Autechre and Phish (?)

I listen to Autechre the way I listen to jam band and jazz music. In fact, I barely listen to electronic music (generally too repetitive and boring, even Aphex Twin).

 

Anyone else approach AE from the jam band camp, or do most AE fans approach their music from within the electronic music genre?

Edited November 2, 2018 by Nenlow66

What does this thread have to do with Phish (other than you mentioning "jam bands"?

That’s your initial reaction, huh?

If you think about the way early free jazz artists approached sound they would probably have liked Autechre and probably would have liked to play around with patches, too. The results would maybe have sounded autechrish. I think AE is less dance music in the sense of techno or other repetitive dance music, even if AE themselves think that. If they do they are completely wrong about their own music, scumbags

No

  On 11/2/2018 at 7:58 PM, darreichungsform said:

If you think about the way early free jazz artists approached sound they would probably have liked Autechre and probably would have liked to play around with patches, too. The results would maybe have sounded autechrish. I think AE is less dance music in the sense of techno or other repetitive dance music, even if AE themselves think that. If they do they are completely wrong about their own music, scumbags

Agreed. Not sure how AE view their own music.

  On 11/2/2018 at 7:51 PM, Nenlow66 said:

Anyone else approach AE from the jam band camp, or do most AE fans approach their music from within the electronic music genre?

 

what does this even mean? I'm picturing someone doing a conscious effort to go "haha yes time to turn my brain into jazz listening mode, I am not enjoying this in electronic music mode"

  On 11/2/2018 at 8:56 PM, span said:

 

  On 11/2/2018 at 7:51 PM, Nenlow66 said:

Anyone else approach AE from the jam band camp, or do most AE fans approach their music from within the electronic music genre?

what does this even mean? I'm picturing someone doing a conscious effort to go "haha yes time to turn my brain into jazz listening mode, I am not enjoying this in electronic music mode"

It means that, to me, AE has more in common with jam band or jazz than it does with electronic music. Many others might disagree.

Disagree

  On 11/2/2018 at 9:17 PM, hello spiral said:

Disagree

There you go. “Two different camps”.

it's just the whole concept of compartmentalizing the way you listen to / approach music that I don't get. Of course there's some bias and expectations on first listen(s) depending on the style of music etc., but after that there's no reason to abscribe the music to a particular trend, especially autechre, since they're so idiosyncratic (spelling?) and unique. Just take it for what it is

  On 11/2/2018 at 9:08 PM, Nenlow66 said:

 

  On 11/2/2018 at 8:56 PM, span said:

 

  On 11/2/2018 at 7:51 PM, Nenlow66 said:

Anyone else approach AE from the jam band camp, or do most AE fans approach their music from within the electronic music genre?

what does this even mean? I'm picturing someone doing a conscious effort to go "haha yes time to turn my brain into jazz listening mode, I am not enjoying this in electronic music mode"

It means that, to me, AE has more in common with jam band or jazz than it does with electronic music. Many others might disagree.

Define electronic music...

  On 11/2/2018 at 9:30 PM, span said:

it's just the whole concept of compartmentalizing the way you listen to / approach music that I don't get. Of course there's some bias and expectations on first listen(s) depending on the style of music etc., but after that there's no reason to abscribe the music to a particular trend, especially autechre, since they're so idiosyncratic (spelling?) and unique. Just take it for what it is

Not compartmentalizing. I agree with “just take it for what it is.” But my point is that I was listening to jam band before and after AE, over and above any genre within electronic music. Even when listening to “recommendations like AE” (electronic music recommendations), I don’t really like any of them, because to me, it’s not at all similar to AE.

I think that you think of electronic music being mostly club music. But if you listen to very early avant-garde electronic musicians like Morton Subotnick you will notice that Autechre is closer to this area of music than to jazz. But I understand what you mean. There is way too much generic and really boring electronic music out there, a lot of it is repetitive club music

  On 11/2/2018 at 9:47 PM, darreichungsform said:

I think that you think of electronic music being mostly club music. But if you listen to very early avant-garde electronic musicians like Morton Subotnick you will notice that Autechre is closer to this area of music than to jazz. But I understand what you mean. There is way too much generic and really boring electronic music out there, a lot of it is repetitive club music

I’ll check it out...If I had to explain it, it’s the element of surprise in both AE and jam band that is similiar (AE perhaps more so).

