POLLhelic Triangle -- Autechre :: Confield :: LP6

it was the actual end for me.

this album is my only autechre and it bangs bangs bangs - either pen expers, parhelic triangle, eidetic casein or lentic catachresis for me - need to narrow it down, suspect I may vote for latter - brilliant breakdown

Previous poll: POLL4, Wrap5 -- Autechre :: LP5 :: LP5

This is when they leaped forward into being special.

I think Confield completely broke me; I tried HARD to get into this, and although I sort of did, I never again tried as persistently with any other album (by anyone) ever again. That is, if a record didn't grab me after the first handful of listens, I didn't give it a benefit of a doubt. It just took so much energy.

Nevertheless, I think it's the best Autechre album of the '00s, because all the other releases are either dry as hell (UGH Draft 7.30) or cold and noodly (Quaristice). Confield is very organic, but rotted to hell -- its saving grace. Even so, I never cared much for "Pen Expers," don't know why, but "Parhelic Triangle" was always my Confield jam of choice -- nasty, brutish, throbbing, like a horror film translated into pure sound.

Also, Barry's got a great blog post on Autechre in the Confield and later era.

this one is better than LP5

VI Scose Poise represents greatness that easily goes under the radar for Autechre fans leaning towards "in your faceness" vs. ambiance

This is when they leaped forward into being special.

― a ticker tape of "must not fuck up" (Noodle Vague),

I'll argue that all the LPs after this aren't special at all

u can argue.

I exaggerated a fraction but ditching the hippies is always a win in my book.

hippies > ravers

u think Confield forward is "ravers" music? really?

no. I like confield. Do you think everything before confield is hippie music? lol

Gawd I love this album. I'll have to listen again so I can remember the music w/r/t the titles.

"Uviol" for me. it makes me sorta physically ill, and I love them for it

Tough because this is such an accomplished album but going for Eidetic thingo.

Thread sub-question: the last album before Autechre tracknames get obviously self-parodic, y/n?

i couldn't vote in lp5 or ep7 and i dunno if i can narrow this one down any better. last great album for sure in my book. totally monumental, but i think this is where they hit the wall technologically, and maybe lost inspiration as a result

that's interesting, "hitting the wall technologically"...because you might be right! probably going to get flamed for this, but...is there any album since 2001 that is significantly more O_O than Confield, just in terms of pushing the hardware?

gonna fall asleep to this record now <3

Z S I really can't think of many subsequent albums that slice and dice sound with such dizzying alacrity!

yeah, I mean there's some Venetian Snares stuff that's insane, but nothing that Confield-era AE couldn't do by turning the BPM up. I It seems like the tech evolved enough between Tri Repetae and Confield to be noticeable, but since then stuff has just evolved to make Confield-y stuff a bit easier to do, but nothing further. But I am just totally making up shit because I have no idea, it's just a gut feeling.

btw LJ you will wake up and be totally insane

I voted Lentic Catachresis. Not an initial favorite by any means

I'm gonna have to listen to this again before I vote, but I'm probably gonna end up voting Eidetic Casein. Like some other people, this is an album that completely baffled me initially but one which was totally worth the effort it took to understand it. This album brings autechre's sound to a whole new level.

vi scose poise is brilliant, the rest is ok

o_O

Relistened to this... the tracks that hadn't stood out to me before like "Bine" and "Lentic Catachresis" seemed to reveal themselves to me, but my solid favorite is still "Parhelic Triangle". It sounds like a carousel submerged underwater. Gorgeous.

Gorgeous like a dismembered carcass!

Thing I read way back on the Warpcomm forums is that "Eidetic Casein" is a woozy remix of "Arch Carrier."

And, here's something from the boys themselves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NsvXJ5DyAk

Things gleaned from close-listening before sleep: Sim Gishel and Bine are EXTRAORDINARY where I hadn't expected anything. Sim Gishel has something not unlike the consistency of wood in its sound and uses a palpable drum-drone as space-filler. Ah yes, the knocking. Dybbuks are knocking on the rush of xylem. Amazing development of beat, and the astonishing incorporation of momentary drum-pattern chords near the end is revelatory. Bine is much longer than its minutes and is arguably the most intense assault on the record. So completely progged-out to fucking infinity; it probably involved more work than any other track here. Maybe not. It's a symphony in oscillation by any standard. Cfern into Pen Expers is like one track, one manifesto: simplicity (or at least, an idea you can track) segueing perfectly into insanity. I love how the first two tracks both act as minimalistic scene-setters, VSP being more an overview of the Confield vision and Cfern being the true start-point of the adventure. Word-up too to Parhelic Triangle, which is the sound of one beat shifting and disintegrating over 6 minutes as a seriously killer heavy-drone chews it to oblivion. Moody as fuck, the dark heart. Already loved that one but now it is among equals.

By the time I got to the last three tracks, I was falling asleep, which led to a distorted hearing, but after a full album hearing, Eidetic Casein is ABSOLUTELY the pop relief, the melodic, catchy, twisted return to Cfern's relative accessibility (and again, we know it's setting us up for cataract). This song applies the modes of percussion to melody, so the beautifully cross-tonal blasts, holding an explicable beat, speak the same vocabulary as the rest of the album but in a different language. And when it disintegrates, it is the melody that disintegrates, not the rhythm. It is a brilliant repurposing of the album's sound, and it works in context, but I think to call it the finest track is to deny what the album is about. Besides, I have a feeling that what it sets us up for, the last two tracks, FULLY synergise the just-attained advanced melodic sensibility BACK INTO the percussive organism created earlier. But then when I heard them I was in a VERY strange place indeed, so I'll need to listen again, awake. My god. But I SUSPECT that Uviol introduces the two elements slowly and minimally (perhaps more itself a Cfern-type track than the unique Eidetic Casein), only SLIGHTLY off-base and unsettling, but enough, and then the astonishing Lentic Catachresis (which I'd have voted for no question without another listen) completely fucking kills our brains dead, as melody strives and CHAOS PREVAILS. Supreme record.

count me in among the 'this album is a tour de force' crowd.

Cfern into Pen Expers is like one track, one manifesto: simplicity (or at least, an idea you can track) segueing perfectly into insanity

I actually see the first three tracks fitting into that pattern. And arguably they are less of a departure from ae's previous sound, so I've always seen them as ever so slightly apart from the rest of the album. Sim Gishel is where shit gets real. But this slight fracture in coherence really doesn't affect my enjoyment or appreciation.

