Quaristice/ Versions/ Quadrange EP

OH you're right, my bad. then you're completely right actually. i read that wrong

i think i'm leaning toward Steels for favorite track....but maybe bnc castl

really? bnc Castl? What do you see in that track? I'm not trying to convince you to not like it, it's just one of the VERY few Autechre tracks I haven't 'got' yet

Favs for me (in order)

Perlence

IO

WNSN

Tankakern

oh fuck me, IO

of course that would be up there too. as i've described it on the first page, i think it's scary and sad yet fantastic. isn't there a versions IO also? i want to hear that sometime. i'm gonna get versions and quadrange listened to over the weekend

and for bnc castl, i guess it just seemed like a weird change of pace in the album. but standing alone, i like it for it's ultra positive vibes. it seems so happy. it makes me think of a family of monkeys. i guess i don't have to "see" anything in it, but i throughly enjoyed it

Quaristice Versions

In the interest of being a narcissistic completionist who is sadly obsessed with procuring tons of literature on ae, I will review versions below:

Altichyre is the sad, depressed side of Altibzz. It has some nifty stuff going on in the low end towards the end but other than that it does not hold a candle to Altibzz. Still a pretty decent track though.

the PlclCpC is hands down way more amazing than the PLC. Like, hands so far down that they are burning up in the magma of the mantle. Starting at about 3:30, the absolutely essential melody left out of the original pops in. Fucking brilliant melody, the beat fits with it perfectly and the bubbling noise syncs up really nicely. Then, at 7:44 they do a completely bassy, sparse, low end take of the same melody with tons of reverb and crazy noises flying around. This part of the tracks is certainly in my top 5 most stunning moments of Quaristice.

IO (mons) I really don't have much to say about. It is a pretty good version but it does not build on the concept much at all, and does not really serve its purpose well as an alternate version. Still, it has everything that IO has so might as well listen to the extended version if you have a choice.

Phylopn is riding on the shoulders of Plyphon. It hardly has any differences. Specifically, the beat at 2:20 that was truncated in Plyphon appears in it's entirety for about 15 seconds. It really irks me that they didn't just leave it that way on the original album, and instead do a different take of WNSN or something for versions.

Perlence range 3 is a worthy successor to perlence. It really just expands the shit out of the concepts. It's quite a sparse and vacant version of perlence (excluding all of the mutual parts). The middle of the track is pretty brilliant and I think it's an essential piece in the Perlence puzzle to help us understand the handful of other Perlence versions. Also, the melody at 6:04 is really awesome, and they would fully explore it later in the plc ccc. I love how they keep riding that fat fucking bass drum all the way through though. Almost brings images of elephants stomping on n00b's heads (obscure thread reference)

SonDEre-ix bothers the shit out of me. The only merit I can find here is the slow progression of intricate and rapid clicks and beeps that diffuse into the track towards the end. Still, that ugly ass chord melody is the musical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. If anyone here really enjoys this one I would be quite interested to hear why.

Tankraken does not do much besides extend the track, but that's ok because tankakern is amazing. The beat is repetitive enough to warrant an expansion like this, and the chimes and melodies that come in towards the end do a fine job of accenting the track and adding a layer of melody that was much needed.

fol4 is infinitely more awesome than fol3. This track is an abyss of Ae space and noise sticking to a very minimal but very catchy rhythm. To talk specifics about this track would be complete and utter gibberish so suffice to say it is an epic and amazing track and I'm really glad it clocks in at over 11 minutes.

90101-61-01 was a grower for me. It took me a while to truly appreciate the track because it is a fantastic exercise in minimalism. I was ready to dismiss the track as pointless, as well as the other renditions of 90101 on quadrange, but it is quite apparent that the boys are very proud of this track so with that in mind I eventually learned to appreciate it and I thoroughly enjoy it now. The awkward stuttering melody prevalent throughout the track is the perfect mix of serenity and madness.

chenc9-x is not a particularly stunning track. It slowly dissolves towards the end and reveals nothing but Perlence space in its wake, which makes it an interesting track conceptually but it is far from engaging and I would never pick it out of a list of tracks if I wanted to hear something good. Chenc9 is better by itself I think.

nofour is a brilliant version of a brilliant track. It does not change things up much but takes the track in a slightly different direction than notwo. A worthy successor in my opinion.

