How did you get into Ae?

[Schlitze]

Greetings, just listening to these sets is making me recall my origins with these masters of sound. My first experience with these Ae guys was back in 2000 and my mates brothers vinyl collection, I used to steal 'em and copy to TDK C90 and then slip em back before he noticed. It was LP5, white case and hardly any text. There was something weird about it, there was no credits or anything on the vinyl case, just music. The rest is history.

I met my mates brother recently when I was back in my home town and told him how he was the one who set me off on Ae obsession. He's now into indie rock and being a good husband. I was like ''Dawg, you've gone lame, give me your record collection!!!''

Give your Ae origins, even though 90% are through AFX.

[Amen Lare]

It'll sound crazy, but one night i saw a moth who spoke with me (with a creepy accent similar to Bane from Dark Knight). He said he's actually a prince and got a royal education, which explained his polyglot ability. So we talked for a while mostly de-mythologizing moths, i asked for his name and he said human friends just call him Mothy. We shared our views on music among other things, he thoroughly recommended Ae "all insects are into this shit". I had no chance to thank him.

[hello spiral]

even though 90% are through AFX.

 

Yeah. I'd been into aphex since 97/98 (come to daddy being played on mtv innit) and then Squarepusher a few years later. Being the music sperge I am I'd exhausted both of their discogs as well as being into lots of other stuff at the time (18-22 yr old me was hugely into postrock and mathrock. Mogwai, GYBE, Shellac etc)

 

I'd always had a mental post-it note in the back of my brain to check out the third prong of what I then thought of as the 'warp holy trinity' and I'd heard random tracks, mainly Kalpol Introl on the Pi OST, but I hadn't yet got around to it.

 

Then in 2003 I moved from London to Somerset in my first post-adolescent attempt at moving out of the 'rent's house. Lived that year in a little place called Burnham-on-Sea. They had a skate shop I hung out in a lot, and the next road over a teeny tiny record shop run by a middle aged couple. They mostly had metal and other random stuff kids had ordered in. They also made it clear they would be happy to order in anything I wanted.

I ordered squarepusher's music is rotted, as it was one of the only SP things I hadn't heard at that point, and Sunn O)))'s Flight of the Behemoth.

As I was browsing all the metal I chanced upon Draft 7.30. Looking back now, I wonder if someone ordered it in, heard the previews and went "nah bruv".

 

I grabbed it.

 

That was a true "where the fuck have you been all my life" moment. Not actually upon first listen. But by the time Untilted was getting ready to drop I already had the full back catalogue and was hooked through the ballbag.

 

Still just as obsessed today.

[Schlitze]

^

I've read over it a couple of times. Confirmed Ae Fanatic. Spiral i love your resilliance.

 

Spelling

[NI64]

I can pretty accurately trace my braindance roots if I think about it. It all began with the game Rez for PS2. When I was younger it was the coolest shit in the world. Still is, honestly! I was obsessed with it and downloaded the soundtrack, which got me onto Ken Ishii, who had my favorite track in the game. I got a couple of his other albums and then dug through some related recommendations and got into Orbital, Underworld, some psytrancey things like Infected Mushroom & Hallucinogen (which spawned my other true musical love, Shpongle, but that's another story).

 

Eventually I got my hands on a CD of Squarepusher's Hard Normal Daddy from a local record shop, and it was a massive eye-opening experience. I couldn't explain how much I loved the music, it was so fucking insane and noisy and complex and perfect and beautiful. I listened to that album countless times. Later I moved my way through his catalog until I got to Go Plastic and my brain just exploded. I didn't even know music like that existed! So at that point I was ravenous for more and started looking through other Warp artists.

 

I think my first experience with Autechre was the Gantz Graf video on that Warp music video DVD, got it off Netflix (back before streaming was even an option on there). Got Draft and Confield after that, I remember it still took a while before I was actually a full-on Autechre fan. Just so much to wrap your head around on those records. Of course I think they're flawless now. :) Was also around that time I joined WATMM and went crazy for all this music! Fast forward to 2015 and there's never been a better time to be a fan. :) Life is good

[colunga]

Through Nothing Records. I purchased squarepushers 'Music is Rotted One Note" first and hated it lol. sold it. then went on the hunt for Autechre. got tri repetae and wasnt really into it. Moved on to BOC and fell for Geogaddi in 2002. Then got Confield off ebay i think. THAT one blew my mind. then I was way into ae and Gantz came out a few months later.