Now to relisten. I really should give this the proper speaker treatment but that will have to wait.

Well, I said Cfern and Pen Expers were of a piece, then said the first two were of a piece as well, thus intimating that I believe the opening triplet stand apart as an establishment of the Confield sound, for the remaining tracks to build and ruminate upon more sophisticatedly. I really cannot get over how astonishing a piece of music Sim Gishel is, coming on Pen Expers' already-impressive heels. From Cfern to that one, we have a consistent level-up in terms of complexity, and then Parhelic Triangle acts as fearsome eye of the storm before we tumble back into a yet-heightened madness.

I mean, there are SO many 'well, we're back here, but it's weirder' moments on this record. It's a proper modernist narrative in song, which is so rare to see done well; done flawlessly, in fact.

I've been listening to this album since its release, but you can count me out of the "this album is a tour de force" crowd. To me it's the aural equivalent of buying a jumper straight off the shelves because you like the pattern, but trying it on at home you find the neck's cut way too low and the arms are really tight around your shoulders but really baggy at the elbow, and there's a huge paunch on it and it's got five different neck openings. It's an awkard, unstreamlined thing compared to LP5's enticing niftiness. Must be something to do with the generative processes employed during this phase, as some decisions (the unpleasantly prevalent bass drum sound on Cfern for example) could have only been chosen by a machine on auto.

I've never been able to make out a discernible melody in the "pop" hit Eidetic Casein - any tune it holds sounds like twenty toy ambulances running out of batteries. Another track people compare to more accessible fodder such as Arch Carrier is Pen Expers, which sounds like someone hoovering up pennies whilst listening to a string quartet tuning up on an ipod for five minutes. Unlike Arch Carrier, there's no payback, no part in either of these two tracks where the chaos melts down and transforms into something tangible - just noodling notes and abstruse beatfuckery for an allocated time.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to get all Geirest about Autechre - I love their rhythm'n'chaos stuff too, but their best work happens when I have something neat to focus on - an interesting melody rising out of the debris, or a sound that develops over time or makes me think of something particular. The majority of Confield tracks sound clumsy and uncalculated to me. Where are the textures of Chiastic Slide? The melody of Rae? The emotion of Pir? This is what I crave from this band most of all, whereas the sounds and emotions on Confield just sound like brain damage.

I'm voting for Uviol - a nice ambient respite from the toil of this work. You may have guessed I still listen to Confield quite a lot in the hopes I will somehow understand it, but it's been nearly ten years. Can't help feeling this album marked a beginning to a long stretch of dry-as-fuck Autechre music, ending with Untilted. Oversteps is a much much better album than this, and just as excting and complex.

I've already mentioned how this album splits up for me, tracks 1-3 and then the rest. The first two I don't have much to say about, they open the album perfectly adequately. Pen Expers is where I think "aha! now we're talking!" It's like Pir turned upside down. In the former, the melodies float and ride over the percussive chaos. In the latter, the rhythm overwhelms and drowns the melody, but it is still there, floundering under the surface. My favourite moments are around 4:55 and 5:20, where it makes its strongest showing, a small handful of descending tones breaking the surface momentarily.

Then everything changes. Yeah the familiar signposts of melody and even beat seem to have disappeared, or at least buried deeply. There is no map, but there is territory in abundance. Huge sonic soundscapes of sound. Dog latin I dunno how you can say "where are the textures?" to me this is the most visually textural music I know.

Tracks 4-6 work as a piece for me. We're somewhere deep underground; dark, cavernous walls of granite, crystalline formations glinting, vast and ominous noises echoing around - immense techtonic forces at play, or something more sinister? Parhelic Triangle certainly sounds monstrous, some great beast lumbering through the depths and darkness. And then for Bine we're suddenly in motion - there's a great sense of forward movement on almost all the tracks here, but Bine is a journey at breathtaking speed, still underground, tunnel walls flashing by, brief glimpses of vast caverns and extraordinary formations, the earth still heaving and booming.

Eidetic Casein is a break for the surface, almost a return to sanity, music-wise, but then for the last two we suddenly head for the stars. Uviol is a deep space probe, cruising the lonely interstellar gulfs, scanning, measuring, and transmitting. And Lentic Catachresis is the transmission received, after being beamed halfway across the galaxy; decayed, fragmented, intercepted by alien intelligences, half absorbed by black holes, polluted with galactic noise and radiation.

fwiw I don't think Eidetic Casein is any more amelodic than the jazzy midsection of Maphive 6.1.

Also, wish Gareth was still here, to expound on his 'autechre=folk music' theory.

or expand

i like these descriptions, ledge - i think this is similar to how i think of the album being broken up too.

Thing is, this has to be the album I like the least which I've listened to the most. It's not as if I gain absolutely no pleasure from it, but I find the cries of "this is Autechre's best album and beats everything before (or after) it hands down" just bewildering. Yet just reading this thread makes me want to listen to it, but when I do listen to it I find parts so irritating.

I can't say the tracks don't transport me somewhere or evoke imagery in me, but it's a blood-from-a-stone process in places and often I get an emperor's-new-clothes feeling that Autechre were letting the MAX/MSP parameters do the work - an impression I certainly don't get from pre-Confield Ae.

VI Scose Poise is pleasant enough, but feels like filler and just seems like an overture, or a lead in from LP5. But I love the bassline and melody on Cfern, they make me imagine huge spiders planning some sort of underground uprising on a far away planet. But what is up with that beat? It's horrible, and horribly loud too. Any sound engineer would have immediately turned down the velocity on that thing and it would have been a better track. As it is, it overwhelms the subtlety of the track as a whole.

Pen Expers is again a good idea, following in the same footsteps as Arch Carrier or Garbagemx36, but delivered cack-handedly. The chopped'n'screwed beats are exhausting to listen to - loads of high-mids in this just going SMACKSMASHCRACKCRACKSMASHCRASH while this diminutive repetition of chords fight to be heard. I get the idea behind this track - using loads of ducking compression to nefarious ends - but I don't think it's as good as many people say. The harmonic aspects of the track are like a poor man's "Arch Carrier" strings, but not as stirring or interesting, just repeating themselves throughout the course of the track. The beats are again, way too loud and could do with a bit of a roll-off in the velocity stakes. As it is, they beat the harmony into submission before it's had a chance to let itself be heard.

