Are you telling me this is AE: SIGN? (Autechre LP 14)

https://d1rgjmn2wmqeif.cloudfront.net/r/b/202853-1.jpg

Might as well have a thread to live blog the live stream.

sir, when and where is that?

I'm writing about this one for tQ and hadn't realised they were doing this, so now I'm trying to cram my own thoughts out before I get influenced by others' reactions

Ah okay, autechre.warp.net, 1 Pacific tomorrow

'SIGN' Album Stream. Thursday 8th October.
22:00 CEST / 21:00 BST / 16:00 EDT / 13:00 PDT / 05:00 JST (9th)
https://autechre.warp.net

oh goodie!

Welp, goodbye plans to work tomorrow

> LP 14

[citation needed]

LP01 Incunabula
LP02 Amber
LP03 Tri Repetae
LP04 Chiastic Slide
LP05 LP5
LP06 Confield
LP07 Draft 7:30
LP08 Untilted
LP09 Quaristice
LP10 Oversteps
LP11 Exai
LP12 Elseq
LP13 NTS Sessions
LP14 SIGN

Are Elseq or NTS Sessions not official long players? I mean they were kinda extra long too. Unless you consider the 5 Elseqs and 4 Sessions their own LPs, in which case we're on LP21

EP7, Qradrange and Move of Ten don't count as official long players, despite containing enough music to be one.

There's an argument against 12 and 13 being LP's given that 13 started as 8 hours of radio and, iirc, 12 was things they were using live. And the lengths count against them, imo, yes.

Maybe i'm just railing against calling something lp14 when it has a perfectly good name already. Like calling Jon Pertwee The Third.

elseq doesn't overlap much with the live stuff, and it was described as an album by the label and the group at the time I think.
Also worth noting that several titles suggest a numbered list: Tri, LP5, Draft 7, Exai.

If there's a numbered list - I wouldn't get hung up on it - SIGN suggests this is LP12: signs of the zodiac, the circle on the cover

It's clearly (clearly!) the 14th release of long form studio material (accepting official designations of their EPs). I don't think 'things they were using live' clearly demarcates elseq from any other release.

i think it's possible to think of elseq and NTS as being something different to the "album" albums, and if you think of the number-related title sequence as a thing then i can make a case for "Sign" as 12 but can't figure a connection with 14

this is an entirely trivial game/crossword puzzle by the way, albums are long dead ffs

after a very casual first listen "gr4" and "th red a" was my fave sequence of tracks.

F7 is an absolute banger as well!

vocal track "esc desc" takes a very lovely detour

quite upset that “pissin AM” turned out to be exactly what it sounds like

Still in doubt if I want to listen to this tonight? Like let it wash over me in all it's - undoubtedly awesome and confusing - glory, but without the chance to dive in again until the lp's arrive, versus ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and enjoy the ride.

(psst..) it's *available* to stream on slsk as well

tick.jpg

(psst..) it's *available* to stream on slsk as well

― calzino, Thursday, October 8, 2020 9:54 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

How can we be sure they aren't fakes?

the one on slsk right now is definitely not real

I like some of these fake Autechre tracks, they might be better than the real thing!

hmmm

So how does this work? I just go to the Warp page and it'll be there? Or is it being hosted someplace else?

autechre.warp.net

thanks!

zomg i'm locked in

lol i've got to go out shortly

It's starting!

Yay, going with silence beforehand was a good idea

lol i wondered where the noises in the house were coming from then remembered i'd got the stream running

I love it already.

ohhhhhhhhhhhhh

Those pesky sound designers next door

i am listening on cheap child's headphones because our daughter is being restless and i didn't want to go upstairs and risk waking her, these were all i could find downstairs.

avoid the chat. are those things always like this? gonna periodically check in here instead

love this already btw

damn

imagining myself on a beach tbh

Stuck at a city hall meeting #sadlol

Enjoy people.

That chatroom is so gross and unpleasant and reminds me why I don't look at 99% of things I could look at online

This is lovely music though

lol i never dreamed of looking at the chat, same as i turn it off if i'm watching a football stream

yeah it's gorj so far. leaving the chat tab hidden for sure

The synthetic yet operatic quality of the pads and their lovely, cavernous reverb (which seems to be a different reverb effect they've been using the last 5-6 years) is incredible. Very different vibe immediately

ah here we go on some electro shit

omg whut with this 2nd track already

oversteps feel here. so lush though! almost feels like they're trolling us.

soo...Oversteps 2??? nice

def lush

This isn't an original opinion or anything but All End just feels redundant when you've got... the entire genre of drone music to compare it to, as well as the rest of Ae's catalogue - I don't see what makes it remarkable other than it's length and that it's by Ae

NTS has tracks like gonk steady one and column thirteen that take the late-period Ae exploratory vibe and add massive hooks, just exhilarating stuff. And I like the sound of the record - super clear and widescreen without being brittle or harsh - much more than sign/plus.

