87 replies to this topic

[John Ehrlichman]

no, his was just awesome, for all reasons. Those aren't the type of reviews i'm talking about, let's get serious here folks!

[baph]

There's nothing pretentious about accuracy, and if Alcofribas is anything in his reviews, he's accurate.

I tried searching for a Christgau review of Autechre for guaranteed cringeworthiness, but I'm unable to find one. I'm sorry.

[dr lopez]

oh god. clearly that pitchfork asshole was either cogsci major and this was his chance to "be cool" or he has just finished godel escher bach and wanted to fucking tell everyone that he made it ALL the way through.

[digit]

This review is from: Quaristice (Audio CD)

Yet again Autechre disappoint with their latest album, a total mess and painful for anyone looking for harmony and melodies in their music taste.

If Autechre just stuck a random beep command into a loop with random parameters, I'm sure some of the pretentious fan base would still come on here stating that 'this album is so deep', good grief.

lol @ 'random beep command'

[gmanyo]

I always remember this one about Gantz Graf from NME - http://www.nme.com/r...s/autechre/6602

Autechre records are purchased solely by bald men in expensive anoraks who would masturbate to a car alarm if it was re-mixed by a German. This impenetrable curtain of misanthropic noise - released with an accompanying three-track DVD that features a squabble of hopelessly pretentious video "interpretations" - is typical of the menopausal electro-manglers' dogged refusal to bow to convention and produce anything of interest to anyone not either a) bald or b) German. It bleeps. It skronks. It krrraaaanks. But mainly, it blows like a ruddy awful hurricane. Remember, kids; if it sounds like a festering hillock of tune-shy bum-wank, it's because it IS a festering hillock of tune-shy bum-wank. Avoid as you would a bald German.

And yes, this was the actual review - printed onto paper and circulated nationally !

whoever wrote that should be shot. by a bald German.

Ha, wow. That's pretty bad.

Some people think Gantz Graf is super insane and out there (this guy clearly), but it's relatively accessible compared to Autechre's other stuff; not because it's less complicated, but because it's more obvious what they were going for. It has zero subtlety.

[dr lopez]

it's written by a sarah dempster

well there's your problem!

[Ivan Ooze]

Fucking lol retarted review from www.soundslike.be
(sorry for my bad translation, but you get the point)

Autechre: Quaristice

How pathetic are you when you, say 16 years after your peak you still deliver every 2 years a new album that can not top it in the slightest possible way? Indicates Warp Records through his loyalty to the in their time pioneer artists Autechre not a poisoned gift by their ever anachronistic and poor ambient electronics continue to report? Autechre has long crossed the limit of cold-blooded charge to bloodless. They are now even at an end to the fatal stroke which separates sound from noise. On the wrong side unfortunately. I find this endless and annoying and i challenge you on one of the 20 (!) Tracks off pretentious. simmer depressing evidence to the contrary, to appoint. 7 seconds is sufficient to convince me. It is many years too late in to quit in beauty. Let us only in silence draw a line under it, gentlemen. With an ambient soundscape on your last album as a funeral Muzak. The volume leaves you very gradually lowered to no more hear the difference between that and the daily rush of the cosmos spinning further in the background. Amen.

[John Ehrlichman]

should we bother doing a poll, or do we already have a winner? I smell 2 3 pitchfork reviews by the same person, anymore of his to strengthen the case?

oh god. clearly that pitchfork asshole

EDIT: Yep, Pitchfork and their review of Untilted

Tortoise and Achilles takes the cake for me.

The overly expository Gantz Graf review by the same pitchfork failure is only marginally better than the Draft abomination

mcpete beat me to it but that pitchfork one is some of the most embarrassing drivel ever written anywhere about anything

Edited by Awepittance, 10 April 2012 - 08:28 PM.

[verticalhold]

where can I find Alcofribas's review?

[Candiru]

Funny how music critics can be the biggest noobs, but so many people you'd never expect actually like Autechre. Anyone who actively tries to make everyone think they are open minded and artistic are usually anything but.

[Rhombix]

where can I find Alcofribas's review?

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/52419-autechre-oversteps-warp210-the-megathread/page__st__1250__p__1231175#entry1231175

Anyway. More Amazon reviews:

Oooh, two guys doing difficult things with drummachines and keyboards; only the extremely naive buy this just because they think it'll make them look intelligent. This has nothing to do with music. I listen to virtually every kind of music (...) and artists like Autechre, Aphex Twin and Mu-Ziq made stuff I really think is good; the otherworldy feel it sometimes has can be great. But Confield is just a big joke.
Take the first track; it's absolutely unlistenable trash which sounds the same as a couple of wine glasses on top of a spinning washing machine. I bet Confield took a lot of work, programming the beats in the most difficult way possible, but Sean and Rob really wasted their time. It's as uninteresting as it is bad. Avoid it bigtime.