I have fewer qualms with the middle section. Subtle and organic in the most parts - kind of frightening in many places. One of the tracks makes me think of an army of feudal Japanese samurai standing stock-still but ready to go into battle. Possibly the next track is the army on the march.

I can't put my finger on Eidetic Casein. Apparently there's something to be gained from this track, but it's like listening to those cow-moo-box toys all droning away out of unison. People at the time were saying stuff like it was the most accessible track with the strongest melody. I can't hear it, it transports me nowhere other than to some horrific ketamine-fuelled domestic fire emergency. Nothing like Maphive 6.1, which has some interesting atonal bits but somehow sounds less like a complete mess.

Uviol is rather smashing though. Nothing amazing, but they almost go back to Amber in terms of twilit mood - I'm thinking of Piezo or even Overand here.

Lentic Catachresis starts a trend for the next few Autechre albums of working as a summary of the album as a whole. A neat trick, in that it ties the album up at the end and gives it well-needed purpose. As the quintessential track on Confield, I hear it as a necessity rather than anything extraordinary. If you want to hear a track off Confield and only want to listen to one track, this is it. It also works as a "what's-to-come" for Draft7.30.

In all, this is the oddest musical experience I think I've ever encountered. Whereas most Autechre releases have involved a certain amount of ear-tunage to fully appreciate, there are parts of this I just cannot parse, particularly Cfern which is a great track ruined by too much faith in the generative system.

It's also the group's most nightmarish album - very few positive or upbeat moments (compared to LP5 for example, which is actually quite major in its melodic structure). Maybe it sounds sinister because of its atonality, I dunno? There were some creepy moments on EP7, but nothing compared to Bine for example.

So yeah, a strange one. I've spent a lot of time with it, but I'm still having trouble getting my head round it and the divided feelings it stirs in me are much greater than anything else they've released before or since.

Thanks for the link Leeeeee ... after the Autechre discussions on the ambient listening club thread, I realized I needed to revisit/reevaluate the post-2000 period ... once these polls started, I figured I'd better get it done before we finished polling the 90's.

Tough choice here. My gut says to vote for the most bonkers track, "Lentic Catachresis".

fwiw, from the chiastic poll:

"Hub" sounds like a dry run for "Confield" in retrospect ... again, when we do those polls, I'll really interested in hearing what you guys have to say about "Confield" and "Draft 7:30". Because if you can't come to grips with the likes of "Hub" ...

Hub isn't nearly as dense as Confield, and that off-kilter, pugilistic percussion is too dominant.

Nice posts everyone. This album seems to get the descriptive noodle working, and that's something.

Hub isn't nearly as dense as Confield, and that off-kilter, pugilistic percussion is too dominant.

― e.g. delegates at a set age (ledge), Monday, 22 November 2010 17:17 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

Disagree to some extent. That irregular approach-retreat whomping sound on Hub is very similar to Confield. Also Chiastic is a much less of a "dance" album in my eyes (ears?) than LP5 or any other 90s Ae.

"very similar to Cfern" I meant.

ach, forget it, that post makes no sense. All I'm saying is Chiastic Slide sounds more like a precursor to Confield than LP5 of EP7.

One thing these polls are certainly confirming is that it's endlessly amazing how differently other people hear things. That 'x sounds more or less like y' can be a radical source of disagreement, even among confirmed fans of x and y, is still a wonder to me.

haha idk ledge, your big Confield travelogue is in many ways pretty similar to mine! We draw more or less the same narrative distinctions.

I'm generally don't appreciate the dancier/poppier ae tracks. It depends a lot on how weird the higher register "melodies" are though. Weirder is usually a bad sign. Wackadoodle doesn't sit well with house/pop

Hip/hoppy tracks are fine with me though

Nice posts everyone
^^

This thread is an excellent read! And it makes me feel kinda bad for picking Uviol because that seems to be the consensus pick for people that don't really like the rest of the album so much, but I love (almost) all of it.

this has become sim gishel vs lentic catachresis for me I think, bine still an outsider

Confield is great reviewer litmus, btw: http://www.popmatters.com/music/reviews/a/autechre-confield.shtml

Surprisingly enough, the NME kinda gets it: http://www.nme.com/reviews/autechre/4997

Long shot: but does anybody happen to have the fake version of this album which was floating around before it came out? It featured what was ostensibly a Bola remix of "VI Scose Pose"; I think all the tracks were other people mislabeled - Kit Clayton maybe? But I think the moment when I realized that I liked the fake better than the actual album - which I dutifully tried to care about - was when I got off of the Autechre pony.

Is this album the point at which IDM ran out of steam? That might have been part of my problem with this record; but listening to it a couple months ago, I still couldn't hear anything. I don't doubt that other people could, of course, but it stopped working for me.

I think IDM already started to lose its momentum around Drukqs, but Confield may have killed it for good.

I can't put my finger on Eidetic Casein. Apparently there's something to be gained from this track, but it's like listening to those cow-moo-box toys all droning away out of unison. People at the time were saying stuff like it was the most accessible track with the strongest melody.

Dog, listen to "Eidetic Casein" next to "Arch Carrier," and you'll hear why it gets upped as the easy song on Confield!!!

Weird; I've always admired "Uviol" for being smooth, but having relistened this week, I'm actually particular to "VI Scose Poise" a lot now.

cool Leee

xpost
I've always seen 2001 as the "great glass ceiling" year for IDM. Lots of people had said it was dead already, but this wasn't true. Warp and Rephlex were at the peak of their powers: Druqks, Double Figure, Confield, Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, Go Plastic etc were all released around that time and all felt like momentous albums in their own ways. I'd venture the thing that killed IDM wasn't Confield, but rather Kid A.

but Bine is a journey at breathtaking speed, still underground, tunnel walls flashing by, brief glimpses of vast caverns and extraordinary formations, the earth still heaving and booming.

this is a great image. lots of them in this thread.

anyway, the percussive stuff on this album ("Pen Expers," "Bine," "Lentic Catachresis") is really quite intense. "Lentic" in particular edges towards harsh noise territory towards the end. it just builds up to this huge, dense, oppressive blast of sound. but an immaculately rendered blast of sound (of course) that is very much working in the lower registers. (no masonna skree here.) reminds me of some of some of kevin drumm's more digital work in that respect.

but that stuff is a little too unpleasant for me to vote for. went for "Parhelic Triangle". a dense, throbbing banger and I love the chimes that drift throughout the track.

and despite the queasy, uneasy sound on many of these tracks, I found confield immediately more palatable than draft 7.30. I've listened to that one many times throughout the years and have retained absolutely nothing.

