Most ridiculous post about 'NTS Sessions 1-4' album on the Autechre thread

none more ridiculous than setting up this poll

good poll

hey Whiney - shut up

Can't wait until your etiquette book comes out, Whiney. I keep forgetting the six things it's okay to like and the four ways it's okay to express that enjoyment.

how long until the 'most ridiculous whiney poll' poll

one of these is a quote from whiney!

laugh a little

the overthinking on autechre is really something special

Lol @ people using words to express their sense of wonder when listening to music, amirite?

all this stuff is otm though

(I roll my eyes but my 'Whiney being Whiney' jabs are in good humor.)

Sometimes it resembles the motion of weather / atmospheric phenomena, fluid shapes, complex machinery, or a malfunction

p fair non embarrassing capsule description of autechre i think

Maybe I should check back in with Autechre (as I am currently listening to Conet Project tracks in a momentary fit of boredom toward most of the actual music on my person).

haha ✔

nah the Magic Eye one is the best. truest shit ever wrote

btw where are ppl hearing this is OT streaming or do I shell out score and five like for elseq

shell out

OK. link to relevant store?

https://autechre.bleepstores.com/

ty

Okay, lol @ 'bleepstores'

judderingticksandhisses.org

It's supposedly streaming on their store but not working for me.

xp

Next question. Is this OK in mp3 quality n.b. I like The Fall

Everything's ok in mp3 quality

cool ty I agree

Right now I am listening to The Fall on a mangled cassette but I would go for the 24bit. Realistically 320mp3 is good tho.

Everything but splash cymbals are a-ok on mp3, imo.

ban splash cymbals imo

2nded

hi-hat and ride only

maybe I should check back in with Autechre

you should! these NTS sets are what everyone's raving about right now. the 4th (and final) set is streaming now, at least for the next 512,580 seconds.

I wrote three of those yessssssss. I'll go to the mat all day, every day for my favourite artist and I'm proud to sound ridiculous when words fail.

You know you're too jaded when enthusiasm sounds ridiculous. I say, fly that enthusiasm flag high! When a really awesome group known for putting out these alien, enigmatic soundscapes puts out a great collection that 99.999% of the world, and perhaps some certain percentage of fans as well, will never know even exists, shout it to the rooftops.

Okay, lol @ 'bleepstores'

Bleep opened three years before Spotify and less than a year after iTunes

50 for 8 discs is pretty good, i might buy this

i like a lot of descriptions on that thread and will absolutely cop to being a bit rate snob AND i wholeheartedly support this poll. i'm voting for software upgrades just because they're really unpleasant and this is pleasant music.

isn't a lot of autechre's music really physical? seems like you'd want lossless for the headroom etc... FEEL THE BASS

if you don't hear this ________________
or this __^__^__^__^
you will not feel it

The pipes one was a funny anecdote so it got my vote
But yeah I’m finding it increasingly difficult to understand what lens Whiney sees the world through. Maybe the ilm regulars have a better handle on it than me, idk

whiney otm

first one is obviously best

software upgrades just because they're really unpleasant

Things getting better = unpleasant? OK.

Can "this is pleasant music" be added to the poll? Autechre is always my first port of call when I want some pleasant music.

show me someone who believes software upgrades are "things getting better" in 2018 and i'll show you a fool. p.s. don't be a bitch

Upgrade by definition means things getting better. If it isn't better it's not an upgrade.

If you want to wilfully misconstrue that I think it's only fair to return the favour and mention that "this is pleasant music" is more nauseating than anything in the poll.

There's no band I wish I liked more than Autechre. On paper, they seem like exactly what I want in a band, but everything I've listened to has been impenetrable. Might try again with this new release

autechre counts as a band? now i’ve seen it all!

though i agree strongly w the reading that confield was a post rock album

lentic catachresis is a post-rock jam for sure

Thanks for the tip - downloading now.

yep, dl worked for me too. Thanks for the head's up!

now download option for me :(

For me it didn’t show up for purchase, I had to sign in and it was then already in my available downloads

Dang this is a fantastic track, too. Very much an NTS leftover, but really, it should have been on the sessions. wow.

It'd be a delightful twist of events if Autechre started using mechanical spring reverb (recording their sounds through amplifiers, etc.), instead of relying on the digital reverb-freeze effects that have been so prominent since the Quaristice days. I suppose it's ridiculous to consider such a thing. If anything, Ae seem to be moving further / farther away from hardware (old school synthesizers, Elektron boxes, etc.), towards this hyper-digital frontier

has there been a poll for Session 4 yet? that one is my favorite by far

Christmas number one material, this Sinistrail Sentinel :-)

Chart rules don't allow free downloads otherwise it would be a shoo-in.

who's going to start the session 4 poll then?

pendulu hv moda is sinistrail sentinel's moda if sinistrailAB air is its fada.

