Autechre Autechre - Oversteps (WARP210) [The MegaThread]

Amber's been my singular favourite since it was released, Oversteps is second, and Sign takes third.

Oversteps is stil the weakest AE album for me. 

I can not feel it, No flow like Sign, Chiastic, Untilted, Confield.. Just some high pitched melodies going on and off. 
If they could have include at least the Machinedrum for beats or mad drum structures like in Exai it would be way more intresting!! 

  On 3/31/2021 at 5:58 PM, jaderpansen said:

yeah to me it sounds more like the waiting room musak once you arrived. deffo has a fluffy, "cloudy" sound.

yeah i had no idea how to express exactly what i had in mind in a concise way because of my poor english skills. what i meant is, when you die, your soul goes to a transition place where you wander around in a dreamlike state, and it's all very mysterious and lonely. and you can feel something big's about to happen. the place looks more or less like this: 

you enter a house that generates new rooms ad infinitum and explore countless of them. in the meantime your soul slowly transforms into something else, without you noticing. you may enter heaven once the transformation is complete. and basically os veix3 plays in the background the whole time. btw this transition phase has no duration since you're outside of time and space, so there's this sense of timelessness and eternity

  On 3/31/2021 at 8:24 AM, kichiguy said:

Yeah r ess really is just the perfect intro. Takes me the fuck away.

this one is really underrated I think, it is such a great opener. I love how huge the atmosphere is, those grand sweeping tones slathered in reverb. and the beat has that funky but understated shuffle, it sounds kind of like it's trying to find its footing as it steps into the storm.

  On 3/31/2021 at 3:29 PM, dcom said:

os veix3.

One of the best songs of their career, wish that more of the album were like it... nonetheless, Oversteps is probably one of their more cohesive albums.

  On 4/2/2021 at 4:51 AM, Boxus said:

this one is really underrated I think, it is such a great opener. I love how huge the atmosphere is, those grand sweeping tones slathered in reverb. and the beat has that funky but understated shuffle, it sounds kind of like it's trying to find its footing as it steps into the storm.

Absolutely love it, there was a period where I would listen to Oversteps almost to the exclusion of anything else around the time it came out and I would sometimes, completely sober, hallucinate the opening to r ess when there was nothing playing

os veix3 : the precise moment in which it is clear that what you find in autechre cannot be replicated

Os veix3 is a beautiful track but I'm wondering what sets it so far above the rest for people? I find it blends in nicely with the album but doesn't particularly stand out. It's kind of restful and grounding.

The one that grabbed me the most in the beginning was qplay. Those hazy tones at the beginning brought me back to 90s IDM (Kubba by mu-Ziq comes to mind, maybe something SAW2-ish about it as well)... and then that beat  

  On 4/3/2021 at 10:16 PM, toaoaoad said:

Os veix3 is a beautiful track but I'm wondering what sets it so far above the rest for people?

To me, the sound selection is perfect, crunchy but not overpoweringly so as there's enough room for everything to breathe; it feels like it's been actually composed and not just algorithmically cranked out. The melody is an understated background tinkling - then, at 2:50 the it's given a sharper, resonant focus and the track becomes simply sublime. It's like the secondary (solo) melody in Black  Dog's Cost II (at 2:50) or the mood shift via melody in Yunx's Cyclomethicone (at 4:05).

there's a few tracks on oversteps that I can only listen at low volume, because those high-pitched, upfront-in-the-mix synths are really physically hurting my ears. this and the melody being a bit annoying to me

(especially the  - known(1) / O=0 / d-sho qub -  run )   actually I often skip those when I listen to the album.

it's weird because this never happens to me with any other of their tracks (exept maybe chilchil, from chiastic)

even  "F7" from SIGN, wich have very upfront / high pitched / high rms level synths, feels ok to me  at high volume, comparing to those few oversteps tracks that I really can't bear.  ....

....maybe I just don't really like the melody from those tracks,and nothing more, and that's why my brain feels like it's too loud or something.

but overall I find most of oversteps synths too much crisp and cranked up in the high-mid to high frequency spectrum ( say, across the 1,6khz - 6khz area)

(oh, and yeah , a +1 for "os veix3"   wich is also my fav on the album.)

redfall? redfall!

  On 4/3/2021 at 11:46 PM, neurone said:

there's a few tracks on oversteps that I can only listen at low volume, because those high-pitched, upfront-in-the-mix synths are really physically hurting my ears. this and the melody being a bit annoying to me

(especially the  - known(1) / O=0 / d-sho qub -  run )   actually I often skip those when I listen to the album.

it's weird because this never happens to me with any other of their tracks (exept maybe chilchil, from chiastic)

even  "F7" from SIGN, wich have very upfront / high pitched / high rms level synths, feels ok to me  at high volume, comparing to those few oversteps tracks that I really can't bear.  ....

....maybe I just don't really like the melody from those tracks,and nothing more, and that's why my brain feels like it's too loud or something.

but overall I find most of oversteps synths too much crisp and cranked up in the high-mid to high frequency spectrum ( say, across the 1,6khz - 6khz area)

(oh, and yeah , a +1 for "os veix3"   wich is also my fav on the album.)

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feel sorry for you, truly. not in a bad way, but like, damn, you're missing out.

also: krYlon is maybe my favorite on the album, and that's saying a lot on such a top tier album.

Yah, Os veix3 has always been a stand out track to me, even back when I didn't care much for the album.

Creative usage of compression on the pad is very interesting imo

  On 4/5/2021 at 12:15 AM, toaoaoad said:

 

 

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well it's certainly somewhere up there (after rcazt, drane2, 444 and first half of sublimit tho).

Drane2 is a tough one to beat for sure. I just think Yuop is such a statement 

best closing track is lowkey Nuane but Yuop is a beautiful emotional catharsis and I love it.

  On 4/5/2021 at 3:35 AM, Boxus said:

best closing track is lowkey Nuane but Yuop is a beautiful emotional catharsis and I love it.

Catharsis? It starts beautifully but it turns sounding like a loss to me, apocalyptic loss, an oblivion ...

  On 4/5/2021 at 3:45 AM, xox said:

Catharsis? It starts beautifully but it turns sounding like a loss to me, apocalyptic loss, an oblivion ...

yeah true it does have a very desolate apocalypse vibe. for me that climactic melody trying to break through is still such a huge emotional release, even though it ends up sort of defeated, dissolving back into the void

but .. apocalypse is a catharsis... The highest, possibly

  On 4/5/2021 at 12:33 AM, jaderpansen said:

and first half of sublimit tho).

whaaaat ? !  only first half ? you're kidding me !

  On 4/5/2021 at 11:48 PM, neurone said:

whaaaat ? !  only first half ? you're kidding me !

Second part od sublimit is my fav part of the album

going off topic but, talking about sublimit :

I found similarity in sublimit and X4, about where it starts and where it ends(even if both tracks have different sounds & a different mood)

both are starting in a feeling of a rush and then gets soothing at the end,still with an overall dramatic thing, sort of a balance between fear ond hope,

hard to describe actually but ... something

Yea I don't see how sublimit could be a contender for "best closing track" if that excludes the second half  

Sublimit .. that zone around 5:25 where the odd time meshes is one of the things that I would most like to rediscover in the autechre of the future