A Guide to AUTECHRE

The joy of FM synthesis. I just wish I had the time, patience and talent to create the rhythms and textures that Autechre do.

Which I guess is where people get the idea that it’s all a load of self generated AI stuff.

Up to and including Quaristice.

I mean after the 8 hour album, I think they learned to break up their massive releases into music reviewer friendly chunks.

Personally I find the two albums announced so far as cut from the same inscrutable cloth, but with a few more 4 4 beats. I wouldn’t be surprised if two or three more collections come out. I mean we still have more color schemes to turn into posterized coronas*!

*(like an aurora borealis corona)

I remember when that came out! I remember being utterly confused by it as it was the first Autechre I had bought and was expecting something more like Aphex Twin or Square Pusher. I actually thought maybe my CD had a manufacturing defect for the opening track :smile:

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You’re spot on here, there is always a huge amount of projection from people when it comes to Autechre and whilst to a small extent I think that with the SIGN and PLUS they’ve touched on a some ideas they’ve previously explored, they’ve been combined in new ways and filtered through a lens of where they are now. Compare that to, for example, AC/DC who’ve made a 40-odd year career out of that one song…

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I wonder if they still do graffiti?

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Me too. Last one that felt like that for me was exai which was brilliant and a some tracks on elseq, but most of them went far too long. NTS and these new albums start to bore me a bit sadly. Probably judging to early.

Lp5 is their best album imo, Untilted comes very close, especially the first three tracks are mindblowing.
I also love all their EPs from the 90s, and lately I really started to love Incunabula, which I neglected a bit before. but it‘s beautiful.
Especially since Elseq many tracks feel exciting for me for a minute or two, then they last forever with only random changes in timbre and glitches etc without adding much to the track. Don‘t know.
I also was very excited about the idea of generative music and totally impressed by crazy random feeling glitch beats for some years, but I got a bit tired of that thing in general lately. Probably totally get back into it sometime :slightly_smiling_face:

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love their vast range of signature sounds

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I do still enjoy a lot of the most recent stuff, but I agree with this. Something happened with their sound design on Elseq and NTS; there are obviously some really great sounds in there but when I think about the experience overall, I can only imagine a bunch of super dry laser sounds and harsh tones. Like I said there are a few exceptions, but I just didn’t find myself as excited by the sound design as I was with Confield, for example, where I still can’t figure out what they used for some of the sounds (cf. the main loop of Parhelic Triangle).

I’m loving Sign and Plus so far though. Most of it seems like a different sound design style to NTS; definitely more “friendly”, but I don’t mind that.

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I think Ive hit the saturation point, re: the latest “style”.

PLUS will prob be the last Ae purchase unless there is a change.

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Parhelic Triangle still gets me. Such a fantastic loop. I feel like a lot of their work on draft 7.30 expanded on this weird loop rinsing, as well as focusing on samples in equal parts to synths. Kinda my ideal AE experience. Some of these new tracks hit pretty hard though… hope they move in a more sample heavy/hip hop mode soon. It definitely seems like they’re just tweaking things nowadays rather than making actual tracks.

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“Dusk at Cubist Castle” (1996) by the Olivia Tremor Control was a 2 CD release where you were supposed to play both at once.

The second CD was very much ambient sounds, and was a little bit shorter, so if you played both at once on repeat they would definitely go out of “phase”.

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“but can it do 4/4?” :innocent:

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You guys are way more experienced than I am, I can’t say I know Æ like you do.
But what I really love in this band, is the absolute freedom in experimenting it gives me.
This, and the inspiration to look for the weird and ugly for the sake of the timbre and knowledge you can collect in the process.

For this, my debt to Æ is eternal.

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Debt Aeterna

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I’ve kind of been the opposite… I felt the post-Exai period of Elseq, NTS and all the live stuff had a clear lineage to some extent. So, I definitely enjoyed it but had to be in the right frame of mind. Especially as the track lengths meant you weren’t just putting on for a bit while you did the dishes. SIGN and PLUS (especially SIGN) seem to have moved in a different direction again with more of an emphasis on the melodic elements again.

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I’m hearing sequence repetition. With slight variance over the last few releases.

Describes a LOT of techno acid , drone , etc etc etc.

Prob why I don’t like a lot of it :wink:

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It’s like that YouTube channel HATE.
99% of the tunes on there I don’t like, basically the same tune over and over, just with a slightly diff sound. But I’ll go thru all of it for the gems that are in there.

i dont know that channel… post a link?
if i search for hate on youtube it’ll return with 99% of youtube.

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