https://fivedials.com/reportage/an-album-can-last-a-day-sam-byers/

it’s not always the music that changes; sometimes it’s you, and the world around you, with the music becoming a fixed point against which you can measure your own inexorable journey through time.

otm

Not ridiculous at all, but scanning around the all-new Quietus website, I came across this lovely bit of writing by a self-proclaimed super-fan

https://thequietus.com/quietus-reviews/album-of-the-week/autechre-nts-sessions-lead-album-review/

autechre is a journey maaaaaaan

can't wait for the dick's picks

― the late great, Wednesday, May 2, 2018 6:26 PM (six years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Prescient

The start of this thread is a classic slice of ilxor. Voting for it as a curated piece to present to the outside world.

i put on 'nts sessions' this evening for the first time in a long time and, like, holy shit, i can't believe they put this out. these tracks are all really long yo. gnarly "hang loose sign"

Firing it up

👍👍

i'm finally near the end of the first one. 10 minutes of four of seven and then 32a_reflected. it's almost disgustingly a lot. there's the bigness of it and then how everything is just one weird eddy that flows into the next. it's a statement for sure. so many beautiful little stretches too, i forgot how gorgeous 'four of seven' gets halfway through.

for real though this is hard to listen to! there is a lot going on and it is all very weird and subtle. it's hard to form a "map" in your minds eye of where the present moment is and how it fits to the past. i always just get a subliminal sense of it that fades as the flow forward morphs into whatever variation or new element comes next. there's sort of a constant churn of syncopation to get lost in especially in the more beat-forward tracks. honestly there are still big sections that just kind of wash over me. the balance between all of the frequencies on this is so nice, there is a softness to the thuds and the clicks and everything sounds so clearly articulated and warm.

i remember when i put together that 32a_reflected was like two long things, one overlaying a reverse image of the other. like, wuuuuuut. far out man.

ok 1 is good enough for tonight, maybe i'll get to 2 tomorrow and liveblog again, my partner is out of town and it's just me and the cat.

i like this thread because it frees me up to be as ridiculous as i wanna be :)

every time you really dial in your attention for 30 seconds or so there are all these crazy little details to catch that make me whisper 'jesus' under my breath. like really zoning in to the tiny details in a bosch painting. now there's a ridiculous reference for you!

i'm starting 2 because it's still early and my nighttime pills have yet to kick in.

so i'm on elyc9 7hres, which i always liked, but good lord it's jammed with sound and i don't remember it being this uhhh dank.

that's kind of a revisit of just part of elyc6 0nset from elseq, right? I'm not going to play them back to back to check this out, even though I do really like them. I'm sure I've mentioned it elsewhere, but apparently not on this thread, they put me in mind of a darwin quote:

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth

though that really underplays the complexity and interconnectedness and fundamental wonder of both the tangled bank and this track.

The quote continues:

and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us two nerds from sheffield.

Really enjoying your live-blogging, map. I’m going to see them live in October and I can’t wait.

xp hahaha otm

2

a lot of squelch on this one. they've always done this thing where tracks are kind of "split" into two "sections". sometimes one section is like "zeroing in" on something from the other. "dummy casual pt 2" is like this. it's kind of a horror show of a track, a bad trip. still not my favorite thing here.

"gonk tuf hi" remains nuts. "xflood" kind of washes over me. "violvoic" remains a highlight, that last half goes deep into the bowels of the essence of metal-spring door-stoppers. i like the last half of 2 more than the first. 'e0' is very pretty. 9 chr0 is the endless variations on blunted stutter goat.

I just love the sound of this record so much, Autechre at their most limpid. Not that there was anything wrong with SIGN/PLUS but that had a ... warmth to it? something. that I didn't like as much.

'limpid' is a good word for it!

i do feel like some parts in 2 get a little loud / harsh but i think it serves the material. a lot of 2 feels 'boom bap' inspired to me.

there's a section at the end of 9 chr0 where very faintly there appears a kind of macro chord progression through a bassline that "stays" roughly on the same note every two measures, and then moves to a iv or a v the next two measures, etc. how it gets absolutely mangled until you wonder if it's still there, how it appears and disappears from all of the scree and whatever effect sounds like spring-loaded reverb on steroids - that is thrilling to listen to in an 'oh my god, what is going to happen next?' kind of way. there is kind of a sick thrill in listening to a lot of this..

'turbile epic casual' oh that's right, the loooong ambient one! it's a mood. when this first came out i was listening to a lot of it on trails in desert wilderness. this sounds like being lost in the desert to me.

were these guys the first people who put forward the proposition that synthesizers should sound like insects from another planet?

Not that there was anything wrong with SIGN/PLUS but that had a ... warmth to it? something. that I didn't like as much.

