mot/oversteps sonically ahead of draft/confield?

  On 7/23/2010 at 4:36 PM, encey said:

The extensive use of reverb is actually something that has made it hard for me to get into Quaristice, Oversteps and Move of Ten, because I feel like often there is just too much of it. I agree it is controlled, in that they are clearly choosing when it sustains and when it closes off, but overall I think there is just so much reverb on so many sounds that the track becomes a muddle.

i agree with this. especially with oversteps, the reverb washes (on tracks like see on see, other 'beatless' tracks) feel claustrophobic, not expansive. whereas with later AFX/Tuss stuff, there seems to be a careful economy with the use of reverb, and there's a better sense of individual sounds having reverb, contrasting with the more dry sounds.

move of ten sounds better mixed/recorded to my ears than oversteps, the first four tracks are truly remarkable (y7 less so) with their space, and reverb (mix). y7 is more of a dense, textural delight.

I agree with that too -- Move of Ten has moved me and my bowels more than the previous two releases. For me, it's probably also that the beats are more interesting and change up more, whereas the beast on Oversteps and Quaristice are, I would say, more straightforward and static.

  On 7/23/2010 at 5:37 PM, encey said:

I agree with that too -- Move of Ten has moved me and my bowels more than the previous two releases. For me, it's probably also that the beats are more interesting and change up more, whereas the beast on Oversteps and Quaristice are, I would say, more straightforward and static.

yeah, i put on oversteps last night, to fall asleep. i had to turn it off during treale, because of that reason, and because i've come to detest the clean, metallic melodic elements in the track. similarly, i've been growing tired with rew(1) because of the lack of rhythmic variance, it's corny funk is enervating. pce1-freeze (can't recall the exact name) is also pretty static/repetitive, but sounds fantastic on the stereo.

I think the corny funk's funny!

Oversteps needs to be played in a car or something for it to truly tickle me. It's seriously the best shot I've heard in years. Very addicting

  On 7/24/2010 at 3:55 AM, karmakramer said:

Oversteps needs to be played in a car or something for it to truly tickle me. It's seriously the best shit I've heard in years. Very addicting

In terms of the general atmosphere throughout the album, it is definitely fresher than confield/draft. It's hard to say if it's really 'better' although I think it has more depth to it. I don't like to compare Autechre's music as I find it all equally satisfying for different reasons.

If I had to horribly generalize, I'd say that mot/oversteps is definitely sonically ahead of draft/confield. There are certain aspects of the sound in these two releases that have had me confoundedly puzzled upon multiple listens:

- The cacophony of sound that bleats in repeatedly during d-sho qub.

- The similar cacophony of string sounds that bleats once per bar in pce freeze 2.8i

- The incredibly loud but incredibly noiseless silence present throughout nth dafuseder.b (to be fair, Ae certainly did not invent this sound)

- Ilanders (enough said!)

- The "beat" to O=0 (To this day I don't think I fully understand it's angle)

and to a lesser degree:

- The tumbling beats in Cep puiqMX

Among others, these aspects of the music are so original and strange that it almost takes getting used to hearing the noise. I noticed this effect when I realized that the first few times I heard these sounds, I was unable to recall them in my head from memory. Once you can hear it in your head when you think about it, it no longer seems that strange to you.

I'm sure Confield/Draft has many similar aspects, although it is all too familiar for me to judge fairly now.

  On 7/25/2010 at 5:01 AM, thehauntingsoul said:

The incredibly loud but incredibly noiseless silence present throughout nth dafuseder.b (to be fair, Ae certainly did not invent this sound)

what?

  On 7/25/2010 at 5:39 AM, tipper said:

  On 7/25/2010 at 5:01 AM, thehauntingsoul said:

The incredibly loud but incredibly noiseless silence present throughout nth dafuseder.b (to be fair, Ae certainly did not invent this sound)

what?

Just the way all the melody is blurred to the extreme.

hauntingsoul, do you know what's reverb?

  On 7/25/2010 at 5:01 AM, thehauntingsoul said:

- The "beat" to O=0 (To this day I don't think I fully understand it's angle)

do you mean that you have trouble convincing yourself where the bars start? if so, i feel the same way about it. it's still my favourite track on oversteps though.