Listening to Confield will no doubt remind one of the unbelievably annoying pseudo-intellectuals who frequent museums spending hours showcasing their impressive lexicons as they ponder over the meaning of the most elementary of works.

popmatters review is pretty dumb, huh?

Tried to sit down and listen to this again last night and just wasn't feeling it. I figured my time would be better spent listening to Draft, Untilted or Oversteps - if only because I still don't feel like I've discovered those fully yet (Draft was 2003?? Yikes!). Sim Gishel is the track I think was the one I've been overlooking the most, but really it sounds like a holdover from EP7.

Eidetic Casein still sucks - the melody just sounds random - not melodic or generative or amelodic, just a mess of noises. It's really unpleasant, and nothign like Arch Carrier. Sorry.

I would understand if you called it less interesting or emotive than Arch Carrier, but it's not random, there's definitely order in there. Both the string-like and ehrm soft glockenspiel-esque parts are basically repeated descending patterns, although the latter skips around more than the former.

Yeah, it's those out-of-tune harpsichord-y noises I don't like. They sound like a three-year old got hold of a cheap keyboard. Without those noises and the later bleating siren noises it would be a cool track. I like the quasi-disco strings and the rumbling sub-bass though.

Eidetic Casein is like a detuned Cardiacs - i.e. magnificent - and I'd consider voting for it if it wasn't parenthetical to the album

fairly sure it's on the album

strange thinking how old this album....seemed a pretty monumental release at the time when i'd barely begun thinking about music

tho i seldom play it, rather icy and obviously requires some attention, i'd still rate it near their best

lentic catachresis, probably

(Draft was 2003?? Yikes!)

signs that you are getting older

btw massive cheers to Leee for reviving my ae interest. Yesterday I spent the whole day with Oversteps/Quaristice/Chiastic Slide and had a wonderful time.

One more thing: My perpetual gauge of musical quality is what Geir thinks how many listens an album requires to hit its peak. Confield took about 40.

This was the first Autechre album I bought so I still have a lot of fondness for it even though pretty much all the others I've heard since surpass it in one way or another. I love the brittle prettiness of 'Bine' and 'Uviol' but in my heart I know I've got to vote for 'Pen Expers', such a striking track, it really did mess with my head (in a good way).

My first, too! Perhaps that's why I'm so fond of it.

damn! i didn't even have to ponder this. first track.

totally their best album, hands down.

after a couple of relistens, went with Pen Expers, though I love pretty much every track on this album

I think this remains to this day the album I worked the longest and hardest to really "get". I remember Draft 7.30 being released and thinking it was way too soon, like I'd just gotten my head around this album and they were already releasing another one.

I was pretty patient back then, I can't imagine spending that much time with an album waiting for it to click these days.

there hasn't really been an album quite like confield since.....something with that level of formal difficulty that a lot of people were prepared to persevere with

no matter how much avant/noise stuff i listen to, confield still seems pretty severe...

i mean, this was an album probably a fairly significant proportion of those who bought kid a also tried to like! and mostly failed, but i remember ppl discussing it on the teletext music pages

lol stuart braithwaite used to send messages to planet music, 'the ghetto internet', lol him

confield >>>>>>>>>>loads>>>>>>>>>> kid a obv

the only track i like is VI scose poise so that.

Pen Expers is an audible representation of rape in my opinion. The way the high pitched noises get silenced by the lower register noises which get more and more violent. It is a piece of art and I enjoy listening to it (2nd fav track).

I think this remains to this day the album I worked the longest and hardest to really "get". [...]

I was pretty patient back then, I can't imagine spending that much time with an album waiting for it to click these days.

My experience exactly.

btw massive cheers to Leee for reviving my ae interest

Also, the chance to make stupid puns.

Pen Expers is an audible representation of rape in my opinion.

wtf? sounds like a fuckin jam to me. ecstatic even.

i dunno how to pick here but might have to do parahelic. i like the underwater carousel image upthread but i always thought it sounded like something digging and digging

Does anyone know from where the drum sound in Pen Expers is sampled? For some reason I think it's an early hip hop track but icbw.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

forgot to vote :(

would have probably given lentic the win although sim gishel was certainly in consideration

I ws the lone "Sim Gishel" vote I guess.

Can never remember if I'd voted for something at the start tho, which wd perhaps have been "Lentic"

the two songs with 0 are both pretty good - bine especially deserves more

Voting for individual tracks is a bit pointless for most of their albums,

yeah

so subjective

on the other hand - the top two winners are my two favs from this album so I finally became a part of an autechre majority here

Reniform POLLs -- Autechre :: Draft 7.30 :: LP7

yeah bine deserved more but it was never gonna get it. quite surprised at the vi scose poise love though.

I've always seen 2001 as the "great glass ceiling" year for IDM. Lots of people had said it was dead already, but this wasn't true. Warp and Rephlex were at the peak of their powers: Druqks, Double Figure, Confield, Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives, Go Plastic etc were all released around that time and all felt like momentous albums in their own ways. I'd venture the thing that killed IDM wasn't Confield, but rather Kid A.

― The Great Cool Lulu who sleeps in Riley... (dog latin), Tuesday, November 23, 2010 10:49 AM (6 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

this ended up being a really fun thread: IDM in 2001

2001 was an interesting year for all this. The main thing going on the experimental front were the new sounds / structures being afforded by the new software. There are a lot of names I wish had come up more on this thread that were shoring up the abstract side of what software enabled from 98-01, every single Kit Clayton 12", Phoenecia, Phthalocyanine, OST. On the noisier front, Venetian Snares, Lesser. And minimal was moving out from BC to Vladislav Delay, Panasonic, Ryoji Ikeda, Sutekh. You could easily go on; it was a wide landscape. Those were the edges moving at the same time BOC was shoring up the nostalgic front and everyone else was going unashamedly conservative & emo tuneful.

if you'd been paying attention to those records, this felt less like the edge than a statement of affiliation. it was almost hard to tell if it was a good record, it followed so much in the footsteps of what a lot of other people had been working out, and what a lot of fans had already decided they didn't like. as it is an incredibly good record, I worry it's kind of paved over the narrative a bit -- it's not their fault the Kit Clayton 12"s are out of print, but I spent last week going back to at least as many records by those people that came out the three years before 'Confield' and they belong in the thread

