Autechre - PLUS

aaaand another one:

https://thequietus.com/articles/29140-autechre-surprise-album-plus

SIGN IS NOT A MAMMOTH NTS-LIKE NEW ALBUM!

We'll just release another bazillion albums via steady drip every month lol these beautful bastards

so are these named after buttons on my Barclays Pinsentry reader?

anyway, i ordered it. my poor, poor wallet

Yeah, I sorta wish they'd just released these together so I didn't have to pay international shipping twice, but hey, that's how it goes.

lol the green album! the rumours were true!

listening now, bit more herky jerky than sign but definitely a companion piece, not a radical change.

on the other hand, i'm quite happy to hear these as separate but related albums. i mean, we all knew this was going to happen of course. i'm donwloading the files now but my hope is that this is a bit more than a 'remixes/reversions' of SIGN

haha, i somehow knew exactly what the cover would look like before i saw it

welll, this is starting promisely. first track is like really quiet acid techno, like you're hearing a rave from miles away

okay, this album is incredibly squirrelly. it's all rabbity little beats and waning synths. definitely a sister album to SIGN but just a bit more jittery

i'm not sure if i prefer this to SIGN so far - certainly not as immediate, but in the same way it's quite a different style to what they've done before. if SIGN is their 'tonal' album, this is their 'timbral' album. there's none of the heavy or punchy rhythms of albums like Untilted, but it is still very rhythmic. rather than being rhythmic like a rock drummer or a techno beat, it's more like jazz-style brush strokes. ecol4 is seriously doing it for me right now in that respect

HOLY CRAP, the last track! WOW!

Wow what

There was a Reddit post about this yesterday, everyone assumed it was fake lol

i predict a blue one before christmas.

(blue on white art)

Yeah, I sorta wish they'd just released these together so I didn't have to pay international shipping twice, but hey, that's how it goes.

― Paul Ponzi, Wednesday, October 28, 2020 6:31 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I too am annoyed by this

no i prefer it.

relatively short albums that lean towards different sides of Ae's work, released in digestible chunks rather than a huge data splurge.

I mean, who are we kidding, they can't help themselves, but hour-length releases are way more easy for me to understand than the NTS stuff which frankly was just too much really. I still feel like I'm scratching the Jovian surface of that release whereas I feel like with SIGN I already know the 'dramatis personae' of that album's cast

then again, i'm not paying lots for postage so it's easy for me to say. i only bought NTS 2 and can't see myself buying the rest

wuuuuuuuuut

I did get a discount of two dollars and fifty cents, I guess that's a little nice

I'm not prepared to go into Autechreland again so soon

strange that these days people talk as much about Autechre's 'curation' and how new releases are packaged and fit into their canon as much as the actual music these days.

xp i agree with Jordan though: Considering these are being released separately, it feels a bit soon to release a follow-up. A few more weeks would have been just fine.

i like this so far - like SIGN, more immediately legible than the trilogy* after Oversteps.

*can I take credit for this y/n

I needed this today. My goodness. Can't wait to dive in.

ha plus sign get it

fuck

love "lux 106 mod", i will take all the pretty Autechre, yes

plus sign?

that Tone Glow roundtable is strange. they all say about the same thing except one person compares SIGN to Syro, which I don't understand at all

think the opening and closing tracks are the most interesting things here so far, or at least the tracks that sound the least like stuff they've done before

i'm also really enjoying the hiss and steam of marhide and ecol4, which remind me of tracks like Dropp and Outpt from EP7

rollin in my lux 106 mod

Man ecol4 is sounding SO good on headphones right now. Perfect nod-your-cerebrum music

Interesting comment on Reddit showing how PLUS and SIGN are both LP14:

"Interestingly enough, it looks like PLUS is being counted as another album 14 instead of as their 15th album. The catalog number is 338 (3+3+8=14) and the track title X4 (10+4=14) point to this and SIGN being considered one album instead of two"

SIGN's catalog number was 329, which also adds up to 14. Coinkidonk? or numerical happenstance?

thrilled to be paying shipping to Australia twice when I haven’t even received the SIGN LPs yet.

After a single pass through I can firmly state SIGN will likely remain my preference of the two and I get why Warp pushed it as the alpha to PLUS's beta.

Really dig the last 4 tracks though, and marhide's amazing cowbell laden wonky drum machine beat with rushes of static filling in the stereo field, but it kinda feels like a Move of Ten to Oversteps type relationship. Closing track is really really dope though.