Edited November 2, 2018 by Freak of the week

^ last fewposts are kind of in the ballpark of what I was thinking

 

I know a couple of deadheads who are into IDM / braindance / and experimental electronic music, there's def overlap there

 

a friend of mine who is into Phish and has played in jam bands himself has turned me on to really, really crazy avant-garde jazz from the 60s and 70s and lot of fusion jazz and stuff like that. he's said he's aware of music like Aphex Twin or Autechre but just never got into, though he could of easily had he gone down a different path as a music fan.

Edited November 2, 2018 by joshuatx

I think I have a problem with jazz vs electronic music. Because as with Jazz, electronic music offers such vast array of styles and releases. And just as with electronic music there are lots of jazz releases that are boring and without any element of surprise. But if we leave the genre compartments aside, I see your point of Autechre's music feeling like a jam. Jams are not bound to genres but are simply a method applied in many (all) genres.

Some of my favorite electronic music is jazz (eg Herbie Hancock - Sextant or the electric Miles stuff that Squarepusher is clearly alluding to).

 

I can see the overlap, though Autechre for a long time had two separate alter egos 1. their studio albums and 2. their live shows. The studio albums were more downtempo, intricate, restrained, and the live shows were fast, driving, tribal. They've basically combined the two since Exai.

 

For my ears, it's something about the sort of trance/hypnagogic state all these musics induce through use of grooves.. but they stlll have a lot more motion than you get in club music that is limited to metronome beats (with some exceptions). Also more freedom when it comes to using tonality, not locked into the usual chord progressions

Edited November 2, 2018 by TwiddleBot

  On 11/2/2018 at 10:01 PM, Bertolt Brechtakt said:

I think I have a problem with jazz vs electronic music. Because as with Jazz, electronic music offers such vast array of styles and releases. And just as with electronic music there are lots of jazz releases that are boring and without any element of surprise. But if we leave the genre compartments aside, I see your point of Autechre's music feeling like a jam. Jams are not bound to genres but are simply a method applied in many (all) genres.

I agree with most of that. Not trying to pit electronic vs jazz, strictly speaking.

Hard disagree. To me it's not just a matter of how "repetitive" the music is or isn't--it's that so much of what they do seems to reference the tropes, rhythmic feels, etc. of different styles of electronic (dance) music. But obviously we all bring our own confirmation biases in terms of reference points for ae.

False dichotomy

  On 11/2/2018 at 9:25 PM, Nenlow66 said:

 

  On 11/2/2018 at 9:17 PM, hello spiral said:

Disagree

There you go. “Two different camps”.

WATMM has treated those into jam bands very unfairly, they're not all bad. There are some very fine people on both sides.

  On 11/2/2018 at 10:52 PM, tneuvm said:

To me it's not just a matter of how "repetitive" the music is or isn't--it's that so much of what they do seems to reference the tropes, rhythmic feels, etc. of different styles of electronic (dance) music.

 

Imho AE was always dance music. Out-there, experimental, sometimes more, sometimes less, but still dance music. In the AE production methods speculation thread I posted the other day a link to a paper in which the author compares Gantz Graf with Ivo Malec's piece Turpituda which I posted above in this thread, and he esentially analyzes the "disruption" aspect of both pieces. Bucephalus Bouncing Ball is also treated in that paper from the same perspective.

 

For me, "disruption" aspect of the music is what makes it primarily interesting. It's about the balance between stability and instability, predictability and unpredictability. I think that Aphex's Formula is an excellent example of a disruptive, continuously interesting composition, and it is actually also my favourite Aphex track. (Xenakis and Malec pieces I posted above are also among my all-time favourites.)

Are you always dancing when you are listening to Autechre? lol

It's very rhythmic and dancable in a way but is it specifically dance music? AE themselves say it but what do they know, they are English

Even on their live shows people aren't dancing much (compared to a lot of dance music)