Autechre 2001 show in Oakland: OST's noise set audible from the street and already making my guts turn over as I walk up the stairs, not even in front of the speakers yet; overhearing one person say 'as long as they play one song from Amber, I'm fine, that's all I ask'; watching everyone get the dancing out of their system to the DHS set; then watching the huge ballroom go from 800 people down to 100 over the course of 20 minutes, and the sound of the applause at the end of the night, half rabid, half confused.

it was a divider, the kind of spectacle you never see at a major venue that was written up in all the weeklies as 'must-see'. the buildup was huge and the stream of people was a physical experience, not just the motion but the way the echo audibly kept expanding as the bodies left the floor. and the way so many people were convinced, the only explanation was that this was being done as a joke, specifically to anger them. and the change in the mood of the room at the 30 minute point as the music, which was minimally staying in place, each 15 minute track using largely the same drum kit; the music really started doing its work, the people who stayed kept moving closer to the bins and to that ridiculous freefloating kick, it just kept getting more interesting

kinda hard not to like these guys

I saw them in 2001 at Brixton. I have no recollection ;_;

Got the mp3s tho, will see if they jog a memory.

Autechre 2001 show in Oakland

I was at this show! Really dug DHS (w/ Jack Danger!), stayed for the whole Autechre set and was, yes, befuddled. Interesting watching dude in dreadlocks dancing to Ae though.

listening to the brixton show. appears to have been recorded by someone standing at the bar.

"and they played voodoo ray by a guy called gerald"
"i can't get jack shit to work on my mac at the moment"
"and he never turned up to my birthday bash!"
"i had the best set up ever. but i never got to dj."

"when's mouse on mars?"
"WHAT?"
"when's mouse on mars?"
"the mean fiddler i think"
"... next month?"

sounds nothing like the oakland show for all i know, but track 2 is brilliant, over the inane bar chatter. starts off with a quite dancefloor friendly pulsating, driving beat, backing some confield-esque underground scraping and revving, which only takes over and dominates the track for the last terrifying 5 of its 17 minutes.

yeah that was the most user friendly track in the set.

just hearing this one for the first time today. it's making me really uncomfortable - like someone constantly flicking you in the ear. needless to say I've never heard music quite like this anywhere and I suspect I will really love this album in about a month's time.

LOVE this record, their best

Great record. Not as challenging as everyone makes it out to be, either.

Would have voted for 'Pen Expers'

The beats on 'Lentic Catachresis' are fucking sublime.

i read a review once by a listener who heard confield as a particularly difficult post-rock / math-rock album, performed with software rather than instruments. they compared the end of lentic catachresis to the extended feedback squeals / hums at the end of certain post-rock albums. since reading that review i've had a hard time *not* hearing it that way.

I listen to this album when I have one of my frequent debilitating headaches and I swear to God it helps. It's gotta be on headphones though

Autechre geniuses: Is there an EP or album that's more in the style of "VI Scose Poise?" I mean of course I like the harddrive crash-breakbeat stuff, but that's also mostly what I know of Autechre (superficially speaking). I just really, really love that one, and "Lentic Catachresis," and stuff that's less schizophrenic / conspicuously noisy

Also, how the hell do you people pronounce Autechre track titles in real life? Serious question. I have very few friends in the real world I can talk with about Autechre, but in that group, we all end up sorta doing our best to pronounce titles phonetically (see also Aphex), which results in me adding "or whatever" at the end of every title (or just saying "you know, the third track on disc 2...")

Same problem I have with titles in foreign languages, of course, but since this is ostensibly english, err...just wondering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuPNwLYrMm0

just after 3'30 on this video Sean and Rob offer some tips on the titles

Whoa, that was cool. lol at "Party Zone." And look at those pants!

> Is there an EP or album that's more in the style of "VI Scose Poise?"

which bit of VI S P? the rattly bit or the nice bit?

rattly bit makes me think of Gantz Graf, the video of which is amazeballs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1RrVa_axRY

For me, this is probably their best work and I really don't understand the "beginning of the end" sentiment in the OP.

This will always be the greatest Autechre video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO9ZY5V461c

Dropp (from ep7) also seems quite similar to VI S P

i read a review once by a listener who heard confield as a particularly difficult post-rock / math-rock album

I've always heard it as their Jazz album myself! That interview video is great. Makes me feel old ...

that washing machine video is great. I know it's random but it's weird how often it seems to sync up (parts flying off in time with the music)

confield isn't the beginning of the end but it's the beginning and end of something. definitely not the end

I'm nowhere near an Autechre completist or anything (the 5xCD box set of EPs usually does the trick when I need a fix) but Confield is an album I return to a lot. I wish there was more music like it.

And thanks for reminding me about "Dropp!" It's buried in the middle of EP7 (and iirc the last song on one of the CDs on the box set) so I'd totally forgotten about it.

Also, it sounds like I need to hear Oversteps. I know the reaction to it was mixed to say the least, but the way it's been described by both haters and fans alike makes me think I'd love it

oversteps is lovely. maybe the most melodic of their more recent output

ehh, gimme Exai over Oversteps. But then the two winners on this poll are my least favourite Confield tracks, the one-two punch of the first two does it for me every time, and Parhelic is really just beyond this physical universe for me.

Every time a thread like this gets bumped I start to think I should just spend my whole time listening to autechre - which is psychotic obviously, but the quality & quantity are there to justify it, plus the feeling that maybe even e.g. Draft 7.30 will eventually click for me. I should certainly spend *more* of my time listening to autechre.

Surripere and 6IE.CR are the key Draft tracks for me. I found the album a bit "eh" until one day I played Surripere at shattering volume, it's suffocating. Also cool to know lots of the album sounds are from samples throwing pieces of wood around in the yard (hence "xylin room").

Also my two favourite Ae videos - the first is official, the second should be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikM9U3St540

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHo6qWxoDOQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEJo2XEACrE

another good one :)

Also, it sounds like I need to hear Oversteps. I know the reaction to it was mixed to say the least, but the way it's been described by both haters and fans alike makes me think I'd love it

doesn't every new Ae album get treated this way? elseq was the only time where people didn't immediately come out of the woodwork to say "I liked 'em better when...", though obviously the sheer length has a lot to do with that. these dudes definitely walk a fine line sometimes. and yes, get Oversteps.

from confield onward (until exai maybe), it seems like every autechre album has much more favorable opinions starting about 2 years after release.