It's like an insane orangutang let loose with a blender in a grocery store. Sure he can make you a smoothie that reminds you of something relatively tasty from time to time, but he'll mostly make you something pretty damn awful.

I refuse to buy this cd. I have all of AE's other releases. They started out brilliant, got better and were, for a time, the leaders of electronica. Now this mess has been released and it is the ultimate in non-music. It does not take a conservative listener to hate this album. It's just noise. That would be fine if that's what AE is known for. But the makers of Amber and Tri Repetae did not make junk, so I expected more. As far as I'm concerned Autechre is gone and I will never buy another of their cd's

This album has all the appeal of a dirt sandwich. Sean Booth and Rob Brown, the duo that created ambient masterpieces such as Incunabula and Amber returned in 2001 offering their contractual obligation - Confield. The CD starts out bad and gets progressively worse. I found myself irritated by track 4 and depressed by track 7 that I had spent my money on a CD wrought with spastic, unconfined space junk. The music conjures up an image of our duo furiously creating loops and samples so firmly rooted in the future of how ambient music might sound, that they never stopped to think of how it should sound. I can't offer and explanation, only an interpretation of Confield. Booth/Brown have run out of ideas. Confield misses the mark with their latest attempt. "PS2 gains sentiency, quits day job to write music full time" PS2 - "I'm very proud of Confield, it offers a binary appeal - very one dimensional"

I think autechre are geniuses and they have done wonderfully exciting, experimental and cutting edge music. However, just because someone is a genius doesn't neccessarily mean that everything they do is genuis. Case in point: CONFIELD

Confield is just plain awful PERIOD. I think most of the fans out there are suffering from the emperor's new clothes syndrome and are afraid to say: "Hey, Sean ... hey Rob you guys really missed the mark here." Well, I'm not.

As a long time fan I find confield the only release from autechre that I cannot stomach and if I wasn't such a completist I would trash it. Harsh, annnoying, irritating and just plain awful. Essentially this is disc full of nothing. There isn't single sound throughout that is remotely interesting and this is my third review I've written for confield.

Hot on the heels of listening to 'gantz graf', their saving grace latest release, I thought perhaps I missed something and attempted to listen to confield again. It's even worse now than it was before. My parting words guys, fans and whatnot. This is a pretty bad release and if we, as fans, don't voice our opinions and adverse reactions to junk like confield, then we're just encouraging these guys to keep making more.

Fortunately 'gantz graf' is prety good.

That last one was written by "bowery boy (seattle)" on September 20, 2002. Let's see if we can find his other two reviews...

[usagi]

There's nothing pretentious about accuracy, and if Alcofribas is anything in his reviews, he's accurate.

I tried searching for a Christgau review of Autechre for guaranteed cringeworthiness, but I'm unable to find one. I'm sorry.

has has reviewed Aphex though, SAW1. it was a typical Christwank review, fuck that guy.

[danshoebridge]

When I saw this thread title, I immediately thought back to the tortoise/achilles review - the yardstick by which all future pretentious reviews should be measured.

Aside from pretentiousness, the other thing I hate in reviews are the writers explaining not only why they don't like it, but how everyone that does like it is in fact pretentious and/or self-deluding. Thank you for your insight sir, I'll throw away all my autechre albums straight away.

BTW, 'random beep command' would be a great title for a track. Unfortunately I've yet to find this mystical button on any of the equipment I own.

[futureimage]

You want pretentious?

http://thequietus.co...ul-morley-essay

What do Autechre mean ? What are they ? All of the above – it could be. Something else ? Undeniably. There is, fantastically, no end to wondering.

[Gocab]

BTW, 'random beep command' would be a great title for a track. Unfortunately I've yet to find this mystical button on any of the equipment I own.

Really? It's right next to the hasty boom alert slider.

[John Ehrlichman]

You want pretentious?

http://thequietus.co...ul-morley-essay

What do Autechre mean ? What are they ? All of the above – it could be. Something else ? Undeniably. There is, fantastically, no end to wondering.

holy... god

[Xenblake]

The amazon reviews of autechre by listeners are a treat to read, especially the american amazon.com is even better.

