Just wanted to share my experience with Autechre’s work. Hopefully some people can relate or can find a way in. I’m obsessed with Autechre’s work and I feel that as a professional musician it has helped me evolve both as an artist and as a listener. I’ll explain.
Why obsessed? My brain just wants to understand. I remember this feeling since I’ve started listening 25 years ago. Every few months I go back to their music and immerse myself in it. And Autechre is one of these bands/artists that have evolved together with me as a person. In comparison with many forward thinking artists of that time, I think it’s obvious that they have taken the most difficult road of completely and constantly challenging themselves to push further, but they do it in a natural way. If you can follown Sean’s answers on that recent long long conversation with fans (it took me a few weeks to go through it but I did and it was a crazy experience- so many amazing references in there!), you would see that challenging themselves doesn’t feel like you would think so. They are just doing what they’re interested in and curious about. And that is why their approach to making music has been so fresh each time they release something.
It’s an interesting comparison with the works of Aphex Twin which have remained (although refined) on the same road for decades. He’s now playing big fests with extravagant visuals etc. He’s almost a house-hold name with big promotion posters. Autechre won’t do that. It’s just not them. They play concert halls in complete darkness.
I’ve seen them live in 2014 (Utrecht 221114) and I found my body moving to each and every sound and my brain constantly trying to catch up to what was happening, desperate for a rhythm that makes sense but it’s costantly out of grasp. What an amazing sensenation to be close but NEVER getting what you need in order to understand. It’s like a constant play that’s extremely fun and engaging and rewarding (and orgasmic if I may say). Since then I’ve been mesmerized with their recent material. I understand it’s difficult to get in but I feel like their continuous construction and deconstruction of sounds and rhythms comes as a natural thing for them. It’s like you hear how their brain functions while they’re experimenting with things that excites them.
Last but not least. The mixing of such a complex let’s-call-it “sound-environment” is phenomenal. You can literally listen to ONE minute of music again and again to experiment with focusing on different details each time and you’ll find that they have created the right space for EACH sound to breath and mutate and evolve. I feel as a listener challenged each and every time. And I like it that way. Thanx for keeping up on this long one. Cheers.
You put it so well. And I agree entirely. I’m just bewildered by their music - it’s so abstract and hard to wrap your head around - but I ‘get’ just enough of it to be completely intrigued and fully invested.
On an aesthetic / emotional level it juts hits right for me.
And on an cerebral level, my brain just wants to find and unravel the patterns.
Ulimate combo for me
Their recent set in Melbourne was intense and difficult but my god - I found it groovy as hell
I really got into them during the LP 5/confield/draft 7.30 era, so I have strong attachments to those three albums, especially Confield. But as far as I’m concerned they’ve been (with the odd exception) strong since Tri Repeatae right up to now.
I’ve always been into weird stuff that doesn’t have much in the way of melody or easy rhythms, lots of noise and experimental electronic stuff. I don’t know if that’s made it easier for me to go along on the journey Autechre are taking. Maybe, but even then, they’re so different to just about everything else, it’s hard to find a reference point.
This probably makes me sound like a right cunt, but the fact that a lot of people seem to dislike their later stuff just seems to confirm for me how great it is. I’m actually impressed how many people are still into it, to be honest, given how boring I find most people are. The deeper they go, the more into it I seem to get. Yep, Plus could have been an EP, but Sign has some of their most emotional and beautiful tracks in years.
And this year’s live album…so much goin on in there if you’re willing to really listen. And that’s the point, it’s gone beyond listening now and more into the realms of Pauline Oliveros and deep listening. I get it, some of you don’t like it, but it’s not bad music, or in any way less quality than their older stuff, you just don’t like it.
well…I haven’t been into the last couple, tho GOOD, I just hear a lot of repetition. sequences revisited with different sounds. its getting a little played. there is cool shit in there. but I find it doesnt hit like stuff Exai and earlier. not that TRACKS dont hit, but the entire release. before up to and including Exai [- oversteps] I can play the full albums start to finish wanting more. but post Exai I find I skip a bunch of tracks. either samey or sounds that I just cant get into…a la Known (1).
again not to say there isn’t SICK shit on post Exai releases.
but you cant deny…this shit HITS like a spiked bat…
I think to some extent they’ve made a bit of a rod for their own back, in that there’s a certain expectation for every album and every track to be nothing but new sounds and new rhythms. I like the way they reappropriate sounds, textures and rhythms throughout their work, I think they do it very thoughtfully and creatively.
Imagine if AFX just used an amen once then moved on…
What mean by repetition is not within a track. I hate random. Repetition = good.
I mean from album to album. Same track or parts of embedded within another, change a sound here and there. Shit showing up three albums in a row.
Amen is fucking a staple. It’s undeniable, always good. But reusing obscure shit…not the same.
Of course not every track on rack release is a 10/10. But there’s been shit that I just can’t make it thru. Like Campfire Headphase. An album that actually agitates me as I listen to it. It’s freakin weird how much it rubs me the wrong way.
Gonna add: If an album doesn’t hit, I don’t shelf it. I go back for years. I still spin Oversteps and Headphase thinking it just wasn’t the right day or mood or whatever. But, to this day, those two just DO NOT sit well with me. But I’ll keep trying to hear “it”
I’m with you, these are my two least favourite albums too, but it’s always worth the occasional revisit, like you say.
I tend to give ae a lot more benefit of the doubt when there’s tracks or sections that pass me by or when they reuse bits of tracks, because there’s just so much of it that hits me in ways nothing else ever has, apart from maybe Russell Haswell, he’s the only other one that comes close.
I’ve listened to their stuff since I was about 12-13, and honestly I feel like they just keep delivering! Wall of text ahead…
Discovered them in 2014 I think, so Exai was the newest album at that point in time. It’s also my #1 overall I’d say. elseq 1-5 is super solid, but way too long as a whole for me to go through in one go. For me that’s not an issue, I just listen to it in chunks. NTS is the same story. I’ve always thought of their tracks as little worlds you can go inhabit for a while. So the length of their NTS epics doesn’t bother me even if I like some more than others.
SIGN was a welcome direction with a focus on the more melodic, timbrally-focused and subtle aspects of their later work (and some super solid beats on M4 Lema and a few other tracks). I enjoy PLUS too but it’s less cohesive as an album for me, as others have said before. If anything the 2020 albums just gave me more confidence that they’ll stay fresh moving ahead. The Sydney show in particular from this year is wild.
With respect to everyone who disagrees, I can’t say their work ever sounds arbitrary or random to me. It’s well known their later work doesn’t involve them painstakingly placing every event by hand on a timeline, but whatever their sequencers are doing internally to spit out the events, they always sound very finely tuned to my ears. I think the fact that they rarely go full-on dancefloor mode or use super conventional rhythms for their drums just make the fleeting moments, where they lock into a groove that’s unquestionably funky, even sweeter.
I like what I like, I guess