I dunno what to tell you about All End. I've listened to plenty of drone and that track doing what it does, sounding like it does, coming where it does in the album just does it for me. There's some sort of aural illusion happening with that track, my brain keeps hearing melodies and harmonies that aren't there.

Yeah, I liked it to watching Derek Jarman's "Blue."

Comparing NTS to SIGN is like comparing Trans Europe Express to Radioactivity. I strongly prefer Radioactivity but I know a lot of people would disagree

And ohmigod some of the tracks on NTS go on for sooo loooong without really doing anything. I don't know how they can justify something like bqbqbq being 11 minutes. It's interesting for all of the first minute

super disagree on that, it's a maximalist piece which asks "what if this, but played out to its fullest extent" and I could listen to that all day. So many tracks mutate, or splinter into tangents, and the length basically forces you to work past your first impressions and listen for other things.
and re: all end, sure there are other works of similar magnitude and concept, sure it's just a timestretch of a simple noise piece, sure there's any number of ways you could criticise it, but lukas is right that it's a ganzfeld on which I hallucinate my soul. I listened to it cranked, a few times in full, during a phase of my life where my emotions were basically unbearable and unprocessable, and it felt like being suspended as a cloud of atoms and was immensely healing to me. So I don't really care if it's clever or original or whatever, it's just wonderful. This kind of art is equally about selection as creation, and putting that up as an hour-length block was clearly an aesthetic decision. Wouldn't matter if it was a field recording of an electric fan.

I agree with dog latin - I get that the length and drawn out patterns are part of the appeal but certain tracks on here just don’t do anything for me and they just go on soooo long. I love a good 3/4 of it though. Including “bqbqbq” (which you gotta admit is pretty funny to have as the 2nd track)

I think we can all agree that … we want more AE in 2022, though, right? 🙂

mattt otmfm

I’d be down for more Autechre sure

Every time this thread comes to life I get a PTSD shock that the band might have dropped another 8 hours of music.

I still want a physical 5CD box of Elseq. I know it’s never coming but I hold out hope.

fwiw the individual NTS Sessions on vinyl are actually pretty cheap, you can get them for like $25 + shipping even though they are 3xLPs. I guess too many people (correctly) decided this was ridiculous to have on wax. but they're wrong. it's awesome on vinyl even changing a record and flipping a side in "all end"

because of the activity on this thread I am listening to PLUS and honestly I think it's as good as anything they've released, at least on a per minute scale. and it's probably the most accessible thing they've done since LP5, outside of Oversteps/Move of Ten. pretty much all the things they do well are on it. and it's got "lux 106 mod" which is arguably prettier than anything on SIGN! can't help but wonder how it would've been received had it been released first.

also its nice to hear Autechre making music that sounds funny again. "TM1 open" is like Hobbit disco

because of the activity on this thread I am listening to PLUS and honestly I think it's as good as anything they've released

been meaning to make this exact post all day

anyway now that I'm done I will be listening to Cluster, who in many ways were the original Autechre. no I will not elaborate on that

@unperson yes! My NTS Sessions CD set gives me warm wibbles and it's a shame we can't have the same with Elseq.

Listened to Plus yesterday, aside from a track or two it still mostly passes me by, possibly because I was never so much into "beat based techno in the classic era". Love the lush and pillowly Sign; I also think of NTS as a career peak and a monumental achievement that transcends its own few longeurs. What I go to most often for a quick and easy hit of ne plus ultra ae though is elseq 1 tracks 2-5.

I bet they press elseq on vinyl for the 10th ann in 2016

*2026

Fuck, just realised that's not far off

Unperson, that’s something I want too.

Speaking of which, I got notified today that my Copies of Chiastic and LP5 have been dispatched and OMG I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS FOR LONGER THAN BQBQBQ

Good news! Hopefully that means mine are en route too. I typically prefer Autechre on CD but I'm very excited to get these.

yeah i don't know why i even own Autechre on record, but these are very impotant albums for me and it will be a nice way to rediscover them

Just another voice on the Internet saying "I'd like an Elseq CD set" (was even considering some Russian boot but now all I see on Ebay is a thumb drive in a box).

