Autechre - Best NTS Session POLL

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3 is my favorite atm

i think it has the most variety and the weirder tracks like acid mwan idle and ninefly are stunning. it has the hardest track, tt1pd, and the poppiest track, glos ceramic.

I think 3 is the most underrated (4 is the most overrated) but I think I'm voting for 2. "violvoic," "e0," and "dummy casual pt 2" are some of my favorite things on this box, and even the relatively weaker tracks on Session 2 ("9 chrO," "xflood") are still pretty terrific.

(iirc, #3 got the least amount of overall votes in the polls)

3

gonk

gonkin' on bobo

2

This is tough... do I pick the one with the best songs? Or the one that is the most cohesive 2 hour listen as a whole?

This is tough... But it's still 4 for me. Fuck calling it 'overrated'.

gonkin' on bobo

This is tough... do I pick the one with the best songs? Or the one that is the most cohesive 2 hour listen as a whole?

― octobeard, Monday, October 7, 2019 5:41 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is my quandary too. A lot of my favorite jams are on #2 but #3 has the higher jam-to-filler (sorry) ratio for me, and is the one I've been going back to the most recently.

re: #4: I've gone from thinking about "all end" as, "eh, cool that they ended it that way, but I will never listen to this again" to "omg why did they blight a nearly perfect collection of music with this pretentious nonsense."

This is my quandary too. A lot of my favorite jams are on #2 but #3 has the higher jam-to-filler (sorry) ratio for me, and is the one I've been going back to the most recently.

as above except #1/#2 instead of #2/#3

and the poppiest track, glos ceramic.

i know 'poppiest' is relative but hmmm

Listened to all of these again since starting the poll and am now voting 3

kinda love 1, 2 and 3 evenly. Higher highs and lows on those. Favorite tracks are from these first three. But 4.... that's consistent and coherent from start to finish. Going to have to go with that as the best "album" of the bunch.

My first instinct is to vote 2 but I’m gonna re-listen to 3 first. That hour-long track makes voting 4 feels like virtue signaling to me.

As I said upthread I've grown to actively dislike "all end." It feels like padding. And anyway, who pulls out Ae records for hour-long drones?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I don't think all end is padding or that liking it represents virtue signaling

The idea that voting for something on ilx could be virtue signaling.. wow

can we just call it fronting

it would still be lame but not as lame

buncha virtue posers

all end is padding, but that doesn't make it bad or anything. it could have just as easily been 30 or 90 minutes depending on how much time they had to fill to get to 2 hours.

it's certainly the best filler track I can think of

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

Haha, yes! Let the moaning commence :)

I disagree with the results, but it makes a kind of sense. 4 has "frane casual" and "mirrage," two of the most difficult-to-beat tracks in the whole box. If the rest of that volume were of that caliber, I'd have voted for it.

FWIW I rank 'em

3
2
4
1

4, 3, 2, 1 for me

1,2,4,3. 1 has three massive bangers and the oldest of old skool four of seven, with its gorgeous coda, and perfect transitions between tracks 7, 8, and 9. Frane casual is currently nowhere near the top of my list of unfuckwithable tracks.

2, 3, 4, 1

my controversial autechre opinion is that the first half of 4 is better than the second half

my non-controversial autechre opinion is that all of the sessions are good

Agree with both of those opinions. All things considered, it's my favorite new release of the past ten years.

just me or do these tracks have very little compression? i feel like i have to crank the volume to hear everything that's going on.

i think you're probably right

i dig it btw, makes the tracks feel really rich.

so do i. miniature sound-worlds buried in the bigger picture.

I commented on that in the NTS thread, even asked if there was a different mastering dude involved. Whether applied at the mixing or mastering stage, NTS has significantly less compression and much higher dynamic range than especially elseq. I remembered elseq sounding very hot and a bit in your face and NTS was a refreshing contrast.

Exai remains my favorite mastered record of theirs. Everything up to and including Chiastic/Envane needs to be remastered imho. Very dull and lifeless dynamics, especially in comparison to everything after, but that could just be R&S's setup/mix too.

I feel like the mastering on Incunabula and Tri Repetae are decent?