  On 7/25/2010 at 5:44 AM, Enter a new display name said:

hauntingsoul, do you know what's reverb?

I'm not even going to dignify that with a response

  On 7/25/2010 at 12:51 PM, modey said:

  On 7/25/2010 at 5:01 AM, thehauntingsoul said:

- The "beat" to O=0 (To this day I don't think I fully understand it's angle)

do you mean that you have trouble convincing yourself where the bars start? if so, i feel the same way about it. it's still my favourite track on oversteps though.

Yeah, exactly. Whichever way you try to feel out the beat, it tricks you into thinking you're half a step early/late

in response to Encey, a good example of AE attempting dirty production is Perlence on quaristice. I think that was their first failure in this department.

as far as the beats go on all 3 albums, i'm not hearing anything on Moves of ten that aren't simple repeating 4 measure long drum patterns (besides the final track). Am i missing some hidden dynamic ever-changing beat structure buried somewhere in here? If i were to compare the rhythmic variance of Moves of Ten, Oversteps and Quaristice i would say Quaristice probably has the most irregular and unpredictable beats (but still not by very much),and nothing compared to Confield, Draft or Untilted.

  On 7/23/2010 at 5:37 PM, encey said:

For me, it's probably also that the beats are more interesting and change up more, whereas the beast on Oversteps and Quaristice are, I would say, more straightforward and static.

examples? Listened to moves of Ten on vinyl last night and not really hearing what you describe.

Awepittance, can you post a youtube or something to a song that you think characterizes the kind of production that you think Autechre were going for but failed to reach with Perlence? I'd like to hear this myself.

well if you've heard Perlence i don't need to post a youtube video. and the idea of it failing is obviously subjective, i just think it's undeniable that they weren't trying to attain some sort of grimey/dirty production on that track. Even from the opening burst of synth lines

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

the sound on this youtube video is kind of fucked but yeah just listen to the actual song

this is another example

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

especially the way the pounding bass drums seem purposefully over driven and muddy.

No, I was wondering if you could give an example of a track by someone else that characterizes a "success" in your opinion of this style.

EDIT: Just to make it clear, I'm asking out of curiosity. I'd be interested in hearing for myself. I'm clarifying this because often people sound antagonistic on the internet when they don't mean it.

Looking for examples, I followed up on Terror Danjah, J dilla, and Mr. Oizo. I couldn't really see what J Dilla had in common with the other two, but the other two certainly have overdriven synths and drums, and used the 'pumping' effect with their kick drum compression (where it briefly muffles out all the other sounds when it hits). I could see how autechre's music could be described in this way, although I think they have been using the 'pumping' effect at least since Confield:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwtVJ6OFlR8

That Plyphon video buttfucked me up the dick! I'm not sure if I hear those kicks as being overdriven & muddy, or just backed by a very warm reverb. In a way, they remind me of these kicks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbHp24SAkb8

What I find 'dirty' about Move of Ten (for now, I'm just thinking of rew(1) ) is its sloppiness -- how loose the beats are, in a funky way. I think these are 'dynamic' in the sense that, while the snare sound is pretty consistent, the bass and hi-hats are always changing in interesting ways relative to it, and the same can be said for the beats in nth Dafuseder.b and even for the Lentic Catachresis-esque (lol) Cap puiqMX -- but I think you're right, Awepittance, that you can say that about many Quaristice tracks ... but I dunno. Listen to the first half of Simmmmmmm and compare it to the similarly-timbred percussion in Caliper Remote off LP5 -- the older track is much more rhythmically tight and dynamic and, to me, interesting to listen to. Steels goes for that kind of rhythmic workout, but I think it fails because it's just too minimal; there are not quite enough sounds for you to find, follow and enjoy the beat. Tankakern is really rhythmically cool, but unlike the Move of Ten tracks, it leaves out the 2-4 snare hits, so you have to work harder to feel the syncopation. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but to me the presence of the snare backbone makes the MoT tracks more fun to listen to.