Two Hands to SIGN's U.F.O.F.

this rules

Ha, just realised I've been listening to this album in completely the wrong order, so some of my comments upthread might be about entirely different tracks

I'm listening on headphones now and it's really coming into its own.

iipre escape is prettier than anything on SIGN

ii.pre esc sounds like Metaz form8 with pew pew lasers going off in the background

I was wondering if it had anything to do with esc desc given the name but they're not at all in the same key or tempo

Gonna listen to both albums back to back while doing laundry tomorrow morning.

I was listening to this earlier while the washer was going and I felt like I couldn’t hear it bcz competing machine sounds lol.

X4 is very dancey. I can hear some sort of 90s club vibes going through parts of it

... that's before it morphs into some sort of desert panpipe reverie..

too early to say but this could well top SIGN for me

yeah i may like this one more, who can say, "x4" is certainly the best shit ever

Gonna listen to both albums back to back while doing laundry tomorrow morning.

a bit like listening to Nick Drake while plucking away on an acoustic guitar

more like NON-PLUS amirite

the sign livestream was really cool. i'm putting 'plus' on hold for a while too tbh.

kind of want winter weather for it idk

I'm the opposite, I'm going to enjoy PLUS for a while and then come back to SIGN which I think will have rewards, but they're not as apparent.

SIGN livestream was literally and maybe pathetically one of the highlights of my year

Not pathetic at all. It was one of my highlights of the year as well, along with learning that Trump got the 'rona, and a brief camping trip in the California redwoods. 2020 has been hard for all of us. Got to appreciate the little things even more!

definitely enjoying this one more than SIGN for now. It's a bit more immediate and grabs my attention more.

also, a couple of nights ago I dreamt that Autechre surprise dropped another album called OPEN. I don't generally think that my dreams predict the future, but this one seems pretty plausible.

OK, you all convinced me. Gonna set aside some time to listen to PLUS tomorrow

also, a couple of nights ago I dreamt that Autechre surprise dropped another album called OPEN. I don't generally think that my dreams predict the future, but this one seems pretty plausible.

― silverfish, Saturday, October 31, 2020 7:36 PM (forty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This may be why you dreamed this - check out the cover:

https://www.discogs.com/The-Necks-Open/master/627957

oh weird

I had a dream that autechre’s next album will be entitled GOATSE.CX

it's only a matter of time till the alogrithms align on that one

anyway, i think this might be muscling its way in as my favourite post-Confield Autechre release. It's so chunky and satisfying. The sound design is incredible and I had my first audio-sensory bliss-out moment in ages just enjoying this on headphones. Each track has a clear 'concept' to it, so it were. And they're doing things playfully. It's pretty much everything I want from an Ae album. If SIGN is a cousin of Oversteps, then PLUS is EP7's little brother

If Biden wins I will listen to this album

Didn't realise this was on Spotify already - not that I haven't been playing it but now they can get their extra 3p per play.

coSIGN dog latin

I had a dream that autechre’s next album will be entitled GOATSE.CX
I just realised the last track on this is "TMI open", so

Lol

hah!

Pfffft

The sound i make when i’m TMI open

i appreciate how quiet so much of this is

a rare outing on 6 music, lux 106 mode on stuart maconie's freakzone.

how hard would it've been to make the back of PLUS match the back of SIGN rather than the unaligned mess it is?

Yes. For an entity that produces such next-level audio, the layouts of SIGN/PLUS and NTS Sessions have been curiously sloppy (at least in CD form, I've concluded that audio issuing from totally digital domain does not need vinyl playback). (Of course sloppiness is relative, but Designers Republic sets the expectations quite high.)

the backs of the vinyl don't look too bad, although they're slightly different (the barcode) - not sure how deliberate this is. what does the CD look like?

Have to say, those Ae t-shirts Warp are touting are HIDEOUS

the problem with the cds is that they go:

tracklisting
cat number
barcode
credits
copyright

but because the tracklisting for SIGNS is 2 longer than PLUS everything else is shifted down a bit. if they treated everything after the tracklisting as a block and bottom alligned it then it'd line up perfectly (swapping the 10mm space at the bottom for a 10mm space after the tracklisting)

Also as SIGN and PLUS are siblings music- and design-wise, I'd expect the inside of the outer CD/LP cover, as well as the "inner sleeve" that holds the disc, to follow suit: SIGN insides are the same lighter orange shade as in the circular squiggle on the cover, PLUS's design does not replicate this logic and uses bluish grey for the insides. That's not mistake or sloppiness, but a curious deviation from otherwise corresponding aspects between the two releases. (Not really complaining about this, just having fun nitpicking and overanalyzing - traits that seem to be triggered by AE releases.)

