Autechre Impressions of Oversteps on Vinyl

It is with great joy (recounted with equally great sobriety), folks, that this morning I see, sitting waiting for me on the chair by the front door, a package, brown, approximately LP-sized, which I know can only contain one thing. Three days before the official release date and it has arrived!

 

It's a hefty bit of kit which the packaging from Bleep, as always, does a beautiful job of preserving, and after carefully scissoring the green tape the flaps of cardboard fold out to reveal the beautiful monster which is Oversteps. We've seen the artwork on the net, but now to hold the whole thing all its heavy majesty is something entirely different.

 

Those of you who care to get your hands of a copy will all see it in due course, so there's no need for a piece-by-piece description - even less a track-by-track run-through à la our old friend

, bless him, since we've all heard the music - but I would like to offer a few impressions I have of it. First off, even before placing the first sacred disc on the turntable, for me it is a release of contrasts. We have the black spot on white background - entirely white all round; and then we go from the incredibly robust outer shell in to the fragility of the wafer thin poster at the centre of the release, along with the discs of Vinyl themselves. Such is its beauty that I wonder if there isn't meaning imbued in every part of it. For instance, would it be fanciful to suggest that even the chosen type of material has meaning? If so, the inner layers of it all - the two pieces of Vinyl and wafer thin poster in their own protective sleeves - could represent the soft heart of Autechre, buried underneath all of this robust packaging. Yet further flights of fancy could be made when we consider that the blacks and whites aren't actually those extremes of shade at all, but rather grey and beige; and the yellow underbelly of each layer, no hint of which is apparent from the black and white pictures with which we are familiar: what could that mean?

 

But it is the music, we know, which is the main event. Even on my shitty 2xAll-in-one setup it sounds wonderful. The pieces (possibly excepting 'r ess', due to its extraordinarily long opening crescendo) begin with a sense of purpose which isn't necessarily there in the digital media. In the .mp3s and even the 24bit .wavs (which I admittedly can't fully appreciate because of my system) they may seem to begin almost incidentally - not so with the Vinyl. But the most beautiful part is that this music really allows the Vinyl to breathe, one of the characteristics we find in Vinyl which exists in no other recorded medium. It seems to me to be the perfect marriage of music and medium, and - as opposed to Quaristice, of which I remember reading that Autechre stated the .flac files were the product - Vinyl seems to be the intended medium on which Oversteps was always supposed to be listened.

Edited March 19, 2010 by Miblo

yes, it sounds great on vinyl, and played loud.

  On 3/19/2010 at 3:30 PM, oscillik said:

yes, it sounds great on vinyl, and played loud.

 

Bloody hell, oscillik, you're on the ball! Were you reading that as I was typing it?

  On 3/19/2010 at 3:36 PM, Miblo said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 3:30 PM, oscillik said:

yes, it sounds great on vinyl, and played loud.

 

Bloody hell, oscillik, you're on the ball! Were you reading that as I was typing it?

nope, i finished listening to it on vinyl about 15 mins before you posted ;)

  On 3/19/2010 at 3:37 PM, oscillik said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 3:36 PM, Miblo said:

Bloody hell, oscillik, you're on the ball! Were you reading that as I was typing it?

nope, i finished listening to it on vinyl about 15 mins before you posted ;)

 

Ah, okay. I trust you've got a better setup than mine on which to listen to it. Admittedly I've only listened to the first side, but will be indulging in the lot this evening after ST:TNG and the day's cricket has been played.

  On 3/19/2010 at 3:49 PM, Miblo said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 3:37 PM, oscillik said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 3:36 PM, Miblo said:

Bloody hell, oscillik, you're on the ball! Were you reading that as I was typing it?

nope, i finished listening to it on vinyl about 15 mins before you posted ;)

 

Ah, okay. I trust you've got a better setup than mine on which to listen to it. Admittedly I've only listened to the first side, but will be indulging in the lot this evening after ST:TNG and the day's cricket has been played.

just a Technics 1210 with Ortofon Arkiv cart and the amp you see in my av. it's not audiophile quality, but it's certainly not shabby.

i listened to the entire thing as soon as i woke up and saw it waiting for me.

  On 3/19/2010 at 3:56 PM, oscillik said:

just a Technics 1210 with Ortofon Arkiv cart and the amp you see in my av. it's not audiophile quality, but it's certainly not shabby.

i listened to the entire thing as soon as i woke up and saw it waiting for me.

 

Ha, it's certainly not my setup then! Mine's a very cheesy Philips FCD 563 -> Headphone socket-Phono -> Philips FW-C38. The best thing about it is the damn cable: a Pro Signal PSG00809. Although I have to say, I do quite like the FW-C38. It's the best hi-fi I've had, anyway, out of the two I've owned (not including the old FCD 563, which is a somewhat recent stop-gap for Vinyl purposes). Next on the list is an affordably good turntable, and then I'll be into separates territory.

 

Do you agree with this business of Overstep allowing the Vinyl to breathe, oscillik?