I have similar feelings about Oversteps. The bars of Ilanders's beats clearly have a '1' on which they repeat, but there's no snare to follow, so the drums just sound more aimless, and so, less expressive, as if the beats we hear just happened to be the ones that came out. I know that's technically not true, that John and Bob deliberately programmed them that way, but they programmed them to the effect that they sound, to me, almost arbitrary. D fo sho 'cuz: The sounds of the drums here are a lot like those on nth dafusedurrr, but the rhythm on this Oversteps track is just made by the kick and the snare sound, and that's it, whereas nth dafuser incorporates those cool little punctuating triplet fills (kind of like on rae) as well as that percussive bass synth. Plus, whereas the volume and reverb swells on d sho cubs sound a bit out of control, I think the reverb swells on nth dafuseder are much more consistent and add a lot to the texture of the rhythm.

The drums on Pce freeze 2.8 whatever are the most repetitive. The interest in this track is all the different permutations of that little melodic refrain, but after awhile, that right-channel tail of the beat gets annoying. Etchtogon is kinda cool, to hear how the scraping metal snare sound changes throughout the track. Other than that kind of stuff, I dunno what else to say about why I like the Move of Ten tracks better. I just find a lot of the Quaristice and some of the Oversteps tracks 'aimless' sounding. But I also don't think I've listened enough times to really internalize the tracks, so I am probably just missing the boat!

Dunno, I was just surfing through the tracks and picking out things that struck me; I hope some of it makes sense ...

  On 7/28/2010 at 10:22 PM, Root5 said:

No, I was wondering if you could give an example of a track by someone else that characterizes a "success" in your opinion of this style.

 

EDIT: Just to make it clear, I'm asking out of curiosity. I'd be interested in hearing for myself. I'm clarifying this because often people sound antagonistic on the internet when they don't mean it.

no prob

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLO-i0JOGMw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZ_1RfBOMEI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzz6oR5LmsA&feature=related

now don't get me wrong, i think there are a few times when AE has really hit this dirty production sound out of the park, the drums on Treale, especially the bass drum are craftily distorted, it sounds like they are overdriven in a very controlled way. Or another good example is Bnc castl on Quaristice, the way the drums distort on that song pop like a mofo & is insanely pleasurable sounding to me, but i know thats one of the more hated songs on Quaristice so i dont anyone here to agree with me :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sACTN2izOgA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFm87ncj-Xc

unfortunately youtube doesn't pick up the sonic subtleties of distortion when compressed to shit like this, but try to find high quality versions of these songs for full effect

Cool. I hear what you mean on Treale. The kick drum isn't punchy, it's more of a grumbling wooosh sound. I'm having trouble hearing what you mean on bnc Castl. The synths sound muffled by distortion, but the drums sound pretty crisp to me. (I'm listening to the cd, so I imagine sound quality isn't a problem)

The grittiness in Perlence sounds looser, and more out of control in a way. I think there is also another phenomenon going on. The individual layers are distorted a bit (at least some of them), but also many of them are very bass heavy, so when they are played together there is distortion in the bass frequencies. I hear this on Perlence and paralel Suns. This sound is amplified by the fact that there is so much bass reverb going on. The resulting sound is more fidgety and out of control than the examples of dirty production you just posted. (I don't know if "fidgity" is a good way to describe it).

I was just typing that as I was thinking about it, so it may not make a lot of sense. But in conclusion, I hear some of the similarities between the production styles, but I think they end up having very different effects for the most part.

believe it or not i understood what you said 100% . on Bnc castl, the entire 16th note drum pattern is being distorted, its not a super loud distortion, but they are definitely running the monomachine drumkit through it's built in distortion. One cool thing about that track is they appear to be sampling the distorted drum line and cutting it up. Kind of like how a breakcore guy like Venetian snares, when he uses a 909 gabber kick he's already sampling it distorted, not sampling a non distorted 909 in his track (and then running it through like a distortion VST)

Cool stuff.

BTW, I totally love bnc castl too, so you're not the only one. It has a really playful vibe to it. It's just like a meandering minute or so of jumping around in a park.

I like Bnc Castle too!

My favorite distorted-ish kick sound is Surripere.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTfJuv-_s50

edit: Now that I hear this, go back up and play '777' again -- the kicks are even the same pitch!

the stereo imaging on ilanders is a+ out of this world