Oh you thought you were done with Autechre music for this year, were you.

👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀👀https://t.co/2OAu1zuvAG

— frozen reeds (@frozenreeds) December 5, 2020

An incredible effort, the long awaited fan reconstruction of the 2008 Autechre live set using original sysex files and patches secretly provided by AE via an invisible link on their website https://t.co/8HVWOzvjrg

— Robbie Martin (@FluorescentGrey) December 5, 2020

was that the tour where they played in a freezing cold car park in London and didn't come on till 12am?

yes, that was March 4 2008, Hearn Street Car Park - the reconstructed show that was just released was on April 4 2008 @ Echoplex, Los Angeles

fancy

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5223611,-0.0804823,3a,75y,67.06h,83.76t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s512Uxl7ZYb2B6_rcxiwLUw!2e0!5s20080701T000000!7i13312!8i6656

+ thanks for the heads up, Ned!

https://autechre.warp.net/releases : has that "Warp Tapes 89-93" link at the bottom of the page been there for a long time? (link to a 1.1 Gb version of their WXAXRXP mixtape)

Sign showed up in my local record shop on schedule, but Plus has not. I was wondering whether it was distribution delays (seems like several late-2020 releases from UK/EU, e.g. Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas III, aren't getting here until early 2021) or if the store decided they needed to sell more copies of Sign before they'd make room for Plus. I could ask them, of course.

When Brok starts forging Mjölnir at 10.02 on ecol4:

https://pm1.narvii.com/6061/89f141399111a3c2ee62844b502aaa4dbef91cff_hq.jpg

i really love this album, it is inexplicable

I've only made it to the end of ""ecol4" so far, which I heard on a walk without knowing its run time. That was a pretty neat experience. Still, for some weird reason I'm ... not struggling with either of the new albums, but still trying to connect with them. Maybe because they are inexplicable!

https://archive.org/details/AE_ONESIX

In 2019, Autechre released seven live shows from 2016 and 2018 onto their website, but there was a hidden Easter egg link to this release, a three and a half hour mix of truncated versions of the sets. Interesting stuff that fits in with elseq very well.

Track listing [unofficial titles]:

clcktwr4
blholc
keycorner space
shimripl sentinel
full_shatter0
GLpureform
blbbR
south cyclone
beastre
sixSwim
leteran
on, set-true
seven of twelve

Those are basically extended edits of the sections of the 2016-18 live sets, really well structured, have listened to this thing more often than the original sets! The person responsible did something similar for the 2014-15 sets too.

I just found out this existed, didn't know how well known it was

oh thank god it's nothing new, I just checked my Autechre library and with live sets and mix sets it now runs for 21 days uninterrupted

autechre fans: "thank got it's nothing new"

:D

t/d

The person responsible did something similar for the 2014-15 sets too.

anyone have a copy of this? the ONESIX one is indeed very well done. I generally listen to it instead of the individual sets now (no repeating bits).

ok I hate to be the guy who says "imagine how much people would freak out if Artist X did Track Y" but "X4" is pretty much everything I would hoped for in a modern Aphex Twin release

at first my thoughts were "PLUS is great but SIGN is really special", now I think they're both really special. long live Sean Autechre and Rob Autechre

the fact that this came out immediately after SIGN was probably a bad idea, I think it caused it to be looked at as like the outtakes of SIGN or a companion EP. listening to it on its own it's pretty much everything I'd want out of a new Autechre album. also its weird that "lux 106 mod" is prettier than anything on the album which dedicated itself to that sound. "tm1 open" is like some elven rave or something. it's one of their few tracks that makes me laugh. I wish the album was a less anxious but still, it's kinda my go-to for them now

Yes frogbs!

going back to PLUS after .. almost two years? it's very very good.

It is very good. I'd say it is among their best

2nd half in particular is amazing

haha i was going to say the other day that i prefer the first half, or the first 3/4 really. it's all really bracing and stomach-churning. i still love how 'ecol4' starts out at like a 3/10 on intensity scale and just gets quieter and quieter. 'tm1 open' never really clicked for me. in some ways it feels like the more drawn out ambient percussive pieces they did years ago - guess i'm thinking of 'bronchusevenmx'