Untilted was kinda 'wtf' for me, following Draft 7.30.. it seemed like they'd abandoned overt color/melody almost entirely, but it's become a favorite. LCC ist tops, Augmatic Disport is one of their most epic tracks (imo) - along w/Sublimit, which is near-unanimously praised/regarded as a classic/epic. Confield, generally, it still feels stilted/convoluted, but i'm coming around to it.

Ipacial Section, fuck

Every time a thread like this gets bumped I start to think I should just spend my whole time listening to autechre - which is psychotic obviously, but the quality & quantity are there to justify it, plus the feeling that maybe even e.g. Draft 7.30 will eventually click for me. I should certainly spend *more* of my time listening to autechre.

― brekekekexit collapse collapse (ledge)

there's something very immediate, almost physically tangible about their music. listening to elseq over the summer and thinking that there's really nothing else like it.. can't describe it very well, other than that it possesses strong visual qualities, and it's physically immediate/raw.. i could see immersing oneself in their music for a prolonged duration, not sure what that says about one's mindset. seeing them live was a great experience, the 2015/2016 material seems like a break from their typical beat-heavy style.

nice thread, enjoying the lengthy/descriptive posts upthread, from previous years. listening now, "sim gishel" is v agreeable

I'd like to meet a person who only listened to Autechre and nothing else, but I'm not sure I'd want them to know where I live

there's something very immediate, almost physically tangible about their music

exactly - I feel their music occupies some sort of 3-D space that very little else does. I've been listening to Move Of 10 a lot over the last month and I'm always astounded by how great it sounds when you really crank it and immerse yourself. all their albums are like that of course, particularly the ones from Quaristice on.

Quaristice is underrated. It feels like a suite of individual mini-narratives and is nothing like any of their other albums.

I get into modes where the only music that will scratch my itch is Autechre. Once it passes then I can return to my regular scheduled programming

Also, am I the only one that likes Draft 7:30 the most out of their "Mechanized Trilogy"?

'Mechanised Trilogy' eh? Is that Confield, Draft, Untilted? Not my favourites but I think I'd choose Draft out of the three yeah.

xp - totally. nothing quite sounds like that *THUNK* on "Cipater" and then I end up listening to all of Chiastic, cuz why not

I've been listening to Move Of 10 a lot over the last month and I'm always astounded by how great it sounds when you really crank it and immerse yourself
move of 10 is so immaculately produced/mastered.. i had it on one night, "pce freeze 2.8i" at moderate volume, a bit baked. it sounded amazing, so crisp, popping out of the speakers--inhabiting the room. it seemed as if you could hear around the contours of the sounds, an illusion of an enveloping stereo fiel. was floored on it

er,

-

I love Move of Ten and have no idea why it's so underrated in these parts. "M62" is top ten AE for me

Also, anyone else think Autechre only became great after LP5? I never play the first four albums. Maybe they just haven't aged as well. The "mechanized trilogy" that octobeard refers to (that's great, btw) is definitely where my brain is at these days

confield is definitely where they finally became major for me, thanks in large part to an incredibly evocative write-up from former ilm'er gareth. (early ilm is littered with posts from me shitting on ae, which i don't necessarily retract but i realize now that i was being needlessly hyperbolic.) i might still argue that ep7 is the best thing they ever did, but then it seems to sit in the sweet spot between the gnarled melodies of the older stuff and the fractal/generative stuff post-confield.

Also, anyone else think Autechre only became great after LP5?

I hardly ever listen to Incunabula these days, but I still have a lot of time for Amber and Tri Repetae (which I love, but don't rate as highly as some people) ... LP5 and Confield are the ones I keep returning to, and I like a great deal of what came after and will always check out a new Autechre record.

former ilm'er gareth

i have my suspicions about saer

I still listen to Chiastic Slide a lot. IMO that's where they really made "the leap" into greatness. Amber still a great disc though

Yeah, I agree that chiastic slide is where they start getting really interesting. Confield is where they get really really really interesting.

Ep7 is really good too though, I need to listen to that again, it's been a while.

It's all great. Every album is underrated.

Cichil Suite is really good :-D

*Cichli Suite

"Pencha" is so incredibly my shit

Yep Cichlisuite is peak Ae. I presume y'all get the title pun.

I've come to really appreciate the first three albums since acquiring them on vinyl. Always loved Amber but it turns out I'm much more interested in putting on Incunabula these days; an album I always had a bit of trouble with back in the day. I like all their albums though. Chiastic Slide is when they truly became Autechre in my mind, but it's a bit of a muddle. LP5 is truly amazing.

i like / hate the way that all autechre threads end up this way.

haha yeah it's just people listing their favourites and then saying 'they're all good really'

it prompted me to dig out oversteps again, so that was good.

I played Untilted the other day for the first time in a while and didn't get a lot out of it. Kind of arid. Elseq just seems to be on another level to that stuff - whether it's because the textures and fabric of the mix is allowed to just... settle over longer tracks, I dunno. There's just so much more that's immediately rewarding, and those pleasing little jerky cells of audio stick around for longer.

I think maybe Draft 7.30 is my favourite of the '00s LPs. They've kicked it up a notch this decade.

I find IRL conversations about the 'techre often go a bit like this as well.

What a problem for an artist to have!

feel like LP5 -> Confield is sorta like N64 -> Gamecube. Maybe you like the N64 games better but once you get used to the better graphics and processing power it's a bit jarring to go back

True about a lot of electronic music

https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2756

have y'all read the recent-ish (June 2016) RA interview?

i like / hate the way that all autechre threads end up this way.

― koogs, Thursday, February 16, 2017 4:24 AM (seventeen hours ago)

Well, they are one of the most compelling bands of any genre I've ever heard, so to me it's unsurprising that their various threads here always succumb to broader expressions of appreciation and respect.

Yeah, I agree that chiastic slide is where they start getting really interesting. Confield is where they get really really really interesting.

When Confield was fresh out, I had a lot of trouble adjusting to their more fractalized type beats and textures. Wasn't until years later when I began to understand and appreciate the synesthetic interplay of sound in their post-LP5 material. Now I listen to it much much more often than their earlier records. Find those almost boring, if not for the nostalgia. However, Cipater, Clipper, 444, Inhake 2, Goz Quarter and Are Y Are We? get me EVERY TIME.

