a guy who knows how long it can take to get into Untilted. Does anyone even trust them on electronic music anyway?