So overall versions has some duds but I really enjoy the whole idea behind it and the main track they focus on is Perlence which was my #1 fav off the original album anyways. I'll do a quadrange review when I have some time.

  On 11/23/2009 at 10:38 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

 

 

SonDEre-ix bothers the shit out of me. The only merit I can find here is the slow progression of intricate and rapid clicks and beeps that diffuse into the track towards the end. Still, that ugly ass chord melody is the musical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. If anyone here really enjoys this one I would be quite interested to hear why.

i love this track because it's AE trying out a method of synthesis they haven't used very much int he past, physical modeling synthesis.

i love it because of how awkwardly it lilts with those confusing sounds. you're right about the word ugly, it's perfect. but to me it's in a good way

listening to (versions) right now. i think it's a lot better than the original...

  On 11/23/2009 at 10:38 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

 

fol4 is infinitely more awesome than fol3. This track is an abyss of Ae space and noise sticking to a very minimal but very catchy rhythm. To talk specifics about this track would be complete and utter gibberish so suffice to say it is an epic and amazing track and I'm really glad it clocks in at over 11 minutes.

 

nofour is a brilliant version of a brilliant track. It does not change things up much but takes the track in a slightly different direction than notwo. A worthy successor in my opinion.

 

truths

  On 11/23/2009 at 11:45 PM, Awepittance said:

  On 11/23/2009 at 10:38 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

 

 

SonDEre-ix bothers the shit out of me. The only merit I can find here is the slow progression of intricate and rapid clicks and beeps that diffuse into the track towards the end. Still, that ugly ass chord melody is the musical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. If anyone here really enjoys this one I would be quite interested to hear why.

 

i love this track because it's AE trying out a method of synthesis they haven't used very much int he past, physical modeling synthesis.

This sounds quite interesting and I am not aware of this method. Elaborate

does anyone own this:

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=83986

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:54 PM, yek said:

does anyone own this:

 

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=83986

I wish, still think it was sort of underhanded of them to limit the second disc to 1000 copies. I understand that people want limited editions and that Ae and warp need their incomes, but they should have released the versions disc separately as well... i mean they would have made even more money and all of the crazy Ae nerds would still be paying for the spec ed.

As it is now, any new Ae fan has no way of acquiring the album except via illegal methods. Not pleased about that. Thank god for the internet is all I say.

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:44 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

  On 11/23/2009 at 11:45 PM, Awepittance said:

  On 11/23/2009 at 10:38 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

 

 

SonDEre-ix bothers the shit out of me. The only merit I can find here is the slow progression of intricate and rapid clicks and beeps that diffuse into the track towards the end. Still, that ugly ass chord melody is the musical equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. If anyone here really enjoys this one I would be quite interested to hear why.

 

i love this track because it's AE trying out a method of synthesis they haven't used very much int he past, physical modeling synthesis.

This sounds quite interesting and I am not aware of this method. Elaborate

Check out this album.

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=17312

  On 11/24/2009 at 9:02 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

  On 11/24/2009 at 8:54 PM, yek said:

does anyone own this:

 

http://www.boomkat.com/item.cfm?id=83986

I wish, still think it was sort of underhanded of them to limit the second disc to 1000 copies. I understand that people want limited editions and that Ae and warp need their incomes, but they should have released the versions disc separately as well... i mean they would have made even more money and all of the crazy Ae nerds would still be paying for the spec ed.

 

As it is now, any new Ae fan has no way of acquiring the album except via illegal methods. Not pleased about that. Thank god for the internet is all I say.

I sort of agree with your point but I was lucky enough to snag a limited edition copy. You snooze you lose.

  On 11/25/2009 at 4:17 PM, six said:

I sort of agree with your point but I was lucky enough to snag a limited edition copy. You snooze you lose.