Tri Rep I feel is a bit too lifeless below 1000hz. Compare with I Care Because You Do (same year/label) for a contrast where I feel it was mastered better (but mixed worse! so much peaking ha)

With Chiastic it just feels a bit flat overall for me, rather than some freq ranges feeling out of balance. The vinyl master is a touch better than the CD, but both really feel like a copy of a copy to me in some way, despite the music itself being all time.

not sure about mastering but Warp seriously need to reissue Chiastic, LP5, EP7 and Confield now

exai gave me such aural fatigue i always figured it was mastered very hot.

I think there’s a lot of compression-as-aesthetic-tool on Exai, e.g. “1 1 is”.
I have EP7 on vinyl and it’s quite something.

Chiastic can sound flat I guess. I always think of LP5 as incredibly flat-plan, but that's part of the appeal. I like how clean it sounds. There's enough room for the sounds to breathe which isn't always a thing with Ae.

I think some of flatness that comes across in a lot of their tunes is also a result of their mixing decisions and that is the case on LP5. A number of tracks on that record are entirely in mono, for instance (see Acroyear2 and others). However in terms of the balance of mids and low frequencies and sense of dynamics, LP5 feels to me the first album release that achieves sense of fullness (though revisiting Incunabula I think that one was excellently mixed/mastered as stated above, but I'm guessing there was much more external influence involved). Compare Amber/Tri-Rep/Chiastic to LP5 and Incunabula and you will get what I'm saying.

Supposedly they switched mastering engineers Draft onward. Make of that what you will.

Starting with Oversteps and especially Exai, I do notice their mixing decisions involve significantly more spacial width and sub bass. So perhaps I'm gravitating towards that rather than the mastering per se, but I still contend that Elseq was way too hot and NTS is "just right".

Exai maybe sounds a little flat on the high end to me. I think we can all agree that we want to live inside NTS Sessions. (Clubs should rent themselves out for max six guests and let you play whatever you want, I would absolutely splurge for my birthday and just play NTS real loud.)

What do you think of the new one?

wish the new one weren't as smooth & mid-rangey, like the mellotron-type sounds that buzz and drone in the bg are kind of hard to pick out. but idk it works considering the overall mood of the record. i think it sounds smoother than it actually is, if that makes sense.

I was playing Chiastic Slide (on CD, through speakers) a few weeks ago and was struck by how "real" "Rettic AC" sounded, as in like it was really present in the room as opposed to being synthetic/imaginary (a recording of electronic sounds). Of course all the sounds are in some sense real (getting into George Lucas territory being baffled when people complain about digital SFX: "none of it's real!"), but that was a really cool sensation, and kind of unusual in my experience when listening to recordings of whatever type.

xp I could see that with Exai. What is your take on Draft then? I feel both have a similar sound mix/master wise and I love them both. Feels analog tape like with gently rolled off highs and solid "thwack" dynamics in the percussion. Shit pops.

Re: the new one, listening to it as I type this, and it's easily their warmest sounding record I think they've yet released. Tons of emphasis in the lower mids/upper bass (250hz-1000hz) and it's very very wide, soft, smudged and yet spacial and 3D. NTS was nothing if not "icy" in its palette and mix, a very snowy winter like quality like the whole set was performed in an ice cave, with more of an upper mids emphasis, but in a good way and utilizing bass/sub bass as a counterpoint often, unlike Tri-Rep. SIGN is the opposite, with maybe a bit of detail is smudged in the lower frequencies, but that's part of its charm. I love it. It really is a career highlight both in its content and in its mix imho. Feels very different for them and I'm here for it.

Draft sounds a lot better than Exai to me. Agree that the mastering is similar, I think the mixing / the actual timbres just work better for me.

1: Blanche
2: Sophia
3: Rose
4: Dorothy

Dorothy
Blanche
Rose

Sophia

Thaenk you for baeing a friaend

i've been back in an nts sessions wormhole for the last two weeks. it's nice here and i don't want to leave.

of the CD version, 2.2 and 3.2 are definite favorites. 9 chr0 and icari are both excellent tracks

tt1pd off NTS 3 is OFF THE HOOK MATE. I'd love to mix some heavily dubbed ragga vocals over this