Autechre Oversteps made me COMPLETELY rethink the way I feel about Autechre

I agree with a lot of these thoughts on Oversteps. It made me rethink their work too, especially as regards melody. It also has a wholly different emotional logic, if that makes sense. "Sentimental" gets thrown around a lot and has a disparaging flavor, but...

I'd love to see the sound palette and space-consciousness used in a more Confield-abstract way too (granted parts of their new work is very confieldy). I hope that's next!

i just think their newer work is more lyrical somehow... or maybe i mean less restrained by like the usual IDM structure somehow, and more succinct and to the point. i mean i love all their work but it was getting to a point where it was becoming somewhat too predicable for me in terms of structure. i know exactly where the track is going, how it's going to get there, and it's going to take x number of minutes to do it. what held my attention was more the production, the microscopic details and just that their sound is so unique

also this is strictly my opinion but their live shit is where it's at, and it's a crying shame they aren't releasing their best material.. vibrant, fast paced, full of twists and turns.. sooo much more alive than the studio albums

i'd love to see them get back into the heavy detailed textural/beat oriented stuff again, with new ears and a lot more twists

  On 7/4/2010 at 7:42 PM, TwiddleBot said:

and more succinct and to the point.

I dunno mate, my favorite aspect of their new stuff is that they aren't afraid to meander- at least some of the tracks. I revel in the "journey is the destination" ideal of beauty that seems to guide tracks like krYlon and M62. They don't build to any real climax, but then you realize you've been loving it the whole way through..

  On 7/4/2010 at 7:42 PM, TwiddleBot said:

i just think their newer work is more lyrical somehow... or maybe i mean less restrained by like the usual IDM structure somehow, and more succinct and to the point. i mean i love all their work but it was getting to a point where it was becoming somewhat too predicable for me in terms of structure. i know exactly where the track is going, how it's going to get there, and it's going to take x number of minutes to do it. what held my attention was more the production, the microscopic details and just that their sound is so unique

 

also this is strictly my opinion but their live shit is where it's at, and it's a crying shame they aren't releasing their best material.. vibrant, fast paced, full of twists and turns.. sooo much more alive than the studio albums

 

i'd love to see them get back into the heavy detailed textural/beat oriented stuff again, with new ears and a lot more twists

An Autechre Live boxset would be fucking fantastic.

I have to be honest, I've always found their live material a bit more predictable and less interesting. I might be more skilled but it's all pretty much the same. I've never listened to a new set and thought "woah, this is like nothing they've ever done before". If you mixed a few live sets from the past 8 years together I wouldn't know, I would have thought they're all from the same time.

I also find them a bit too cold. I don't think they have to make music that's densely melodic, I like EP7 and Confield and they're pretty scant on melody, but what's there is quite moving. Their livesets seem more just sorta... funky.

I can kind of see what you mean about the live tours because the beat does not let up from start to finish. But I just find that their live sets move so much faster than the studio material, in terms of changes and tempo. So many ideas back to back, the synth work, the crazy bass lines.. unlike anything else they've done. I guess I'm particularly thinking of glasgow+especially the crazy pontins set that is utterly relentless esp at the end (if only it was in stereo, alas). The rhythmic changes in the quaristice tour blew my mind and nothing like that was on the album (tho i totally dig quaristice)

I do love their longer tracks too, that are about the journey.. that's totally what drew me to autechre in the first place. EP7 is still probably one of my favorites of their works conceptually and texturally. I dunno maybe I'm just ranting pointlessly because it's early monday morning. Also, I really want a live box set lol

sean booth on midi tuba

rob brown inhales helium and sings it out on the tape heads as the audio records

this is something they have never done before.

that should be their next tour.

  On 7/5/2010 at 11:38 AM, Springymajig said:

I have to be honest, I've always found their live material a bit more predictable and less interesting. I might be more skilled but it's all pretty much the same. I've never listened to a new set and thought "woah, this is like nothing they've ever done before". If you mixed a few live sets from the past 8 years together I wouldn't know, I would have thought they're all from the same time.

I would have agreed with you completely - BEFORE I actually saw them live. The experience was very different to listening to the live set recordings.

it's very hard to understand Autechre's discography. I think it is too stubborn and every work must be viewed independently. I also think it is fun to try and categorize trends, etc.

My top three Autechre albums are: Chiastic Slide, LP5, and Oversteps. I thought those were most cohesive I guess. I loved the internal progression of Oversteps. It felt very logical and whole. Quaristice to me was their worst since I don't know what. It felt like a loose smattering of random songs that were uncharacteristically short too. I didn't like it better than Draft or Untilted, and definitely not Confield.

I remember thinking Oversteps was the best since Confield too.

i remember quaristice they said was hardware right? maybe with each album they give themselves certain boundaries to work within.. hence sounding different but not sounding like they are particularly evolving.

Quaristice once it clicked with me made me excited about Autechre again. Oversteps and Moves of ten kind of diminish my excitement for a new AE release. Even for a split second when i thought Kiosk was real that good ole' autechre warm and fuzzies disappeared. In my mind if Kiosk were to sound like Moves of Ten or oversteps i could honestly do without it. I'm waiting for AE to blow my mind again, the last time they did was Fol4 from Versions

  On 7/5/2010 at 11:38 AM, Springymajig said:

I have to be honest, I've always found their live material a bit more predictable and less interesting. I might be more skilled but it's all pretty much the same. I've never listened to a new set and thought "woah, this is like nothing they've ever done before". If you mixed a few live sets from the past 8 years together I wouldn't know, I would have thought they're all from the same time.