The other side of that story is that some people don't have a couple of hundred bucks to fork over for an album that they could quite easily pay 1/10th the price for and just download the alternate version

  On 11/25/2009 at 7:52 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

  On 11/25/2009 at 4:17 PM, six said:

I sort of agree with your point but I was lucky enough to snag a limited edition copy. You snooze you lose.

 

The other side of that story is that some people don't have a couple of hundred bucks to fork over for an album that they could quite easily pay 1/10th the price for and just download the alternate version

It weren't a couple of hundred bucks though, it were only 20 squid (or maybe 25, can't quite remember)

I managed to snag one too. If my memory serves me well, it was 60 canadian dollars. That's about 35 pounds I think.

But yeah, who knows why they limited it to 1000.

lol oh that's right I was thinking of the last time i found one on ebay

listening to quadrange. i like how once again they aren't afraid to let a song go longer

i love how it will do a long reworking of a quaristice track, then do a short little interlude

I think it's fair enough for me to go ahead and put up my Quadrange review. At this point I'm sure most of you are tired of reading these but I'm doing it more for me at this point, OCD. If you can be arsed to read it, I hope you enjoy it but if not that's cool just hit pgdwn a few times.

Quaristice.Quadrange.EP.AE

The Plc ccc sets the tone of this massive ep. I almost like to think of this ep as the lost levels of quaristice. Like in oldschool games there used to be all sorts of secret levels and shit, this is kind of along the same lines. This track is really brooding and slow, really relaxing and heavy. They snagged that lovely little melody from The PlclCpC that was absent in The Plc and formed an entire minimalist track around it. It is important to make a distinction between Ambient and Minimalist when discussing this album, however, as many of the tracks do have quite alot of energy and content which distinctly separates them from Ambient music, but things change very slowly and repetition is the name of the game here. Its all about putting you into a trance, and this track really nails that. This sets up the album as I mentioned earlier. Again, Ae knows how to start a fucking album!

Perlence Range 7 is the most energetic track on the album, I think. This is absolutely my favorite rendition of Perlence out of the original and Ranges 3&7. They took the fantastic snare break and blew it right the fuck up. Probably one of the best components to the track is the quiet skittering ticks that bounce left and right creating this popping feeling in your mind. That little diddly is a huge throwback to Untilted where the focus was almost to induce the feeling of little needles poking into your brain (in a good way). Everything gets very sparse and minimal towards the middle as the focus shifts to the snare break and the background noises fade away. They also play on your suspense with the much loved wooden 'tock' noise by introducing the beat and the track fairly thoroughly before they finally add it as a stabilizing component at around 3:10. The effect of this is that the track seems to be stumbling and suttering up until it finds the 'tock' and grabs on tight. Fucking brilliant track, SO fucking glad they decided to grace us with a 10+ minute version of a track which, to be honest, was fucking amazing by itself in the first place. This track is a supreme argument for the idea to make alternate versions.

Perlence Suns is a fantastic ambience piece. While it doesn't hold a candle to some of the ambience later on in this EP, it easily stomps and pisses over all of the ambient tracks from Quaristice and Versions. It takes the tasty fat square synth from the Perlence tracks, turns it into pads, and then completely immerses it in the waters of paralel suns. Not a whole lot going on here but the subtlety is fucking SUFFOCATING. It is a wholely brilliant track and would be an exemplary piece to study if you aren't quite feeling the whole ambient direction of Quaristice.

90101-51-6 quickly tunes back into the 90101 channel. The form of the track can throw the listener off, however, because the types of beats and melodies sound like they should be part of a much more intricate piece. Instead, you get what almost seems like a chunk of a much larger song, and this chunk has been stretched out to the point of stupidity and then beyond into the category of what I would almost want to call 'artistically obnoxious'. As an aside, another good example of an 'artistically obnoxious' piece by Ae is 777, wherein they drown out their beautiful melody with a huge fat bass line. Again, if you think of the track in terms of what it is lacking, you will almost certainly detest it. Its purpose is to put you into a trance, and there are actually a vast amount of subtle melodies and sounds going on that you will probably completely miss unless you listen to it as it was meant to be listened to.

