Autechre - Amber

latentcall from elseq gives me a similar feeling and has jerked a tear or two from me.

it's so crazy to think it's been 24 years since amber. that's equivalent to 1974-1998!

None of which is to detract from how great an album Tri Repetae is - as with Amber, part of its greatness stems from how Autechre were exploring so many possible directions in tandem with a lot of different producers and carving out their own distinct sound within what was a dense field of innovation and cross-pollination.

― Tim F, Friday, May 4, 2018 4:54 PM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tim otm

it’s not necessarily that i think autechre were “advanced” at this point in their career as much as amber as a whole accesses a v specific mood for me. it’s definitely connected to other contemporaneous dance music but it’s special via the particular approach

This was my favorite AE album and in some ways probably still is. These days the old FM patches grate a little and I wonder why nobody else points out that a lot of the tracks don’t “go” anywhere but that’s probably more about how I’ve changed and not about this record.

going places is overrated

Also how come someone on this thread is asking for other IDM albums from this time frame that sound like this and nobody said B12

“Nine” is basically straight off Time Tourist ffs

true but i didn’t bring it up because time tourist was two years after amber

i’m listening to rihanna needed me at the taco shop and it sounds like she’s singing over autechre

if you want a straightfaced recommendation for “sounds just like amber” it’s not going to be 100% easy because they nicely carved out a niche for themselves - there’s a lot of darker ambient electro from the era that dhares the atmospheres and synths but not the beats, there’s plenty of stuff with the intricate beats but the atmospherics are different (b12 would fit here). the closest i can think of is higher intelligence agency but that doesn’t have the steel grey aesthetic ... so yeah, reiterating my sense that the most special thing about autechre is their manipulation of mood and atmosphere

dhares = has

torta fingers

if you want a straightfaced recommendation for “sounds just like amber” it’s not going to be 100% easy because they nicely carved out a niche for themselves

hm sounds pretty advanced

Whether or not they went on to go more "advanced" is a bit of a misnomer anyway - "abrasive" yes, with new plugins yes.

― Siegbran, Friday, May 4, 2018 10:16 AM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i agree with this but i don't know how to broach without incurring the wrath of all the autechre fanboyz here

it wasn't so much new plugins as it was gradually moving to max/msp and an object-oriented programming approach to composition though, right? at least that's how i always think of their transition from more conventionally arranged music of the amber era to their amoebic morphing (but always readily identifiable as autechre) recent music.

I haven't heard torta fingers fwiw but I trust you.

ah yes i forgot that these two guys making syncopated industrial with delay units are such an important totem that bringing up other artists not named Richard is just silly I mean why bother

dhares = has Was a banger tho.

The niche was carved in Tri Repetae / Garbage / Anvil Vapre - Amber is not as special for its time as some people are making it out to be

i don’t really think we’re making it out to be special

unless oh damn, these dudes aren’t special!!!

tlg just paused mid-sandwich to explain how nothing else sounds like this record

jeez dude take a chill pill

you’re a special and valuable person, whether or not the music you like is

that is not tlg’s point at all

tombot u mean richard h kirk right?

i’m just confused about why we have to spend so much time determining why autechre is not special especially during this record

i’d be totally fine with talking about contemporaneous work if it wasn’t framed with this bullshit

because rockism must be crushed

serious answer because determining why they’re not special helps us determine how they are unique

:O

also “we” don’t have to spend time doing anything, you can either FP or killfile or even talk about something more interesting to you if you don’t like my line of inquiry

lol i mean honestly i’m relatively new to *loving* autechre so it’s not like i have any actual input so sorry

listening to amber now it feels a little stiff and incoherent to me (not unlike some recent posts by old guys in this thread, woah!). they aren't more advanced now but they're definitely more relaxed.

xxxxxxxxxxp

karl otm except thery’re not really ahead of the curve w the techniques so much as they’ve just devoted a lot of time (like a lot a lot) to refining the techniques

and ended up w something people find relatively ... accessible?

they’ve just devoted a lot of time (like a lot a lot) to refining the techniques

like how i feel about death metal, this is honestly better to me than.. idk, “new” techniques, whatever those are

for taerjerking Ae I turn to "rae"

i’m not really into cutting edge production myself

people have been making music like nu autechre for a while now though (50 years?)

I feel like this was of a piece with a lot of IDM in the early & mid-nineties and the main things that really separate it are the absence of any 4/4 bass drum and the way things kinda meander instead of following the buildups & breakdowns arrangement rules of the time.

I voted Nine because it sounds like Eutow’s parent.

i think that’s why people always compare it to machines that are running by themselves

people have been making music like nu autechre for a while now though (50 years?)