Also one more thing... and I've brought this up here before, but post-Confield Ae seems to be where they really begin to express swagger in some of their tunes... something that I feel is missing in their earlier work. Gantz Graf, Ccec (EP7 but close enough), IV VV IV VV VIII, rew(1), 90101-5l-l, etc. Just seriously sick stuff.

Yes there's something glorious and addictive when they let a sly hip-hop feel stir the undercurrents of the abstract bit-storms they are conjuring up. Pretty much every album has some filthy, degenerate boom-bap lurking in the depths of a few tracks. The ending of "recks on" on Exai has to be the most evil, beautiful hip-hop I have ever heard. Turned loud it's almost suffocating.

which is the exact thing I said about "surripere" above, time for a new lexicon

"cfern" deserved something i think. melodies on this album are consistently lovely they're just crawling with insects

Little known fact - Mariah Carey wrote some custom max objects for this.

Could never get past the horrible kick drum sound on Cfern, although the overall atmosphere is cool. This album makes me think of wandering around a desolate moon; exploring its dusty monochrome surface (CFern); sheltering from sandstorms (Pen Expers); poking around underground catacombs and discovering evidence of ancient alien civilisations (Sim Gishel, Bine); before finding lush liquid pools teaming with fauna and insects (Uviol).

It's not my favourite of their albums, but each track is very much its own thing

u wander into abandoned club on desolate moon where "sim gishel" is playing on a loop

i do love that the more i go back to this era of autechre the more i notice, for all its difficulty, much of it is essentially eroded club music with sand in its joints. the glass warehouse of untilted perhaps makes this clearest

That's a good way of putting it. Sometimes it sounds more like moving sands that spit out the occasional vestige of club music, but the reversible figure is part of the charm.

"eidetic casein" is like being locked in a bounce house on acid

or like the way a jellyfish swims but you're hearing it from the inside

eroded club music with sand in its joints

A+. This def goes for their three 00s albums imo.

xp lol

I just figured out that Eidetic Casein means 'Cheese Dreams' lol.

Anyway, picked up the new Draft7.30 reissue but going to wait for Confield as it's still the Ae I have the most difficulty with

Confield is the only one of the reissues released so far that I haven't bought.
I've always had a degree of difficulty with it since it came out, but I know a lot of fans vouch for it and some might even say it's their best.

So go on, convince me. Why is this the best Ae? Why should I buy the vinyl beyond mere completionist reasons?

I wish they'd re-release EP7 on vinyl

this album just has a really pleasing ratio of chaos:beauty

Remember how polarizing this album was? lol.

It's funny that a group with a rep for being super cerebral has such physical music. Vi Scose Poise and Cfern so far are both about gravity. I got the idea to listen to this from a music YouTuber who had a reaction video to Cfern and asked half-jokingly "why would anyone listen to this, it's academically interesting but I connect to it not at all." I'm not really sure what to say to that. It's not a matter of connecting to it. Cfern is a thing that is happening in my living room. I can almost see it.

Now if he said that about Pen Expers I might understand. This is no longer a thing that is happening in my living room, because my brain is telling me that what my ears are hearing is physically impossible. It's just a rent in the fabric of space. The universe is slightly less coherent now. Synths ... synths in the deep ...

... it pays off at the end, though, as the rhythm tears the track to shreds.

Sim Gishel comes to give us something to hold on to. I'm a few minutes and and what's happening in the high end on this track is wrong, unholy angles, it's vibrating my amygdala in a very unpleasant way. Something in there sounds like singing?

Four tracks through. I have learned that melody is evil and only rhythm can save us.

Wait. Parhelic Triangle is arguing with me. Why is it so insistent? I'm listening to this album louder than usual but I don't remember it being so uncomfortable. Those almost sound like bells in the background, which is soothing, to be reminded of life before this album. But the rhythm keeps trying to accelerate with those horrible scraping noises and then falling back. A gentle fadeout now, so you can't hear the omnious gurgling very well. Someone has been dragged just out of sight and is being devoured.

Bine is less hostile. It's an overwhelming amount of sound but the shellshock has me a bit numb, I can just let it wash over me. It even seems to be gaining in coherence, which makes it a suspicious outlier here. There's something tremendously exciting happening here now, unbelievably fast but conveying focus and calm, it's almost casual. It's like hearing a musician whose mental and emotional processing is much faster than our own (instead of just its limbs being faster.)

Eidetic Casein is my reward for making it through tracks 3-5. I can resolve what I'm hearing into a few actors whose motivations I might be able to understand.

Uviol sounds like I feel at this point, specifically the groaning that starts around 2:36. It sounds perilously close to tension actually being released. There are some lovely floating pads with tons of vibrato going in the back. They barely sounds actively triggered, it seems like they're just being vibrated by the rest of the track. It's pleasing at this point to hear something so ... passive. Receptive. The ending, as you know, is gorgeous ...

... and into Lentic Catachresis. I saw them in 2005. Still the only show I've been to with the lighting provided only by strobes. Urgency is coming and going now, at times it seems we're just going to fall apart, with just a distorted pad in the high end pushing consistently forward. Now the hi hat and kick rushes ... have to defocus my ears to keep the whole track in front of me ... and it's over way too fast.

I like this

Funny, Bine, sounds like the most hostile track on this album to me

I revisited Confield pretty recently in part to confirm it remains amazing (it does)

I've warmed to it but I still find it their most challenging album.

We've talked a bit about how a lot of these albums are demarcated by "themes", what is the theme for this one?

e.g. the woody textures of Draft; the B-boy ballbearing sounds of Untilted; LP5's flat-plan approach; Tri Repetae's grinding, industrial vibe; the dub(step) influences on Oversteps etc... I can't quite nail Confield's aesthetic though

Funny, I just listened to this yesterday as well, it still blows my mind. I don't think the world was ready for it in 2001 but even now it doesn't sound like anything else. I agree there's something very physical and tangible about this music, each track feels like a different room in a museum, rooms where things are moving in ways your brain can't understand. DL is right though, Bine is the most 'hostile', in that it makes me feel like my head is going through a car wash. IMO the best part of the album is the end, Side D if you've got it on vinyl - Uviol is kind of like their take on jazz, it's surprisingly pretty and hypnotic, then Lentic Catachresis which I think is like the aural equivilent of a roller coaster. Actually I'm pretty impressed by how well this all works as an album, front to back - each track sort of builds on what came before. So the last two is where it all comes together.

