Autechre Autechre - Oversteps (WARP210) [The MegaThread]

This album is brilliant! and it flows together.. remarkably well.

It's funny how often a new artist's album will make you love past albums more. It's because you grow to like the new album on its own terms, and start to listen to it obsessively (as you don't want want to fall into the silly practice of squaring everything new an artist does with something from their past). But then you go back and listen to older works, and they suddenly sound even more amazing then you remembered, because your ears had got used to the new one, its warts and all. I heard some of LP5 and Confield again, and they're really something else. Confield especially. Much more melodic than I remembered, too - but with amazing sound design and mind blowing percussive elements to go along with it.

I guess the boys are older now, and they've done those albums already. Not so into ruthlessly pushing the envelope, perhaps. There is definitely a drier, looser, goofier, more stoned vibe to their (non live) stuff from Quaristice (a bits of Untilted) to Oversteps. Hearing Acroyear2, Eidetic Casein, and Lentic Catachresis after having got used to Oversteps was pretty shocking: so much ordered chaos, so many more dense, alien sounding layers evolving and fighting against each other in all kinds of funky ways. I've got Chiastic Slide on now, and even that 1997 album feels dangerously precise and sonically beyond most other electronic music after having been obsessed with Oversteps.

Not that the new one is bad. It's enjoyable, and it's served a useful double purpose of making past albums seems even better (which i found Quaristice did to former albums also.)

  On 2/23/2010 at 5:21 PM, theSun said:

it's going to be all about the polyrhythms going on with the synths. that's what's going to stick in your head after you're more familiar with the tracks.

Which is also why Confield, Draft and Untilted are unmemorable wastes of time and are little more than atmospherics + overcooked drum programming.

/dons shield

Oversteps is the album that should have followed EP7, but if it took them 10 years of cock-waving to get to this point, it was worth the wait.

/dons armour as well

There's some really nice, subtle use of dynamic range on this album; a few tracks just get a teeeeny bit louder in certain passages/climaxes, and I'm finding it really effective. Has anyone looked at waveforms? I'm guessing Oversteps might be less compressed for maximum loudness than Untilted, but not sure.

There's a lot of intentional distortion in Oversteps, but there also seems to be a good bit of headroom. This album sounds fanfuckintastic.

  On 2/23/2010 at 6:43 PM, Chis said:

  On 2/23/2010 at 5:21 PM, theSun said:

it's going to be all about the polyrhythms going on with the synths. that's what's going to stick in your head after you're more familiar with the tracks.

 

Which is also why Confield, Draft and Untilted are unmemorable wastes of time and are little more than atmospherics + overcooked drum programming.

 

/dons shield

 

Oversteps is the album that should have followed EP7, but if it took them 10 years of cock-waving to get to this point, it was worth the wait.

 

/dons armour as well

read the rules

untilted was compressed into oblivion.

i'm not going to explain why confield, draft and untilted are perfect albums. i'll just let chis discover them at a later date.

  On 2/23/2010 at 5:37 PM, eugene said:

now with the proper quality copy out i can conclude..

 

fuck you autechre, 24bits of subpar generic IDM wankfest with a few hints of past brilliance.

this is infuriatingly disappointing.

 

you known(1) fags should take a close listen to eidetic casein.

 

/Orubasarot

why don't you go blow lunch or do whatever it is you do to keep that ass of yours in business.

and i like known(1) AND confield....UH-OH! http://bit.ly/7cRp6

uh! ohhhhhhhhhhhhh....

  On 2/23/2010 at 6:54 PM, theSun said:

untilted was compressed into oblivion.

 

i'm not going to explain why confield, draft and untilted are perfect albums. i'll just let chis discover them at a later date.

I discovered that they're all full of drums and almost no melodic content worth remembering. Some people have a different opinion to you, you know?

Oversteps might be their best album in years, but for some of us it's because Sean and Rob have gone back to writing melodies. Not messing around with drums for hours.