― the late great, Friday, May 4, 2018 9:07 PM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok gimme a digest

it's pretty cool to see these different takes in one place - new fan discovering the old magic, old fan going hard on the old magic, drunk guy. i really responded to the 90s stuff for many years (still after the fact tho) and lost the thread after "gantz graf." but elseq came out and now more than 15 years later i'm a johnny come lately to everything they've been doing, probably to the annoyance of lowell, ledge and others.

one thing i really don't agree with or like is the evolutionary, technique-driven timeline that has been beaten into the ground with talk of upgrades and the vanguard and so forth. i think it obscures what has really happened with two people who have been making visionary music for this long -- they eventually found techniques that matched what they wanted to do all along and what they were actually doing earlier within certain constraints of equipment. and now there's a richness and self-assuredness to the music that they've been developing for much longer with a particular toolset than any toolset they used in the first ten years that feels more mature, broad, wicked, funny, dynamic, relaxed, exciting, basically everything good about musicians whose well doesn't run dry.

that is a great post map

xp digest away

http://www.discogs.com/label/58423-Prospective-21e-Siècle

xxp that sounds right map except

what they were actually doing earlier within certain constraints of equipment

don't hear this

oh damn never heard of xenakis before

hm why'd you ask then?

what they were actually doing earlier within certain constraints of equipment

don't hear this

― the late great, Saturday, May 5, 2018 5:36 AM (nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

by this i'm referring to all of the really wild syncopation that it felt like they were taking great pains to make sound as accidental and organic as possible. like they got as far as they could with sequencing machines and once they found a platform where they could be much more indeterminate with rhythm suddenly it sounded like all hell broke loose, but they were always trying to make that kind of music with the more grid-bound tools they were first using. that tension used to be the coolest thing about early autechre to me, but now i think i'm a lot more appreciative of what they do melodically.

ok i get what you're saying, i get that the aleatory elements were always there (at least since flutter) but i feel autechre were much much better when the tension between avant garde and functional was still there

Yeah, I’m all for odd time signatures and I absolutely get escaping the gravity of loops. But.

i think the technik-narrative is not exactly a straightforwardly progressive one, and it includes a lot of shifts that open up ranges of possible music for them that are not in themselves very technical, like the embrace from quadrange remix eps up through the live recordings and elseq and the radio sessions of longform process structures. or the gradual comfort with kickdrums.

other times it's more in the way of musical refinements of things, as said, that they were already doing. i played draft 7.30 the other day and was struck by how much the electro-breakbeat-sculpted-from-noise technique there was reflected in what they're doing lately with synthesis. which - i don't know anything about the actual technical details - sounds like a way of setting up, in various recognizable ways, a small number of concrete elements that are audibly internally related, in really multidimensional ways, like pitch and timbre and attack and i dunno like viscosity, but treated in a volatile way, so that they can also transform them into each other, or take them apart, as you listen. i think of that especially as a post-oversteps refinement. i'm sure something similar was going on before, but to my ears the lushness and precision they can achieve with it now enables them to invest nearly every moment or every variation, if they want to, with an inherent interest for the ear. they're just more of a joy to listen to.

(you can imagine old fans treating the new music like grindcore carcass fans treat 'heartwork' and 'surgical steel'.)

i also feel like a lot of the recent improvements in 'technique' are not so much in equipment/programming as they are in language. you see people comment that this woodblock or that beat from so-and-so reappears in a new track, but i think it's more that they've established an expressive enough repertoire of elements in their style that they're readily intelligible to listeners, even maybe less experienced ones, and don't need to be 'explained' via extensive proof-of-concept uses.

i was listening the other day to the first track of 'move of ten' and noticing how it has a 'startoff' / baton raising kind of function realized by the high-pitched noise and the quick breakbeaty static immediately after, so brief; there's a similar bit at the beginning of 'gonk hi tuff' on the radio sessions. again, i don't think that's original to them or a technical milestone or anything, they've just worked through enough of that in every detail of their composing/improvising idiom that they're able to 'speak' in a richer way. especially without seeming like they're imprisoned by their tools, captive to their recordings slaved over in the studio, etc.

a track like 'all end' would be a whole record by an artsy contemporary drone artist, you can imagine how they would give interviews describing their bullshit process or whatever, how they were trying to make lots of similar sounds for installations in gallery spaces, yet it all hangs on them basically having found a compelling way of making ~one kind of noise~ for an hour. perhaps they do nothing else like that, but often they would try to build a career out of repeating it somehow, with some sidesteps and twists and variations.

but for autechre now it's like a one-off afterthought, to extend the end of bladelores. a lot of it isn't even particularly marked with their signature, but just enough so that it broadens their idiom just a bit more. which you can't pull of unless you've already got a very comprehensive means of musical expression at your disposal.

what i like about "move of ten" is that it sounds a lot like amber-era autechre but what i don't like is that it feels like they've just randomly sprinkled musique concrete elements all over it

this basically could have come off amber or tri repetae imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfjY7lnIDXk

that's a great post! xp