Autechre Is Autechre out of ideas?

I listen to Autechre so that I don't HAVE to put up with that bullshit.

This thread is the worst.

To my mind ae are still at the top of their game, and have been ever since confield.

Draft 7.30 not exciting lolololololololololololololololololololol.

Can we finish this thread then? Please?

Make it go away.

If you think that Oversteps does not show signs of creativity just because there's less beats, I don't know what to tell you.

last post please.

first of all @ the ongoing fanboy-fraction (to which i count myself):

you shouldn't try to break it down to "personal opinion" every time, despite being true to a certain degree, no serious aesthetical discussion can stem from that, which would be interesting for a change. also terms like "degree of innovation" ARE objectively measruble, tho it'd take a cultural expert to analyse that properly which i surely ain't.

anyway here's how i see it, beginning with adressing the origina1 post (going backwards):

1: "They should do a guitar and piano album or something, maybe work with an MC, something to get some fresh ideas going."

i guess you're just taking the piss here... guitar/piano? good one!

also it's not like they didn't incorporate cut-up voices in a kinda mc-ish fashion numerous times already (ccec, io, pro radii, ending of pce etc...)

2: "There's a few cool tracks on Move of Ten, but it sounds like they're just hopping on the unquantized-Dilla-glitch bandwagon every producer under the sun is doing."

ok this i think is just bull. the only recent track that vaguely fits this description is maybe "rew 1". and it's not like they found their love for hip hop (dilla in particular) only yesterday...

3: "It's all just sort of more-of-the-same."

the same of wut? quaristice didn't sound like untilted at all. neither does oversteps. ok, there may be hints to the past in certain tracks, but a bit of self-referenciality is no bad thing in my book as long as the re-contextualisation in the now feels legit and it sounds... good? i'd take a track like nth which clearly reminds me of mid-90s ae any day if it is done so well.(also check out acts like ac/dc or slayer lol... giants in their respective genres with no innovative force whatsoever). with oversteps maybe you're getting at the "could have been made in amber times" argument. we were there before and i begged to differ. can't be arsed to look for the discussion now and copy/paste everything but i'll give a short summary answering you're first point:

4: "Nothing after Untilted showed any real interesting melodic or beatwork ideas"

alot of people seem to be missing the ultra-complex beat work. and well it's true, that doesn't seem to be their main concern anymore/atm. which kinda hints to a change of priotites which in fact goes completely against your "more of the same" statement. and even the most awe-inspiring virtuosity is no guarantee for "fresh ideas", is it. if anything it takes more patience than "genius".

now calling the melodic work on oversteps uninteresting is a bold statement i think, cos imho it lives from pretty much just that and as i said elsewhere i feel their sensibility for melodic/harmonic development/counterpoint has greatly evolved since the early days. there are no polytonal experiments like in treale anywhere on incunabula/amber. also i think if one would rebuild bits of tracks like pt2ph8 or 0=O and replace all melodic sounds with highly compressed, "field-recordy" percussive one's you'd have your draft-ish beat complexity right there! seriously there is almost not one pattern repeating itself just the same, listen.

and to me the melodies feel really special in terms of mood they evoke, often very ambiguous: happy/ sad, relaxing/ suspenseful... but ok, that's probably really only debatable on a subjective level.

anyway, fact is i think:

- this album doesn't sound like any of their old ones. and none of recent years from anyone that i can think of. cyber-baroque, is that a genre yet?

now for another criteria which i also find alot of interest in: the sound design...

tbh i think untilted, as incredibly arranged as it is, is probably their most bland sounding. it just lacks ass! i think they got it right with quaristice again and overten are further steps in an interesting direction.

fm synthesis might not be the latest thing but i think it's cool they at least don't overuse granular synthesis anymore which was omnipresent on ganz draft etc. anyway the whole production style they cultivated from quaristice on is something else in itself i think. strangely "muddled" almost like a memory, extremly bass- and reverb heavy... it might seem nostalgic but:

people seem to citisize the fact they are able to make comparisons to other/old stuff and yeah maybe one could indeed see alot of ae's work as nods to their influences (80s ...just listen to their radio mixes to find proof), but doesn't any artist do that to a degree? the thing is how much of a personal twist goes along and i think their vision of the past is more than idiosyncratic enough to make for an unique experience.

also could it maybe just be that your personal horizons have broaded since 2003 to be able to find all those references? that ae worked as a kind of starter drug and ur just used to heavier stuff by now? i had an "emancipation phase" too around the time of untilted but i came back and i think i'm here to stay cos besides all notions of innovativeness and virtuosity ae to me are just one of the most "uniquely personal" artists around nowadays and at least i couldn't predict any of the tendencies they turned to on the last few albums which is part of the attraction.

blah blah... anyway i wish i was more eloquent to get points across (twiddelbot i'm counting on you here ;P) but maybe it'll be a little step beyond "sucks/u crazy?".

if you read this all the way through you should feel privileged to that extent of boredom.

gaenius.

autechre is, autechre does.

i've been recently thinking how incredibly happy i am with where autechre are at the moment. what with oversteps, move of ten and the recent live material, in my opinion i'd say they've reached a new level of genius. there's something very matured and developed about their current sound + approach to melody. no no no, i would not at all say they're out of ideas or anything along those lines.