[hoggy]

I think I got Gantz Graf first because it was next to Aphex at Spinadisc and I got Aphex after hearing it at the Cookie Club

[Alcofribas]

i went into a deep meditation. i was naked, alone, afraid. cold. i knew i had to change my life. i was in a cave. a threadbare cloth draped uselessly over my genital components and asshole. i sat upon a cold stone slab. for weeks i ate nothing but dew off weeds and insect carcasses. my mantra was repeated duly, religiously, and without end. a beard grew upon my face until it dangled over my nipples in such a way that i knew i was being tested against the arousal. i resisted. animals eventually came into the cave and went about their business as though i were one of them. a dove perched upon my shoulder and cooed into my right ear. a grizzly bear growled furiously into my left (fucking cunt, chill out bro). one morning, as the fierce golden rays of dawn pierced through the silhouettes of the tree tops and cut into my cave like laser beams i was like "wtf man" and walked out of the cave, got into my car, and drove to best buy where i purchased the latest release by nothing records: the 'chre brothers "ep #7." i knew at once that this was some cheap american bullshit. "where is the frosted jewel case?" i asked myself at once. upon returning home and doing what i always did with new discs, viz, immediately skip backwards, i said aloud to no one "where is the fucking hidden track?" but nevertheless i was hooked. and to this day i still listen to sean and robert's autechre.

[doublename]

A computer algorithm recommended them to me about 9 years ago.

[frankbooth]

Kalpol introl on Pi soundtrack met this young impressionable mind. Ripped lp5 off napster and obsessed. Then Confield was first ae purchased and it's all been downhill since.

[ambermonk]

Saw the music vid for Second Bad Vilbel back in April or May of 1997 on an MTV program called AMP. Someone on here thought the fact that I discovered them on MTV is blasphemy, but I don't have jack shit to apologize for. Had to find out about them somehow.

[Guest bitroast]

That was a true "where the fuck have you been all my life" moment.

 

 

this one took a while for ae.

first listen of drukqs ~2004 after only hearing 26 mixes for cash (( with ~0 reference of who this aphex twins guy was other than he kept appearing in articles about radiohead and i looooved radiohead)) was straight up "where the fuck have you been all my life" moment.

 

then got into boards of canada (burnt copies of MHTRTC and Geogaddi with no track titles) and squarepusher (burnt copy of go plastic with no track titles and slight pause before wish you could talk). autechre was totally dat 4th prong.

 

only thing is.. autechre are kind of really hard to get into. at least, i found them really hard. went back and forth between untilted and chiastic slide (was recommended as good starting point in aphextwin.nu soulseek chatroom lol). found both of them way too cold and impossible to wrap head around.

 

was tri repetae++ 2cd that finally started having a bit of a lasting impression on me.

 

even today, if i was to recommend starting points for getting into autechre to a newcomer, i'd be at a bit of a loss. i guess tri repetae++ 2cd. can't go wrong with tri repetae++ 2cd :)

maybe oversteps.

[goDel]

In the late eighties/ early nineties there was a friend of a friend who got these mixtapes of Belgian New Beat, which was a thing back then. These tapes got me interested in the music which was played in club at the time. At that point that was pretty underground. And even the commercial tunes were alright. Thinking about Inner citys Good life, btw.

But the combination of these mixtapes and selected shows on the radio got me into buying records (12 inches mostly). And i guess i got introduced through a label like R&S to stuff like aphex and detroit techno. It was when stuff got really commercialised, that i went into the opposite direction, i guess. At first the more techno side of the spectrum. But later also the more melodic side.

Without the internet, it was mostly reading reviews in specialised magazines (on paper!) and a couple of radioshows which brought any information. I think it was when reading reviews of tri repetae that sparked my interest. The reviewer talked about this complex music which would bring tears to the eyes of some alien on a distant planet, or something. Obviously, being in my alien teens and completely against the commercial nonsense which was spreading like fire amongst my peers ( think 2unlimited), I just had to find out what this counter culture of cerebral beauty was about. So about that time the Warp thing got on my radar. And it was in 97 i guess, when i actually jumped on the ae band wagon with chiastic slide.

The first time i heard it, it was a collection of wtf moments. For me and the cat, btw. Especially the second track which was more noisy than anything i had heard until that point. I remember the cat running away scared when the second track starts with these high pitched noises. And i was probably thinking why on earth anyone would put that on a record. It took me a couple of listens to understand and appreciate the mixture of these noises which would translate into some kind of rhythms and melodies. The first track was pretty rewarding very quickly. And the other tracks were pretty rewarding as well, but took more time. So the ae bug stuck, and from then on, any new ae album was guaranteed to introduce a new set of wtf moments.

[Adieu]

Would always hear my brother playing Incunabula in his room when I walked by so I asked what it was.

[Lewps]

How did you hear about AE?

friend/ family member ☐
newspaper classifieds ☐
promotional website ☐
neighbourhood shaman ☑

[Stock]

I first stumbled upon Squarepusher's Just A Souvenir by reading a french electronic music magazine, then everything went quick : I bought another SP album, saw that Warp celebrated their 20th birthday soon afterwards and decided to buy the Warp20 (Chosen) comp as a starting point for this new music I was discovering.

 

First disc had Gantz Graf which I just did not understood at that time, second disc had Drane which was a bit more accessible yet still kind of strange.

 

Then there was that YouTube channel named bstdrmusic or whatever (the one with the orange background and the fuckton of music) and I listened to Bike and Eggshell - I was like "what ? that's the same band ?".

