Autechre Digital Exclusives

Howya all, just curious to see if ya all dig the digital exclusive vibe or not. I think the accessibilty of quadrange via bleep is fantastic, but to be honest, i'd love to be able to pick it up in the flesh. It seems it's not financially viable in our day and age for warp/ae to send it to print, but it'd be cool to stroll in to town and grab the new autechre ep. Anyone?

benefits to downloading

1) cheaper, whether or not the company passes that along to you is something different altogether

2) artists less dependent on record labels

3) can offer above CD quality and avoid ripping issues

4) artwork can be higher resolution

Similar background to you, pretty obsessive since about 1997. And a similar conclusion. These reworkings are not great leaps forward in music and I am starting to feel a little milked.

BUT - this year they have also given me a 12-hour, eclectic, cool DJ set. The album was pretty excellent. And their overall impact on my experience of music has been immense. I can afford it and I don't begrudge giving money to artists who have been significant in my life, but with multiple rehashes they are diluting their significance a bit.

i read somewhere in an old autechre interview that they were pretty fond of how some acts such as mantronix back in the 80's would release a song then a week later you could get a 12 inch vinyl with about 5 better versions of that same song. I think their trying to do something similar, even back with cichlisuite (which was awesome). I don't see the tracks as autechre milking people, their just giving people the option to hear more of something they already enjoyed albiet expanded and more "behind the scenes".

There is only one way to listen to music properly - vinyl

All these digital tracks are great, and I love bleep.com, but anything worth keeping needs to be on vinyl

...as long as the mastering is ok I prefer digital downloads, my collection of physical goods are giant already - so now I like information with a small footprint.

(btw, great #3 post jcounts - we share the same experiences, although I nowadays like queerstice are a little bit more than when it was newly released)

Being an old cunt who grew up loving music, without the internet and even remembering when CD was 'new', I don't thnk there'll be any substitute for getting a physical copy of a record on the day of release and playing the fuck out of it without having heard it before (unless I happened to catch it on the radio, which was rare). I'm enjoying the gradual release of Quadrange and wouldn't knock Autechre for it, but I see it as something of a novelty. I wouldn't want Ae or any of my other fave artists to repeat this too often.

Yeah, I'm a nostalgic dinosaur, but it'll be a sad day for me when music is a purely digital medium.

It is funny how those Quadrange EPs make Quaristice (Versions) so worthless. 140 minutes of versions for so much cheaper.

(versions) have flow and variety like album.

a ridiculous question : i use foobar2000 for converting flac to wav. i plan to burn it on cd coz my little finger tells me that on good set up[cd player/ampli] it will sounds better than flacs on winamp.

but so far, the quadrange (flac or wav) do not sounds as good as other wav trax bought from elsewhere.. is it normal? well the sound is still pretty decent but hey my quarisitce cds sound better than the flac.*

* i know this question will be totally alien for people who enjoy music via mp3 on their laptop speaker but..

it's normal for you.

I like having a physical copy of most of the music I buy, however I think eliminating record companies from this equation is much more important. It's also much cheaper and easier to access

I think I might burn a physical copy of each Quaristice thing, and print the artowrk too. Just so I feel like I have the formal copies.

  k h o v said:

a ridiculous question : i use foobar2000 for converting flac to wav. i plan to burn it on cd coz my little finger tells me that on good set up[cd player/ampli] it will sounds better than flacs on winamp.

but so far, the quadrange (flac or wav) do not sounds as good as other wav trax bought from elsewhere.. is it normal? well the sound is still pretty decent but hey my quarisitce cds sound better than the flac.*

* i know this question will be totally alien for people who enjoy music via mp3 on their laptop speaker but..

You're comparing apples to oranges son. On the same equipment (with same eq, etc) the flacs/wavs/burned cd are gonna sound exactly the same because they're the exact same pcm audio. Any difference is in your head.

i like quadrange very much

so far i hadnt burned quadrange on cdr + played on cd player ; i was comparing quadrange/quarisitce on 2 different equipments. but i know its only "0 & 1"...

yeah i'm always scared of losing shit loads of tunes i bought. what i'd like would be vinyl editions with free access to flac/wav : you know, you'll get the best of both worlds ; i know i'm thinking like a dinosaur but i really like the big old gatefold lps. but honestly this new trends of digital market has its good points : just go to boomkat/juno/bleep & you'll find some impossible to track down & deleted records (type kilohertz on juno DL & you'll get a nice surprise).

After 9010171-121 and Perlence losid 2, I would just like to retract my statement about starting to feel milked. This stuff is brilliant.

yep, i think its fantastic. I am going to save perlence subrange 6-36 for when i eat mushrooms this weekend

i feel milked but i am enjoying some of these. operative word... some

  Caretstik said:

Being an old cunt who grew up loving music, without the internet and even remembering when CD was 'new', I don't thnk there'll be any substitute for getting a physical copy of a record on the day of release and playing the fuck out of it without having heard it before (unless I happened to catch it on the radio, which was rare). I'm enjoying the gradual release of Quadrange and wouldn't knock Autechre for it, but I see it as something of a novelty. I wouldn't want Ae or any of my other fave artists to repeat this too often.

 

Yeah, I'm a nostalgic dinosaur, but it'll be a sad day for me when music is a purely digital medium.

yeah, i remember sitting down at the only decent record store in town, waiting for ups guy to show up. every now and then the owner would get a promo tape or something and he'd loan them out to me and my friends, but you wouldn't hear anything of the new releases until you put em in your stereo. i also miss going to record stores in new cities and looking for rare stuff. nowadays it's all just a click away

I miss the old days too. It's been said already, but it's so true. There is a whole ritual to "new release day". After waiting for a long time for the new release, it's a countdown until you get to hear the new music. The day before it officially goes on "sale" is like waiting for Christmas to come when you're 5 years old. The record store I shop at will sell new releases on Monday night at midnight, right when they close. I would assume most shops do this. You can bet I was there at 11:55 to pick up Quaristice.

The ritual doesn't stop with the purchase. First you get the shrinkwrap and that STUPID sticker off the top. Then you OPEN it, for the first time. The anticipation is mounting, what do you do next? Put it in and listen immediately? Look at the artwork and track names before listening?(that is assuming you haven't looked at every inch of the c.d. case already) Or do you listen to it and look at the artwork and such while listening? I would bet that most people follow one of these patterns of new c.d. purchase almost exclusively.

Something that is instantaneously on your computer and ready for your ears lacks the tactile, physical interaction that makes going to a record store on the day a c.d. is released and literally "picking it up" so special. It will never be the same, or better.

Back in my day we paid 15 cents for an LP. Record players had to be wound up by hand, increasing the anticipation, like waiting for an orgasm or something. Kids today with their iPods and Googles and torrents can never understand wading through 15 feet of snow to the nearest record store(usually 5 towns away). After all, it's not the music that's important, it's the disc of laboratory made vinyl that gives music its soul.

Fuck digital downloads. My lawn is pristine and I aims to keep it that way.

I like music and properly mastered musicfiles works perfect for me. My 700 CD-collection are mostly a monument for older times. Just let save some resources and let the physical formats die, there a lot better options today. Bleep and Beatport totally crushes any ordinary recordstore.