  On 6/19/2010 at 1:59 PM, Suffocate Peon said:

I don't get a sense of excitement or enthusiasm in their music anymore. I think Confield has it, I think Draft doesn't. I think Untitled has it, I think Quaristice doesn't. People will disagree with that, but most will agree that there's a feeling of Autechre scratching at the surface of something more in Confield, Autechre sound inspired and creatively free.

 

I don't think Draft is like that. It's almost down to earth.

 

Oversteps sounds bored by itself to me. Move of Ten less so. I really like some of the tracks, but already I'm bored of them.

 

I don't want Autechre to do anything other than what they do, but their attitude is 'yeah we'll keep making music as long as we enjoy doing it more than doing other things', when I want it to be; 'we're really excited about making more music that's not like anything we've done before'. But after more than 20 years of doing it, maybe that's not possible.

 

Aphex Twin is the same as well. Like he's spent years excited by the possibilities of experimenting and is now past all that, and now is just making good, melancholic, emotional music but which fails to inspire a response beyond 'yeah, it's alright'. I mean Analord and The Tuss, of course. And I do really like them. His best stuff for me is his experimental music, which he says of what he puts out in the Aphex Twin name, because to me it sounds invigorating and I won't ever tire of listening to it.

I agree with this guy.

Except I really like that Aphex is doing tunes like Fenix Funk, Alspacka, and XMD5a. They just flat out rock, and aren't concerned with trying to cram as many breakbeat edits into a 4 bar phrase as humanly possible.

To me, Untilted was Autechre's "Analord". They just made some kickass beats, put some great melodies behind em, gave the songs actual beginnings and endings, and it was an excellent work. Confield was, and still is, brilliant. But I find there's nothing in Quaristice or Oversteps or Move Of Ten that has as satisfying melodic or beat hook as Pen Expers (nor even having the briliant sense of crescendo that song has).

My comment about guitar/piano/mc was not to suggest they literally do those exact things, but that they try to make something other than "Autechre music" to gain a sense of musical perspective. The late 90's and early 00's we were all wow'ed with how they disregarded musical convention and made meandering glitchy songs, but now that's old hat and a return to things like dynamics and emotional melodics would be a welcome change in my book.

I also understand the majority of you spend all day on here writing 18 paragraph essays breaking down every track they do....that's ok too.

All I can say to this is: I LOVE Move of Ten!

trey doesn't shred like he did in '94

If Autechre wanted to fit people's idea of "fresh", they'd already have made a country rock album.

Autechre out of ideas?! You're out of your mind! Shit

*provocative topic provokes*

  On 6/19/2010 at 6:23 PM, tht tne said:

trey doesn't shred like he did in '94

laibach remixes ftlol

I didn't like the post-Untilted releases as much as the earlier ones. But then I also don't like LP5. Let's see what's up next.

  On 6/19/2010 at 5:43 PM, autopilot said:

...and a return to things like dynamics and emotional melodics would be a welcome change in my book.

sounds like a 100% description of oversteps to me.

Putting a C minor FM synth chord into a randomizer plugin isn't exactly what I meant.

  On 6/19/2010 at 6:51 PM, autopilot said:

Putting a C minor FM synth chord into a randomizer plugin isn't exactly what I meant.

That's a little unfair...in regards to Oversteps.

Well, actually, some of the melodic aspects of Move of Ten sound a little like that to me.

  On 6/19/2010 at 4:06 AM, ruiagnelo said:

Autechre is not out of ideas. WATMM is.

quoted for ultimate truth

  On 6/19/2010 at 6:51 PM, autopilot said:

Putting a C minor FM synth chord into a randomizer plugin isn't exactly what I meant.

that's not even a real thing that a person can do.

  On 6/19/2010 at 7:54 PM, bigs said:

  On 6/19/2010 at 4:06 AM, ruiagnelo said:

Autechre is not out of ideas. WATMM is.

quoted for ultimate truth

That could have been an epic last post.

  On 6/19/2010 at 3:51 AM, autopilot said:

They should do a guitar and piano album or something, maybe work with an MC, something to get some fresh ideas going.

i totally understand what he means. and i don't think it's such a daft thing to say really.

obviously they wouldn't make a straight up mainstream "guitar and piano" album, i'd guess,

but just to work with some different instruments for a change, would surely get them creating 'new'

and very different stuff to what they usually do. surely?

having said that above, i don't think they're out of ideas. they'll probably keep making music for another 20 years, doing what they do.

you can't deny though that it'd be interesting to hear what they came up with if say they did limit themselves to only using 1 electric guitar, 1 acoustic guitar, a piano, a sampler, and a bunch of mics, for an album.. can you? would nobody be into anything like that at all?

personally, for their next album i'd like to see them to go off into the desert with some bongos, tamborines and melodicas, maybe a couple of recorders and a triangle, and a couple of sound recorders, take a load of acid and record their time there. now THAT i'd buy! lol.