I played this once last night and have played 5 other non-Oversteps albums since, before going on to a second listen. Is something wrong with me? Guess I'm just pacing myself.

maybe you should break away from your conventional idea of a "melody." maybe you shouldn't expect autechre to be something they are not. maybe you just can't get past the fact that confield/draft/untilted don't sound enough like music you've grown accustomed to. i don't really care why you don't enjoy absurdly aggressive rhythms tied together with minimal synths, but just saying "omg ae too many drumzzzzz" (this is what your posts read like) makes you sound quite stupid.

i understand that maybe a handful of people have a different opinion than me, and i enjoy legitimate discourse. but you are clearly wrong sir.

  On 2/23/2010 at 7:14 PM, sidewinder said:

I played this once last night and have played 5 other non-Oversteps albums since, before going on to a second listen. Is something wrong with me? Guess I'm just pacing myself.

nope, nothing wrong with you at all - stops you getting sick of it in such a short period of time.

anyone else love the chord resolutions towards the end of Treale? something about some autechre tracks...it's like your ears are begging for the chord resolution and when it lands you're just like "fuck yesssssssss"

  On 2/23/2010 at 7:22 PM, sysyphus said:

anyone else love the chord resolutions towards the end of Treale? something about some autechre tracks...it's like your ears are begging for the chord resolution and when it lands you're just like "fuck yesssssssss"

did you wipe after you came?

  On 2/23/2010 at 7:22 PM, sysyphus said:

anyone else love the chord resolutions towards the end of Treale? something about some autechre tracks...it's like your ears are begging for the chord resolution and when it lands you're just like "fuck yesssssssss"

hell yeah! especially in that track tension is massively rising up towards that point, weiird harmonics, then all of a sudden it's like "w00t, happy end!". lovely.

  On 2/23/2010 at 7:23 PM, oscillik said:

did you wipe after you came?

you have a sick and twisted world perspective little man

edit: and yes i did

  On 2/23/2010 at 7:22 PM, sysyphus said:

anyone else love the chord resolutions towards the end of Treale? something about some autechre tracks...it's like your ears are begging for the chord resolution and when it lands you're just like "fuck yesssssssss"

I feel the very same about treale. We're talking about the part which starts for the first time at 3:45, right? Love that!

Yeah, Treale has some serious mid-90s styleee Autechre payoff to it.

  On 2/23/2010 at 11:00 AM, pigster said:

this is incredible.

(qplay is pretty much uviol, no?_)

I would say os veix3 is more uvioly than qplay

My god ox veix3 is incredible. Really strikes a Corc vibe with me (my favorite track of LP5!)

i have no idea of music theory, all i know is i'm shaking my head in disbelief at how effortlessly O=0 (and various sections across the album) sounds sweet and bitter at the very same time. it seems alien but not at all forced/confrontative. maybe best comparable to "ethno" music from regions where different ideas of harmony than western evolved... "naturally" (like other people mentioned gamelan similarities etc). only in this case it's some kind of robot-civilization, long after humanity's gone from the face of this world. yes, i think this album still sounds totally futuristic and otherwordly, despite the fact that it may have references in sound-choices to how people defined "futuristic sounding" in the last 50 years. but so did condraftled... so there.

i feel this album's as idiosyncratic as it gets, maybe even more "personal" in it's amalgamation of influences.

i'll have to admit though that i'm not that familiar with most "IDM" artists so maybe i really can't judge it's generic-ness...

oops lol, i guess the last post would have made more sense in context to the discussion going on in the initial reactions thread... ah well they'll probably be merged again anyway

  On 2/23/2010 at 11:14 PM, xxx said:

I came back to this thread for any updates and it's like a hacker's hive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Daa9W6SeE3Y

row row row your boat

  On 2/23/2010 at 11:30 PM, sysyphus said:

  On 2/23/2010 at 11:14 PM, xxx said:

I came back to this thread for any updates and it's like a hacker's hive

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Daa9W6SeE3Y

 

row row row your boat

razor and blade!

  On 2/22/2010 at 9:08 PM, oscillik said:

is anyone else picking up on the vaguely Vangelis-like timbres?

How fuckin funny is the Vangelis 'Chariots of Fire' version of Pen Expers they did at Coachella... Laughed my ass off when I heard that for the first time.