Yes, Uviol and Lentic are where it's at

Maybe if there's a theme here it's "Autechre go organic". Like, up till now the music definitely sounded like machines, beautiful as it was. The sound was definitely "electronic-electronic" and rooted in techno. And while they'd hinted at this before, especially on Chiastic Slide and EP7, this is where they tip into something else entirely; where it sounds more like the surface of a fertile alien world full of beauty and ugliness and danger, as opposed to a deconstruction of extant dance music

the surface, the deep underground caverns, and up into interstellar space - but yep that feels appropriate.

Yes!

It might not be my favourite one to listen to on a regular basis. It's deifnitely not the funkiest Autechre or the most immediate, but it definitely conjures up the most imagery. I'd equate it to a video game like Super Metroid where each track is a different biome-as-level. And just like planet Zebes in that game, it's a treacherous one! Confield is NOT an especially easy listen - there's a lot of rough terrain to negotiate, but it's a lot of fun too

i'm giving this a go for the first time in many years. i bought it at the time and tried, tried, tried to get into it but it just kept running off of me like water off a duck's back. i am hearing more here than i remember but the first four tracks still feel kind of clumsy and flat to me. there's a flatness to the overall sound, the paddier sounds and the rhythmic sound design aren't very well integrated i don't think, too often they're relying on fast looping of sounds, one of my least favorite things. it feels like a collection of pretty rudimentary templates for what they would do much better & more thrillingly later on. ok the last half is a lot better i think, 'parhelic triangle' is getting interesting and then 'bine' is the first really good thing on here. eidetic casein is properly meaty and weird, same with 'uviol'. lentic catachresis yeah idk again the fast looping thing just doesn't hit for me. i would take 5-8 and leave the rest.

I think you're right about some of the clumsiness at the start.

"VI Scose Poise" is pretty, but feels like a retread of some of the stuff they'd done on LP5, or 'Nannou' by Aphex. It's a very-much "IDM" track with the bell-sine waves and the spinning-coin percussion. It's good and fine, just nothing new, even for the time.

Cfern is clunky as hell, but it's grown on me despite some really unpleasant sounds. Although I like how it makes me think of a moonbuggy bouncing over really bumpy terrain, jumping and landing, spinning somersaults and tumbling down dunes. Rhythmically interesting, just wish those kicks were a tad less aggressive. Like "VI Scose Poise", it also sounds very "IDM", especially with the melody, which like map says doesn't really syncopate satisfactorily with the beat. More like a jam band who haven't learned to listen to each other.

Pen Expers also suffers from "too much going on, not enough cohesion". The beats, again, are overly aggressive and the effect is like a toddler let loose on a drumkit while a string quartet try and rehearse.

After that, the whole thing becomes a lot more listenable. Perhaps if I were to play god, I'd switch out some of the earlier tracks for a couple off Gantz Graf, but on second thoughts it might work even worse. Those tracks mentioned above might not be my faves, but they imbue the album with a lot of character

How would you even get to level 5 without playing levels 1-4

"VI Scose Poise" is one of my favorite Autechre tracks from any era. In fact it's probably the first thing I'd play for someone who's never heard them.

i don't think I would have been that intrigued to hear more if it was the first thing I heard by them! I do think it and cfern are ok but inessential - but pen expers is a glorious piece of beauty hidden within chaos.

not chaos so much as force. a velvet fist in an iron glove.

DL is OTM in describing this as "organic". I love how they sampled rubber bands wrapped around a shoe box for Parhelic Triangle, and the use of sampled bell sounds on that same track and Cfern. Some of the sounds and textures are never used again in their later work.

Also agree with frogbs describing this in the context of each track being its own room in a museum exhibit. Their music definitely began to sound "sculptural" starting here. Sometimes I feel like this album is their actual debut, and everything prior was under a different band name.

BTW - back in 2001 I'd have picked Uviol or Pen Expers. Now, I'd probably go for Parhelic Triangle or Eidetic Casein. The former is one of the most compelling and unique tracks they've ever composed.

yeah Parhelic is top 5 Ae for sure. If forced, I would probably choose this as *the* Autechre album, although I love their recent work too. It's the first album where they discarded dance rhythms altogether. Altho I love their bangers and boom-bap workouts, this is the emergence of their own unique and untouchable thing.

Huh, did they really sample those things, octobeard? I can definitely hear the rubber bands. Super interesting as I rarely think of Autechre as being sample-driven

Their music definitely began to sound "sculptural" starting here.

what does this mean?

xp yes, it was mentioned in the WATMM AMA years ago. I don't have a link to the comment.

They've used samples a lot. Decco loc's beats are apparently wood and rubber sounds recorded. I believe Rob mentioned some field recordings of NYC were samples used in M39 Diffain. A tissue was draped over a microphone for the static textures of Rettic AC. Clearly some wood creak samples in M4 Lema

Much of Draft 7.30 uses samples of wooden blocks - "xylin room" being a direct reference to this.

yeah I don't know for sure, but I'd bet the marble bounce sounds in Krib are also samples rather than DSP per se too.

BTW that song is seriously gorgeous.

Listening to that track now, and it’s gorgeous and uniquely weird.

It’s been ages and ages since I last listened to Draft, which was the first AE I reviewed professionally. At the time it wasn’t thrilling me … but in retrospect, yeah, there was definitely a wood on wood vibe.

It’s a little arid for my taste, but “surripere” is immense if you crank it up

I love Krib

Maybe that's why I'm not so hot on Vi Scose Poise - I feel they perfected a similar idea with Krib a few years before

Draft and Untilted have massively massively grown on me since they first came out. I really didn't think much of them at all and for a long time figured Ae had lost the plot.
They're among my favourites now

How have I never seen this before?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tiVmPXNzdM

Watching this, it dawned on me that Cfern is conceptually very similar to Miles Davis' Nefertiti, a modern jazz tune which is notable for the melodic instruments (the horns) staying anchored to a similarly-repeating cycle without any solos while the rhythm section (bass, drums, piano) improvise around them

Four Tet finished his Lollapalooza set with Sim Gishel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs-VSiZ2ZHA

It really is hard to believe this happened and this isn't some sort of overdub