[danshoebridge]

It's like an insane orangutang let loose with a blender in a grocery store. Sure he can make you a smoothie that reminds you of something relatively tasty from time to time, but he'll mostly make you something pretty damn awful.

I quite like this one - I don't agree with it, but I like the image of an ape making me a smoothie.

[usagi]

this thread had some some loltastic Ae reviews

[feltcher]

Alcofribas, I have not read your review in a good long while and it has brightened my day up again already!

r ess - pretty cool. more of an intro than a song. i think "r ess" means either "res," viz resonance, or maybe RS like, i dunoo, maybe some one's initials or like "Rob Sombie" or something.


ilanders- first autechre song with electric guitar. starts off slow, like just plucking around, you know like noodling or whatever. but then a wicked ae beat comes in, really tight compressed kicked with like really fast drum rolls all over the place. also the first ae track with vocals. as far as i can tell these are the lyrics:

using energy we create this recording
if you are sound of mind
you won't mind
our sick pads and their sense of forboding

(that las line might be "sons of fur-coating?" but wtf is that??

known(1) - literally the best song. reminds me of LUDD, kinda dumb but like brilliant at the same time. sick beats/ambient stuff.


pt2ph8 - i think the title refers to peer-to-peer gaming or something (is that even a thing?). anyway, this starts off very cinematic, lush orchestral swells, dark heavily reverbed brass looming in the periphery. then it conveys perfectly the following: you're in a nightmare, but it's a cube, but it's the house you grew up in. it's so weird b/c you know your way around perfectly but it feels like you're getting to the different rooms a lot faster than it should take. so: are the hallways smaller? or are you bigger/faster? fucking does your head in the way they do this.


qplay - kinda shite

see on see - made entirely of samples of water this piece is ambient but a bunch of times a big break beat just randomly comes in, like totally un-quantized and makes me think they didn't even know it was happening or something. pretty mental, the samples of the ocean are totally manipulated beyond recognition so it basically sounds just like the bass line in "vose in."

Treale - by this time i was pretty wasted so i feel like my observations might not be as objective. by the time this track comes on the album has already been playing for 65 minutes. so, you're kinda sick of it. this track sounds really gay, like, in a gay way: there's this 909 beat with a cute little whistling moog sound over the top (think snoop dog's first record) and a vocal sample that's saying either "dicks, eat 'em" or "this is IDM." i dunno, the voice sounds kinda like my ex so i skipped this one.

os veix3 - completed wasted by this point. i tried to turn this one up b/c it's really ambient but accidentally pressed the buzzer for my doorbell thus letting my mates in. they were like, "hey, is this the new ae?" and i was like, "dude, i don't even fucking know anymore." they told me this track was mega turbo ambient and i have no reason to doubt them.

O=0 - obviously a pisstake b/c this one is just 15" of silence (cf the title, lol @ ae)

d-sho qub - this one had me loling hardcore. the title is a play on the phrase "fo-sho, cuz" which is slang for "for sure, cousin," or basically, "yeah, dude." it sounds like they're using a korg ms-20 through a boss dd6 and then sampling that with an ensoniq eps with customized parameters and then filtering this through a korg wavestation? i think i also hear cs80, ems synthi100, and some buchla oscillators in there. it starts off really fucking creepy. like, creepy as fuck. like, i left my house at this point.

st epreo - depressing tune. a remix of "maetl" although at first it sounds like a remix of "silverside." really dark pads hover over a coffin-heavy bass line (probably a roland super jupiter). the beat sounds like it's composed entirely of samples from coltrane/rashid "interstellar space," although my mate pointed out that i was so fucked by this point that i had actually put on interstellar space but forgot and thought it was still oversteps.

redfall - via email i was told this was from a scrapped soundtrack for "redwall" but who knows. anyway, this sounds A LOT like the first track on incunabula. actually, my mate said i was at this point listening to incunabula. the song is lush, ambient synth strings with nice soft attacks. they sound metallic but gentle and soothing. leads into "bike" which totally surprised me. i was like "bike? on oversteps?" and i mean like the actual song, not a remix. mental.

krYlon - mental drill n bass thingy.

Yuop - the entire album, played in reverse, sped up X100, through a ring modular and buffer override. surprisingly the best tune.

8/10

Review: - 8.5 / 10

[usagi]

it is excellent, but I believe his Ae interviews are much funnier

[azatoth]

(_._) ---> (_o_)

[thehauntingsoul]

in before thehauntingsoul

[John Ehrlichman]

*

Edited by Awepittance, 24 January 2013 - 01:43 PM.

[dr lopez]

oh god. anyone wanna congratulate him on winning our tourney?