are autechre and squarepusher taking the piss?

i would dearly love to 'get it' if only to win a bet with my flatmate who reckons i will never honestly be able to say, "see that autechre stuff, i get it now. i'm feeling it man."

Autechre of course make religious music and therefor don't have to smile or be funny or take the piss. That's the whole point: pious and austere.

I think the press has misrepresented them as much as anything. They are a couple of stoners that like to play with electronic boxes, and apparently people seem to dig it. I dont think they sit around all day and discuss what the philosophical implications of algorithmic composition and their place in the legacy of 20th century western avant garde sound art. They are two guys who make records, it is everybody else who paints them as IDM monks.

After Chiclisuite, their music gets a dense, digital crunchy sound and isn't quite as melodic on lp5 and ep7 and goes even further away from the two eps on the newer records. "lp5" has some really intense percussive parts like the track Acroyear.

Before Tri Repetae, their sound is more smoothe and artic on "Amber" and "Incunabula". "Amber" may be my favorite.

I don't have their last lp and the ep before that, so I can't say about anything after Confield. Other than Confield and the Basscadet ep, I have liked everything else.

Q: What do you think the future of algorithmic programming is in your music?
Ae: 0-100% variable.

Ok, not tommy cooper but a serious question given a flippant, but intelligent answer.

Who cares if they're taking the piss? They're not mind.

Squarepusher's problem is quantity over quality. He hasn't made an all round decent proper album sine Hard Normal Daddy almost 9 years ago. Music Is Rotted One Note was pretty good since then, admittedly - but really what has he given us? It seems that every release since has had one classic fucking kicking tune - Red Hot Car, Do You Know Squarepusher, Iambic 5 Poetry, Tomorrow World, Underwatertorch etc. Sadly, the rest of the tracks are average to low par. What we've had is a multitude of singles and mini-albums featuring dodgy jazz-noodlings, awkward and dated drill'n'bass mongalongs and painful soundscapes. I'd have rather Tom had waited nine years and then released one kicking album with the aforementioned tracks - that would be worth hearing.

As for Autechre, a single listen will never satiate the listener. Their albums are complex, offbeat and hard to listen to. It took LP5 twenty listens before I came even close to getting it properly - but after that I was hooked! It's one of my favourite all time albums and there are few bad moments on it. The melodies are there - they just take a bit of a retuning of the ear. Now tracks like Vose-In, Arch Carrier, Rae are as easy to listen to for me as a pop song.
When Confield came out, I must admit I was thrown - I still dislike that album and it does make one wonder what they were up to. Draft7.30 is basically the same idea as Confield but executed a lot better.
When I first heard LP5 I thought Autechre were taking the piss. Tracks like Fold4,Wrap5 just made me think "what a bunch of geeks - 'ooh look what we can do with our equipment - it's speeding up and slowing down' etc". I disliked it for the same reason I dislike these virtuoso guitarists who are masters of their instrument but can't write a decent tune for their life. It's only when viewed in context that you truly see where Autechre are at - as Michael says, they're not likely to be IDM geeks (much). Incunabula is bleep techno to the core with elements of Ambient and a smidge of hiphop - it still sounds good today. Listening to Draft7.30 as if it's a breaks or hiphop album is a good start. Even the opening few seconds sounds like a needle being put into a groove of a fucked up turntable.

Well, if all they are is stoners who play with boxes, then IDM fans are stupider or more deluded than I thought.

― dave q, Thursday, 13 September 2001 01:00 (9 years ago)

I just listened to the first Autechre album, and it's so good! Kitty in a sink good.

http://www.last.fm/music/Autechre/+tracks

I was just attempting to give their whole discography another try and I wondered if I was the only one who just doesn't enjoy their stuff any more after about 6 albums. Seems like most people already gave up after two. I still buy the new releases because I guess I'm a completist. :-/

Six albums is a lot in one sitting.

maybe skip the first 3 or 4 get to the proper stuff

^

maybe skip the first 3 or 4 get to the proper stuff

― bellendery hooks (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 12 September 2015 11:55 (5 minutes ago)

this is an entirely incorrect surmise that i subscribed to until leee's atypically worthwhile autechre poll

it was more intended as a jab at basic ae bitches than a summation of my own listening habits tbh

ok, well listen to '444', 'eutow' and othersuch but don't give up until you're through untilted

well quite but it also inevitably supports a sort of rockist complexity queen teleology that misrepresents them

there are consistencies from their earliest bleep/breaks stuff through to confield/draft/etc and it's probably safe to assume it was software development that enabled them rather than any sort of argued refutation of their earlier, simpler work

that's true, and they have a stated fondness for even their very earliest material

a sort of rockist complexity queen teleology that misrepresents them

otm and suitably chastened

lately more than ever i've been listening to them as B-Boys ++

wdn't think of it as a refutation tho so much as wandering along the paths that intrigued them

this foto

http://i.imgur.com/6VQpN9u.jpg

not listened to them much in a while but they're really good winter listening so i foresee a return to castle warp in the coming months

haha sean is such a mensch

wdn't think of it as a refutation tho so much as wandering along the paths that intrigued them