  On 3/19/2010 at 4:28 PM, Miblo said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 3:56 PM, oscillik said:

just a Technics 1210 with Ortofon Arkiv cart and the amp you see in my av. it's not audiophile quality, but it's certainly not shabby.

i listened to the entire thing as soon as i woke up and saw it waiting for me.

 

Ha, it's certainly not my setup then! Mine's a very cheesy Philips FCD 563 -> Headphone socket-Phono -> Philips FW-C38. The best thing about it is the damn cable: a Pro Signal PSG00809. Although I have to say, I do quite like the FW-C38. It's the best hi-fi I've had, anyway, out of the two I've owned (not including the old FCD 563, which is a somewhat recent stop-gap for Vinyl purposes). Next on the list is an affordably good turntable, and then I'll be into separates territory.

 

Do you agree with this business of Overstep allowing the Vinyl to breathe, oscillik?

to be fair, i could probably do with getting some better quality cables for hooking my amp up to my soundcard and my minidisc recorder.

 

with regards to the sound, i'll have to give it some more listens - i had it running primarily to check for any defects in case i need to send it back, i was in a Skype call with my fiancée at the time. i'm gonna give it some proper attention now though.

holy fuck, Treale is smooth at -4 pitch

Is vinyl green inside too by the way?

  On 3/19/2010 at 7:51 PM, o00o said:

Is vinyl green inside too by the way?

hold on, lemme just break open the vinyl and look inside it :p

 

yeah the sleeves on the inside are green

  On 3/19/2010 at 5:29 PM, oscillik said:

holy fuck, Treale is smooth at -4 pitch

 

+1

 

Err..

 

I mean...

 

-4

 

Brilliant. Treale just keeps sounding better and better.

  On 3/19/2010 at 7:55 PM, oscillik said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 7:51 PM, o00o said:

Is vinyl green inside too by the way?

hold on, lemme just break open the vinyl and look inside it :p

 

yeah the sleeves on the inside are green

 

ah nice in this context it makes sense

 

nice blade runner poster in the background where did you get it?

  On 3/19/2010 at 8:50 PM, o00o said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 7:55 PM, oscillik said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 7:51 PM, o00o said:

Is vinyl green inside too by the way?

hold on, lemme just break open the vinyl and look inside it :p

 

yeah the sleeves on the inside are green

 

ah nice in this context it makes sense

 

nice blade runner poster in the background where did you get it?

check this thread, details in here

 

edit: actually the details aren't in there, but there's a better pic in there.

you can get the poster from here

Edited March 19, 2010 by oscillik

thanks

  On 3/19/2010 at 8:01 PM, feltcher said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 5:29 PM, oscillik said:

holy fuck, Treale is smooth at -4 pitch

 

+1

 

Err..

 

I mean...

 

-4

 

Brilliant. Treale just keeps sounding better and better.

 

Can't wait to give that a shot myself.. any day now!

  On 3/19/2010 at 9:09 PM, TwiddleBot said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 8:01 PM, feltcher said:

  On 3/19/2010 at 5:29 PM, oscillik said:

holy fuck, Treale is smooth at -4 pitch

 

+1

 

Err..

 

I mean...

 

-4

 

Brilliant. Treale just keeps sounding better and better.

 

Can't wait to give that a shot myself.. any day now!

 

Damn, no pitch control on my thing. Unless you count 33⅓/45rpm. ... Now that's an idea...

 

TwiddleBot, you'll fall in love all over again.

Currently blasting over a pair of massive 1960s Tannoy dual concentric speakers and sounding every bit as great as I'd hoped. Well mastered. Seems to be a nice quiet pressing too, even the fade in on r-ess doesn't suffer. As usual, the emphasis sees a bit different to the CD, probably related to me having a much better record player than CD player rather than artistic decisions.

  On 3/20/2010 at 6:54 AM, xxx said:

... But, I want to look into the experience of physically interacting with the product. ...

 

These could be the words of someone from the 22nd Century heading into an archive of historical records, tapes and CDs.

just got the parcel notice in the mail last night.... tonight i have some vinyl to spin. sweet!!

  On 3/19/2010 at 10:27 PM, Miblo said:

TwiddleBot, you'll fall in love all over again.

 

Yup. Sounds terrific.. silky smooth!

  On 3/20/2010 at 6:54 AM, xxx said:

I guess moral of the story is that I should learn some patience because I can always encode to PC--should stick to vinyl. My encodes are always so variable and often shite though, but that's a different sack of potatoes.

 

Personally when I buy the vinyl I do not feel even the slightest bit hesitant about downloading.. Looks like bleep just jumped on the ball.. all vinyl comes with instant mp3 downloads now

Yeah same. If I've bought it I've bought it. Especially seeing as the vinyl editions are usually the most expensive.

eating this up ! im' on known 1 right now... it really sounds better on vinyl, not just audio quality , i don't know what it is. has a very nice flow too with the super long fade in to the first track.

I have the vinyl version only -- long shot i know, but would anyone care to share the wavs?

Edited March 24, 2010 by Tankakern