9013-2???? In all my nerdy Ae fanboyism this one still stumps me. The fact that the title directly references the 90101 tracks provokes you to try to make the connection but there is none sofar as I have found. It almost sounds like they took a melody from 90101 and turned it COMPLETELY inside out. Or, if we continue with my suggestion that the 90101 track is a channel that repeatedly gets tuned into throughout the quaristice experience, it's like the tuner bar is stuck in between the 90101 channel and some other increasingly strange channel. Actually, I think I'll say that 90101 must be the radio station in Quaristice land (most likely it is run from within the Bnc Castl with the kleptomaniac king of Quaristice land). Kind of an ugly melody though and it is good that it's quite short because the only real appeal is the strangeness of it.

Tkakenren fully explores the ideas that were presented in Tankakern and expanded upon in Tankraken. It presents the melodical chunk much more clearly at some parts, and around 5:30 they begin to explore the Tankakern cave much more deeply. Also the bird chirp samples can be clearly heard here, and they were nearly inaudible in the original. Then at around 8:40 they drop the bass almost completely away and the beat gets stripped down completely naked. This is an awesome effect because it shows us a whole new angle on the track. Pretty sweet track overall, again repetition is the name of the game and it changes very slowly but I think it is the superior Tankakern version.

90101-51-19 gets tuned back in again. This time we seem to have caught the station right after a commercial break as the DJ is announcing the next song. As we know though, the only song that ever gets played on the 90101 radio is 90101. I guess it must be the king's favorite song and he is not satisfied with taking everyone's shit (see my quaristice review) but must also force them to listen to his favorite song for ever on loop. The beat explores some interesting places and there is more variation than 90101-51-6. Sometimes the beat falls away, sometimes the melody falls away, they switch things up a little bit and the track becomes quite reverb packed and spacey towards the end, but I can't really seem to see the merit in releasing these two nearly identical tracks when there are many other Quaristice tracks that could do with a separate version.

Perlence Subrange 3 takes the sweet, metallic, shy melody from Range 3 and blows it up into a fantastic full blown Minimal track. Tons and tons of reverb here, almost like all of the machinery of the Perlence machine was stripped out and nothing but the empty shell remains. The emptyness really helps to emphasize the lack of all of the regular Perlence elements. The delicious square pads tinker away in the background like the broken remains of the machine. Eventually the metallic stabs die out and we are left with nothing but the fat bass drum, the wooden 'tock' and the tasty pads and tinkering synth. Reverb builds on reverb as the space the track occupies expands exponentially. This track is a perfect hint towards the Subrange 6-36, and I thoroughly enjoy how they created an ambient track around one of the central beats of Perlence, and then stripped everything away leaving only the flavor behind. FANTASTIC track, BEST Ae ambience ever, best ambience ever, I don't know how they did it but they FUCKING NAILED IT with this one!!!!!

chenc9-1dub brings us back into a familiar long lost territory. It focusses on the first melody of the Chenc9 and leaves the second bit out entirely. Even though the second chunk was superior to the first in the original, this track really makes this chunk of the track shine. It just seems to me like a polished up and refined version of that melody.

9010171-121 brings us back to the 90101 radio. At this point it appears as though they are actually exploring some seriously new territory. I'm quite pleased because when I had gotten to 90101-51-19 and i saw another 90101 on the release list, I groaned expecting that it would be the same thing, thoroughly beating this dead horse into a pulp. Instead, we get the same type of track energized much more fully. At 1:30 the melody takes a dive underwater and repeats without rest, relentlessly splashing out cockadoodle melodies of organized randomness. Fairly awesome track overall, I was quite pleased with it.