Is "buy it and burn it" not an option? or unsatisfying without artwork?

the lack of a physical copy means that despite Ae being one of my favorite musical acts ever I'm barely familiar with elseq relative to the rest of the catalog

xp -- probably mostly the latter for me, plus CD-Rs being more likely to degrade over time than factory-pressed discs (Russian boots in my limited
experience have been factory-pressed)

but lukas is right that it's a ganzfeld on which I hallucinate my soul. I listened to it cranked, a few times in full, during a phase of my life where my emotions were basically unbearable and unprocessable, and it felt like being suspended as a cloud of atoms and was immensely healing to me.

I recently programmed some LED lights to create a visual ganzfeld while in a sauna listening to All End for 20 mins, and this description feels like it matched my experience a bit

my soul sibling

picking this up again after a year and I never realized how symphonic a lot of this album is. you could almost envision an orchestra playing it. guess I missed a lot of that because I'm not used to hearing stuff like that out of Autechre.

Serious question, but how are we supposed to approach a band like Autechre in a post-AI world? Like, a big part of the appeal for me is the feeling that this is partly based on algorithms and the emotion comes from a feeling of "The machines are trying to communicate emotions only they can feel" or something. How does that square with what we know today?

Comes down to the intentionality behind the algorithm and whether the end result is musical, for me.

there are enough moments in their music where you can tell people are at the helm, I think of them like DJs tweaking a bunch of knobs, but they're 4 dimensional knobs for 4 dimensional music

From Iceland — Autechre On Darkness, Spotify, And Fish Sticks https://share.google/3j7oX4tmFyWvTB1zP

I hope this link works, good interview

well, generative music is hardly a new concept. computers are fundamentally for doing repetitive tasks that are too annoying for humans to do (imo) and they way ae are using the tech to take limitless possibilities, narrow things down by playing with inputs, and then finally curating the output further was never really that different from, say, roland kayn.

also, the music sounds cool

xp was hoping for a bit more on spotify and whether they're still happy for their music to be on there.

I like this album but a year or two ago I played it back to back with EP7 and the latter sounded so much richer and more inventive.

Going back to Confield I've fantasized them selling programs or models for song genesis instead of albums.

That would be a neat idea

They said that they didn't sell generative software because they wouldn't own the copyright to the output, IIRC.

Autechre's algorithms are nothing like LLMs. LLMs get fed a bunch of examples and imitate and interpolate. Autechre's algorithms don't do that, they generate sound based on ... well, lots of different things, but I guess the analogy I would make is that Autechre's algorithms are like little robots holding paintbrushes and LLMs are like cameras that take a bunch of photos and print out one Ultimate Average Photograph.

Yeah I remember them addressing that question too, but it would be a sweet medium of expression that would fit their ethos and aesthetic nicely, but alas.

maybe they just want to make music

i hope they go back to "albums" or studio releases. the live stuff is great but tends to be in a certain format. composed stuff is where they really let loose imo. i ended up liking plus more than sign. good time for a revisit.

and yeah i would be surprised if ai had any effect on what they do. it doesn't really seem to fit their aesthetic or their process. but who knows. can't lie i'd be bummed if they started using ai generation tools to create sounds. wouldn't blame them for using ai to code though. are they still using max? i wonder if max has like ai integration now.

xp I would too, but all "signs" point to them performing live and releasing the recordings as their "albums" for the indefinite future, as per their recent interviews.

It's now been the longest gap of time for them between album drops (5 years) if you don't count their recent release of live recordings last year.

oh i know all that. things change, people change. i hope they change their minds. but whatever they do i'll enjoy it i'm sure. and we'll all continue to do galaxy brain posts about it :)

i listened to SIGN on a long, slightly inebriated walk home from a DJ gig.

my thoughts on this one is that in the context of the COVID pandemic and lockdowns it was exactly what I wanted to hear from them: A stripped-down version of their sound exposing the pretty melodies and counterpoints that usually gets buried in a thicket of other sounds. It was a salve to have this music. Easy listening in hard times.

So it surprised me that my walk home was a tense and paranoid one. Maybe the music reminded me too much of those uncertain times, or simply walking home late at night was making me feel on-edge, but I don't remember this album sounding as sinister as it did.

In today's context I feel like SIGN has switched with the NTS Sessions in my estimation. NTS used to feel tough-going and claustro. So much going on. Such long tracks that repeat and repeat. But now I think of NTS as the thing that suits my mindset. I just love zeroing in and in on the little details, whereas SIGN is very surface level really - you just get taken along by the synthy sounds.