― bellendery hooks (Noodle Vague), Saturday, 12 September 2015 12:17 (1 minute ago)

sure

clearly it's irritating that simpletons raise up the early work in order to damn the latter* but that is usually a general and basic aesthetic programme speciously applied, so has little to do with the work itself and should be discarded whole rather than negatively incorporated into one's own argument

for this case and in a thousand others, recent discovery of exactly the same pattern with respect to bartok's early music

* nb not suggesting stanm is doing this

ironically i was noticed this many years ago in re: writing on James Joyce but failed to reconsider the lesson here

nakh, no, simpleton may be the right word - at some point my simple brain stopped being able to follow where they were going with this (I'm guessing it's the moment the pretty patterns in their software became more important than actual melodies and rhythms - and this interpretation is probably another sign my brain is too simple for this) :-)

They (or Sean Booth) have certainly disparaged the earlier stuff to a degree in interviews. Maybe they've grown out of doing that.

I do think these days that post-LP5 stuff is "better", but that's not really to do with "complexity".

Anyway EXAI is enjoyable and generous, maybe start there and work back.

Okay, I haven't given up completely, hence the attempts to give it a go every now and then

I remember liking their early stuff, which was more in line with WARP style "home listening techno", like The Black Dog or Speedy J, thoughtfully crafted but still lovely... Then I ignored them for a few years, until i Impulse bought "EP7" or whatever it's called, the one with all thin, abstract lines on the cover, and the music was so abstract too, devoid of any emotion, that I just didn't get it. It felt more like a display of their music programming skills than any meaningful form of self-expression. None of the stuff I've heard since have confirmed me to change that opinion, though admittedly I've no idea what they've been doing in the recent years?

A man looking at some pictures in a famous art gallery commented to a friend: "I don't think much of these pictures." "Excuse me, Sir," said an attendant who overheard him, "the pictures are not on trial."

I will be seeing them on their u.s. tour stop in denver, gonna be chronik!!!

tick.jpg, tick.jpg xp

i will be having so many drug fueled synesthetic experiences to their dope beatscapes

It's weird, Draft 7.30 is often gorgeous and funky and Untilted is full of odd bangers and rhythmic fun. They may not have sounded that way at the time but try again. It is true though that the mode of engagement required for maximum appreciation could be a little autistic so if you're a hopeless extrovert, lazy or not willing to meet it part way it might never click.

Still don't like Gantz Graf, though.

the not uncommon condemnation of the elder joyce compared to the putative purity/clarity/etc of his earlier work persuaded me to go straight to ulysses as a teenager, so i've still not read 'the dead', though i may well get drunk and maudlin enough over the weekend to do so

do

was thinking of critique in the opposite direction too, tho of course what you described is more common. but i specifically remember being illuminated by a piece that argued that to read Dubliners and Portrait as exemplars of comparative "simplicity" or "clarity" was to overlook their affinities with the rest of JJ's published work and his...deconstruction, i guess, tho i want to word this differently...of form/content binaries

he is perhaps the writer whose career has most been written as a Whig History, and it's as misplaced there as you point out with Ae

that i can quite imagine to be the case, again it's the mistaking of either relative formal simplicity or the presence of certain juvenile characteristics in the early work as being indicative of some essential simplemindedness (see plenty of high modernist writing on the pre-1909 schoenberg)

with pop esp [rock] music it's more common to find the widely-held belief that the first [album] contain the vital essence of [band] which is thereafter etiolated by an inexorable radioactive decay

this in topsy turvy form is the narrative sometimes found in the wire/quietus/etc: that as young turks slough off their juvenile whimsy and develop into the lived-in, tobacco stained avant-furniture of late middle age, the more their essential and venerable perversity is revealed (spoken as a fan of all stations on the cross of scott walker)

Was gonna bring up walker as example of both these tendencies (privileging of the "difficult" late work, leading to kneejerk dismissal of same from people who insist the early funny stuff is where it's really at, leading to &c)

hopefully somewhere out there in deep space/deep essex borders, squarepusher is still taking the twatting piss btw

yus

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.music.idm/32269

nice, 2005 makes him a bit of a prodigy for that scene
looking at his twitter shows an evolution from microhouse fandom to another, more essential form of bacchanalian twuntery namely dope low production wines and craft beer

http://i.imgur.com/Vm5OYma.png

1. Have you ever woken up at 5 in the afternoon to the sound of the run-out groove of a Blake Baxter record that’s been on for 8 hours?
2. Is your tinnitus set to 122 bpm?
3. Has house music ever affected your ability to do your job?
4. Is house music your job?
5. Have you ever looked at a tree and thought you could see it breathe?
6. Do you wish you’d been 18 in 1988?
7. Were you 18 in 1988?
8. Have you ever used Night Nurse recreationally?
9. Do you regularly use house music to block out disturbing thoughts in your life?
10. Do you think some dogs are sexy?

If the answer to 5 or more of these questions was “Yes”, then you’ll love TOTHEBONE

,i've long got the impression that people like autechre shouldn't be judged on their fans,or

Autechre of course make religious music

but if they are taking the piss, are they funny/amusing/endearing? ... autechre, by contrast, are pious, austere and a bit of humour actually wouldn't go amiss.

out, heretic!