― rainbow calx (lukas), Friday, August 29, 2025 5:01 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm, nailed why I never find myself wanting to return to these (though I did like them both at the time), expressed in a way I was unable to exactly articulate

3

clustro casual. so impossibly deep in there, such languid pads, i just let it float along.

splesh gets progressively funkier. it might be one of my favorites on the whole thing. i like this thing they do where patterns mostly repeat for a few measures - like a few synth lines are more or less the same - and then there's a new section for a few measures, and then a new section, etc. it's them at their catchiest on this release.

little snippet of all end

then tt1pd - the beast. i love this track. dunno what to say, it just goes. another with a second section. love the little clicks that sound like closed hi-hats throughout. is this what you say about an autechre track - 'i love that little sound that....'. ok there's kind of a third section too! all of the nasty buzzy synth lines moving in that chromatic sort of pattern get so loose at the end. another thing that happens with these tracks is sometimes you hear then basically doing long-form improv with one sort-of-idea and they're very good at it. unlocking a feeling of freedom by keeping some elements constrained and just absolutely rinsing others.

acid mwan idle. hoo boy. i remember the first few times i listened to this i did not expect a trebly anemic hissing throbbing drone piece. repetitive, trippy. kinda satanic, kinda coil. the minimalism! fire gets closer at the end.

fLh. bleep bloop, let's get real detuned. not among my favs.

glos ceramic. here we go, back to it. another one with sections strung together--eddy to eddy. gets appealingly chunky and crumbly. weirdly catchy.

g 1 e 1. the pretty little lo-fi piano one that turns into a hypnogogic boards of canada ambient smear.

nineFly. kind of another 'sick thrills' one. dank as hell slow crawler.

shimrpl air. one of my favorite of the ambient pieces. so ethereal. cirrus clouds. layers of them. moving very fast. on neptune.

icari. one of the best for last. so much space between the percussive elements, the thuds and clicks. that slow-moving feedback drifting through everything. very deliberate-sounding. carefully strung together sentences. feels organic, like an ecosystem. we're cutting through brush at night.

Lukas, I think that’s why I didn’t love those albums. I wanted the astringence of Elseq/NTS.

i adore PLUS. i think some moments come close to sounding like 'nts' - 'ecol4' for instance. it does sound a little richer overall. an extra touch of sheen maybe. i think one of the secret weapons of 'nts' is how quiet they get. start at kind of a normal volume and then just get quieter from there. or to start quiet and stay quiet. for 20 minutes. there's a lot of that in the live shows too - quiet, careful intensity. things kind of barely holding together.

I guess I'll have to listen to these all over again - 2 and 3 anyway, which have more tracks i find difficult (amidst some giant stompers like violvoic and tt1pd). 9 chr0 sounds like someone doing weird DIY.

Yoooo

I'm glad you revived this one map

Im walking home from a five hour dj gig and north spiral sounds like the night defragging itself

that’s a proper mad one

Something I find myself increasingly obsessed with is how music sounds when it's out of range.

I once had a desk job where the office overlooked a large factory warehouse. You could hear the pop radio music coming through from the warehouse but it was at once tinny and muffled. I heard the little violin vamp from Britney Spears' "Toxic" bleeding through the walls for weeks before actually hearing the song properly and going "Ohhhh that's what that was". I'd been hearing it totally differently.

Other times I can hear a soundsystem playing house and techno from far away and my brain hears the "one" in a totally different place because the kick drum is inaudible. It becomes this strange offbeat "mm TIK uhh, mm TIK uhh" until I move closer and all the sounds fill in and make sense.

That's kind of the effect I get from NTS 1. Like if I've been out listening to loud music all day and now I'm in bed and my brain is still playing that music while I'm on the edge of sleep

love sign and plus, I think much more than the contemporaneous live stuff actually ... weirdly I always kept imagining Dave Gahan singing over several of the tracks then I realized they were probably big Depeche Mode heads in the 80s before the hip hop and house wave kicked in and it seemed to make a lot of sense viz the kinds of melodic structures they tend to return to, very dramatic, very melancholic, very romanticist ... like tell me if I'm wrong but are say "esc desc" or "sch.mefd.2" or "psin AM" or "iipre.esc" (from plus) not fairly Depeche-circa-Black Celebration-coded?

Funny, i find myself sometimes doing "Bryan Ferry-isms" over Ae. I could definitely imagine someone with his or Gahan's vocal range working with them

haha yeah, totally crooner core ... Sylvian as well would fit

this from Milton Parker on the elseq thread is so otm, really gets close to how my enjoyment of this stuff has increased:

"where the point is an unknowable flood of so much of it that you stop thinking of it in terms of 'pieces' or 'albums' or even physical media, you stop consciously thinking of it in terms of putting on a specific album. you just engage with it as sound without that record-geek side of your consciousness stepping in to track or map which one's your favorite or which album it is or which stage of his career it is you're dealing with and instead it is all continuum. which is pretty much where you want to be"

Yes. Especially with these long format releases. They force you to live "in the moment", and by that I'm talking on a micro scale, like zooming in and in on a waveform