Have you listened to both the Untilted tour and Confield tour recordings? Besides a fast paced tempo they are significantly different. I could kind of see what you mean in regards to the Untilted and Quaristice live sets being similar but thats where it ends.

  On 7/5/2010 at 10:18 PM, blos said:

I would have agreed with you completely - BEFORE I actually saw them live. The experience was very different to listening to the live set recordings.

I meant to say that I suspect their live material makes a lot more sense in a live environment. Alas... they'll never come to New Zealand... maybe next time they go to Australia the stars will align just perfectly and I'll be able to make it over.

  On 7/6/2010 at 6:40 AM, Awepittance said:

Have you listened to both the Untilted tour and Confield tour recordings? Besides a fast paced tempo they are significantly different. I could kind of see what you mean in regards to the Untilted and Quaristice live sets being similar but thats where it ends.

I haven't given them that much attention probably. The only live set I've listened to a lot is the 1999 Coachella set, which is just before Confield I guess, it's got sorta Pen Expers on it. I like that set... and there's another one from 2000 I quite like that starts with Tilapia... but then they started doing the crazy ones that I think everyone else likes...

I've got one from 2001 which I assume is the confield era style you're refering too.. I can hear a difference in style to the later ones but not hugely, the difference is comparable to say... Hub and Calbruc... two tracks that sit side by side on one album... considering they make can make leaps that great in such a short space of time, I'd expect a bigger jump between several years of live material.

Maybe the difference is too subtle for me but that's why I say I like their albums more, because the difference between them is pretty obvious, especially these days (hence the title of the thread).

  On 7/6/2010 at 3:11 AM, yek said:

i remember quaristice they said was hardware right? maybe with each album they give themselves certain boundaries to work within.. hence sounding different but not sounding like they are particularly evolving.

every musician limited by the tools they use. fortunately, one of the things about ae is that they see extremes in their tools and play with them. they might say quaristice is simply "hardware", but you can do a lot of things with ae's hardware. they evolve over time simply as a result of their noodling. they said many times in the past that they just make music because they like to. there's no higher calling or some bullshit. it's not like they're trying to make the most innovative album ever with each release, they are just having fun. so the "evolution" is more "natural" (i guess)

  On 7/6/2010 at 7:03 PM, theSun said:

  On 7/6/2010 at 3:11 AM, yek said:

i remember quaristice they said was hardware right? maybe with each album they give themselves certain boundaries to work within.. hence sounding different but not sounding like they are particularly evolving.

 

every musician limited by the tools they use. fortunately, one of the things about ae is that they see extremes in their tools and play with them. they might say quaristice is simply "hardware", but you can do a lot of things with ae's hardware. they evolve over time simply as a result of their noodling. they said many times in the past that they just make music because they like to. there's no higher calling or some bullshit. it's not like they're trying to make the most innovative album ever with each release, they are just having fun. so the "evolution" is more "natural" (i guess)

well think of it, they are supposed to have tons of gear, and they probably don't use it al;l, and every album sounds very much different. i think they must pick a handful of tool s and set guidelines that they can only use. just an idea

plus with oversteps they're using more computer stuff.

i'm sure they've developed a thorough enough understanding of hardware functions to emulate anything they can imagine in max/msp. (assumption)

that's why i'm excited about new autechre, they seem like they built a lot of the oversteps stuff from the ground up (aside from people reporting on presets, which i have no merit to comment on at this juncture) and with a long term approach in mind. using the same tools to create ilanders and pt2ph8 and rew1 and cep puiqmx would definitely imply a far-reaching set of rules.

  On 7/6/2010 at 7:42 PM, theSun said:

plus with oversteps they're using more computer stuff.

 

i'm sure they've developed a thorough enough understanding of hardware functions to emulate anything they can imagine in max/msp. (assumption)

 

that's why i'm excited about new autechre, they seem like they built a lot of the oversteps stuff from the ground up (aside from people reporting on presets, which i have no merit to comment on at this juncture) and with a long term approach in mind. using the same tools to create ilanders and pt2ph8 and rew1 and cep puiqmx would definitely imply a far-reaching set of rules.

agreed

  On 7/6/2010 at 9:45 PM, karmakramer said:

  On 7/6/2010 at 7:42 PM, theSun said:

plus with oversteps they're using more computer stuff.

 

i'm sure they've developed a thorough enough understanding of hardware functions to emulate anything they can imagine in max/msp. (assumption)

 

that's why i'm excited about new autechre, they seem like they built a lot of the oversteps stuff from the ground up (aside from people reporting on presets, which i have no merit to comment on at this juncture) and with a long term approach in mind. using the same tools to create ilanders and pt2ph8 and rew1 and cep puiqmx would definitely imply a far-reaching set of rules.

 

agreed

i agree with this as well. what's interesting to me is Autechre doesn't talk much about how powerful of an FM synthesizer Max/msp is and how unique it's FM output sounds compared to almost everything else. They like to name drop obscure FM hardware synths like the FS1R but if you've opened up their older max/msp patches you can hear how much of even their old sound on EP7 and LP5 was generated in msp.

not to mention their live sets were using the same shit apparently, though i haven't had the chance to give those many critical listens.