Perlence losid 2 is another flawless minimalist/ambient piece. Everything important takes place under the surface of this track. The surface is a constantly blowing Perlence wind, and the beats make some really sweet changes and switches. The track does not really ever stay put even though at first glance it rarely changes. Go to 1:20 and listen as the melody decides to glitch right the fuck out. This is probably the most epic glitch in Ae history. Then, at 3:45, the surface drops down revealing the interior much more clearly. The Perlence wind surface then begins to jump up and down and eventually it is morphed into a very very nice melody, check at around 6:15 when it has become fully coherent. Then the surface drains away almost completely at 6:35 and all that remains is the sputtering machinery, soaked and filtered to shit. Really awesome track, not only in the contents but also the structure of the track is very coherent and masterfully planned. I love this track with all my heart.

notwotwo is another notwo pretty much. It does soar to far greater heights though, and eventually it finally reaches an Altichyre sounding place, with some wonderful grumbling bass reminiscent of Pro Radii. Pretty sexy track but not much to say about it.

Perlence Subrange 6-36 is a whole fucking hour of Perlence-space. This track is not one to listen to lightly. It varies incredibly slowly over incredibly long periods of time. Tons of reverb here gives us the space, and the Perlence wind is blowing in the background. The skittering square synth stabs are back as well, although they are far less prevalent and simply serve as seasoning on this dish. I like to think of Perlence as a multi-level machine that starts with the original track at the top and the ranges and subranges constitute differing levels of this machine. This track is fantastic, although it does rely fairly strongly on the knowledge and memory of the other Perlence tracks to achieve its primary effect. Grand album closer, to me it sounds like an intermission that is to be playing constantly until the new Ae album is released.

So overall it is a very awesome EP, although it is quite a concept piece and the puzzle will not really make alot of sense without being fairly familiar with the previous two versions. I give this album 2 :cisfor: for the boys tipping their LP into a new direction to pave the way instead of just creating a minimalist/ambient EP out of nothing.

I feel that Altichyre (first track on Versions) is the most emotional ambient piece they've released since 'VLetrmx'. It's a great chord progression and definitely one of the best melodies they've composed; I just wish it were longer.

i recently revisited all these and i was struck by how warm everything felt to me. it feels perfect for winter listening too. most of ae's stuff sounds so cold and machine like bu these all feel very organic in a sense and i really enjoy them a lot.

i was also then reminded how i would really love to get my hands on a sbd from the quari tour.....grrr

  On 12/20/2009 at 8:07 PM, jules said:

i was also then reminded how i would really love to get my hands on a sbd from the quari tour.....grrr

Oh god let's not start that again

  On 12/21/2009 at 9:48 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

  On 12/20/2009 at 8:07 PM, jules said:

i was also then reminded how i would really love to get my hands on a sbd from the quari tour.....grrr

Oh god let's not start that again

lol. i know. we got spoiled with all the quality stuff from the untilted tour and then, blammo, nothing from the quari set.

wow. i've had quaristice since release and listened to it countless times, never getting into it. today (as it always does), that changed. i had a few tracks i always liked (IO, plyPhon, rale), but it really sunk in today. i'd go as far as to say this was the most cohesive album they've put out... it flows like their live sets (no surprise here, given the live approach to production they took). as of the time being, i can't think of a single track i'd even think about skipping -- i'm lovin all of em! as a pretty die-hard fan of the group finding the most joy in works like ep7, untitled and lp5 (and pretty much assuming i'd never get into this one) i'm shocked to find that this one is currently my favorite.

edit: must say, i attribute my falling in love with this album at least partially to me finally getting good headphones (sennheiser hd-25 ii's). it makes a world of difference (listening, again, to untitled, et. al was like rebirth for autechre). i've always had good speakers, but headphones bring out the details you can't get without jacking speakers.

They didn't *really* take a live approach to production.... Sure the tracks were recorded as live jams but then they got edited, then edited, then edited, then edited.... They said they did two hour-long jams a day then cut them down to twenty minutes, then to ten, then smaller incrementally until they felt right.

  On 2/9/2010 at 2:56 AM, Greg Reason said:

They didn't *really* take a live approach to production.... Sure the tracks were recorded as live jams but then they got edited, then edited, then edited, then edited.... They said they did two hour-long jams a day then cut them down to twenty minutes, then to ten, then smaller incrementally until they felt right.

yeah, i read all the same interviews -- but that the ideas were conceived in a jam setting means a lot... or at least it does to me!