 

So I decided to buy Incunabula, Amber and Quaristice for christmas. Fell in love with the 3 albums, discovered the rest of the discography etc etc :)

[triachus]

Would always hear my brother playing Incunabula in his room when I walked by so I asked what it was.

How long did it take before you realized there's no album called "Dude Get Lost I'm Jerking It"

[maxd98]

I'm quite young, and so I only first developed independent musical tastes around 2012. It started with Linkin Park, Coldplay, and Nickelback (kill me). I then discovered the wonders of prog metal in early 2013. I was a huge Dream Theater fan for about a year, and then I found modern classical music thanks to Ólafur Arnalds in early 2014. Spent half of 2014 obsessing over Ólafur Arnalds.

 

Over that summer I was recommended Bonobo, and so I decided to give Spotify a try in August 2014. With my classical music tastes, spotify recommended me some Post-Rock, which is how I got into that genre (still love Explosions in the Sky, GYBE, MONO, etc). I then checked out Bonobo. That downtempo sound made Spotify recommend me Boards of Canada (specifically the song Reach for the Dead). For some reason, this song intrigued me. It seemed mysterious, cold, unknown.

 

And so I did something I rarely did with Spotify. I listened to their debut album based on Reach for the Dead alone. What a fucking journey that was. I was hooked.

 

I digested BoC slowly, beginning with MHTRTC, followed by Tomorrow's Harvest. Then Campfire. But Geogaddi scared me. I was actually afraid of it. I attempted to and 5 seconds after Ready Lets Go started I shut it off. I eventually got over that, and became the biggest Boccer in Malaysia.

 

2 months later I was hungry for more. So I delved back into Spotify and Aphex Twin popped up. Heliosphan, to be exact. Bought SAW 85-92 immediately, but it took a little while for it to fully dawn on me how great it was. Aphex Twin was a slow burner for me. I shied away from his "heavy" tracks, which means I stayed clear of Drukqs for a long time. Eventually I devoured the Aphex Twin discography (then I realised that he has like a dozen other names he releases music under, and then the soundcloud dump happened. I'm still trying to digest it all).

 

(side note: Squarepusher came up once or twice. Too jazzy for me, though I appreciate Damogen Furies and Feed me Weird Things).

 

So this leaves me to May 2015. The name Autechre had popped up a few times when I read some articles about Warp Records. I noticed someone writing that Chiastic Slide was "essential listening." So based on that guy's praise of the album, I gave it a go. Keep in mind I was into the easy-listening Aphex stuff at that time.

 

My god, listening to Chiastic Slide for the first time was almost painful. It was a hard album to start Autechre with. But I liked it. I was scared to listen to the rest of the discography, though. Yet I kept hearing more and more praise for Autechre. So I did the same thing I did with Boards of Canada. I listened to Incunabula. That album became my favourite album during June 2015.

 

The rest of the summer was spent slowly dipping my toes into the lush-pool that is the Autechre discography. At first I preferred 90s ae, falling in love with Tri Rep, then Amber, then LP5, and then I fell in love with Draft and Exai. Then Oversteps, Quaristice and Confield still have not clicked with me yet. Untilted is well on it's way to my top 3.

 

I'm still working on listening to every Autechre LP and EP without being repelled by the abstraction. I'm working on L-Event right now, and that has been my biggest challenge with Autechre so far. But I'm conquering it.

 

A couple months ago, I got my first turntable. I'm slowly amassing the vinyl versions of my favourite albums that I have discovered over the past year.

 

And that is basically the story of my musical journey, leading up to Autechre.

[jaderpansen]

Rather boring story: By listening to LP5 on CD in a store when it was new (summer vacation 98). Can't even remember why excatly, i think the custom package design caught my attention and i vaguely remembered seeing some videos before (hi ambermonk) plus i was just getting into Warp stuff in general around that time. It's one of my favourite albums of theirs to this day and i've been following them ever since, tho BBF status was achieved later with Draft.

[Guest bitroast]

wish i heard LP5 early on. always preferred EP7 to it and i think hearing EP7 first may have something to do with that.

[kausto]

I heard LP5 first. It was summer '98 and i was riding on a bus to the White Sea.

Edited November 14, 2015 by telefunken

[auxien]

I had some excerpts of tracks downloaded (from Warp, I think) for months; they were like a minute and a half each (still probably took over an hour to download each back then) and I would just loop them all the time. Shit was so fresh to my ears. The excerpts were Nil and Montreal.

 

Then I managed to find Tri Repetae ++ in a CD shop not too long after it's release and there's been no turning back since.

 

sent using magic space waves

[KovalainenFanBoy]

I discovered Aphex via the internet, which inevitably led to checking out Autechre at age... 14 or so I guess. Took me many years to actually enjoy it and become a full time member of the ae kult though

[zkom]

I saw the Basscadet video 1996-ish, I guess? But didn't really become a fan until I warezed Incunabula and Amber in the fall of 1999.

[Adamovich]

Gantz graf video on German TV channel Viva, 2002ish