misc

Pretty obsessed with fLh at the moment. Both this and bqbqbq are tracks that start out all happy and jokey but then by the end you feel kinda weird and on edge.

Some of this is so great but then other bits really make me cringe. Not that into it overall but only listened once and opn often takes a little while to get into. Shame though cause that first track is so good and for me it doesn't really match that for the rest of the album. It peaks at the very start.

glos ceramic and nineFly quickly becoming some of my favourite stuff they've ever done. How the fuck do they make this stuff, i don't get it

What are you studying mate ? When you finish your study and you are employed in a capacity to utilise your knowledge and skills they will almost definitely br more stressful than study and exams depending on what it is . Relax and enjoy the Autechre Fourth year theoretical physics. I love it, but when missing new ae enters the picture...not so much. Plus 10 exams in 4 weeks is too much. But anyway, this thread ain't about me, just wanted to vent somewhere.

In the shitty position of being in the most ridiculous exam period while these are coming out. Literally can't spare the time to listen to them, and can't listen while I'm working cause I only concentrate on the music then. Been listening to nts 1 and 2 in 20 minute chunks while walking to and from the library, but that's it, it fucking sucks. Also scared I'm gonna end up associating the music with this awful time. Think I'm just gonna leave 3 and 4 until after exams, but reading some of the stuff on here, all I wanna do is listen to 3 now! At least after 10 fuckin exams I'll have 8 hours of new ae as a reward.

six of eight is so beautiful in that wonky, off-kilter way that autechre do so well. This music makes me very happy.

I think Exai was the last time they had their crazy Max patch sequencing some actual hardware. Ever since then it's been all in the box. I think that accounts for the sound difference.Might've got this completely wrong, but I'm pretty sure I remember them saying in the aaa that for exai the synthesis was completely max, but they made an effort to program it to sound analogue.

This is some tuf gonk

Incredible. Felt like so much more of a journey than session one, can't quite believe it was only two hours. Gonna be so much to explore in this one. Cheers ae!

Exactly. I'm bopping my head but I'm also scared.

Oh damn I've heard this horse snare before

Holy shit, move of ten!?

Yeah this is the beginning of ae_live remixed to oblivion

Fuckin brutal. Has just been non-stop bangers so far. Feels a lot more experimental. Truly feels like new ae. I love it.

Hearing a lot of the second half of acdwn2 in the drums of this one

Holy shit this second track. This is incredible so far.

Why do you think they stopped editing themselves? Doesn't "elseq" probably mean "edited live sequences"? I'm sure that they ARE able to go back and edit what they "jammed" live. Tho it's not really a jam as there was a long programming process beforehand. slightly cleaning up live jams does not = painstakingly crafted music, which is what we had from 1993 to ~2012. when i play a random 30-second selection of anything from exai / elseq / ae_live / nts, there's just not enough difference, the sonic 'playground' is way too similar ... i.e., as i said, they're now enslaved to whatever weird semi-AI they've written in MaxMSP, such that they literally stopped buying hardware and don't make music outside of MaxMSP now. i mean, in general, i was intrigued by elseq and i think it was an interesting idea to edit live jams and release a massive mp3 album; not a bad idea, and the tracks are pretty good. but they're literally just doing "elseq two: electric boogaloo" at this point, like, here's eight more hours of the same effing thing (obviously some differences but meh) I think it still is painstakingly crafted, maybe even more than before. Everything they do happens within parameters they set, every detail is exactly how they programmed it. Sean says: Generating the music using their custom code is actually more expressive than placing every single sound by hand I believe. Here's a link to their elseq interview in case anyone wants to read it again: https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2756 This. I don't know how their system is designed but I assume they've created a very mature set of black box abstractions which they can hook together as they please. This gives enormous flexibility and allows experimentation and orchestration at a much higher level, ironically reaching a much finer level of detail despite these finer details being abstracted away from the user. The balance between high and low level is always difficult. Play instruments by hand is kind of like programming in some shitty inflexible language because you literally only have two hands and one instrument texture. Programming sequencers is kind of like programming in C. I assume they're created something like C++ where they can reach immense abstraction but also drop down to the metaphorical assembly level (sample-level math operations) any time they please through gen~ Instead of re-writing container classes all the time in C or using weirdly implemented once you can just use very clean and well defined std::vectors for instance. Similarly in a well implemented Max/MSP framework you could create high levels of abstraction with regards to high level abstract DSP primitives I assume that if they had to they could whip together something really abstract and weird in a short amount of time whereas most electronic musician's workflows would require them to work really hard to do that. With a well designed system abstraction can be a primitive which can be manipulated in arbitrary but well defined ways whereas with typical synth programming you have to do everything, and this limits expressiveness because you have to express everything manually, whereas with abstract generative methods you can express broad abstract concepts with limited amounts of code I'm probably projecting a lot and I'm a programmer not a musician so that influences my thoughts on the matter. I wrote some rants on the matter years ago but never got around to actually implementing anything. The Max half of Max/MSP is a pretty shitty programming language imo with a lot of weird hacks and unexpected behavior, I'd love it there was a more perfectly implemented version without the weird shit because it would increase agility tremendously instead of being a headache. Ideally you can do this all in plain MSP but it requires much more processing power and you lose the nice event processing abstractions of Max. This is all really interesting and I agree completely. The thing is, with the few releases before nts1 I really got the feeling that I was listening to something that could only be made on this system they'd built. Like it really felt like what you were hearing was uniquely autechre, it just wouldn't be feasible for anyone else to make this music, and that was the product of this constant experimentation they've been doing in max. I'm just not getting that at all with nts1. It doesn't really sound like it'd need to be made in this software they've built, whatever form it takes. Which again is fine, I don't wanna criticise that cause people are liking the tunes. It just to me feels like a bit of a step back from the level at which they were working. What would be incredible, although I don't wanna get my hopes up, is if the point of these 4 sessions was to showcase the versatility of the max system they've built. So each session was a live generation of a different style. Could have this one, then a more abstract one, an ambient one, and then finally the hip hop one they've been talking about wanting to do. Honestly that'd be incredible, something for everyone.

Sad to say I'm really not feeling this one. The exai, AE_LIVE, elseq progression is probably my favourite stuff they've ever done, so I'm more than happy to hear further developments in this kind of sound, but this one just feels a bit flat. Seemed like they were moving into a more and more weird, abstract, alien sound which I absolutely love, and the onesix tour sounded even more so. Like all the sounds felt so alive with a ton of character, and everything was sequenced to sound so natural, like you were listening to the sounds of some alien world. I dunno this probably sounds dumb, I'm just struggling to put it into words. Basically this stuff just sounds like some tracks made in a computer, which is of course what it is, but it's lost that transportive element to me. Everything is just a bit straight and empty. Obviously it's not bad, it's just not the kind of thing I was hoping for after the progression of the past few years. Glad to see so many people are loving it though and will obviously keep listening in the hope that it might grow on me.

There's one called The Flop House, but only listened to a couple episodes ages ago so can't really comment on the quality.

Possibly a coincidence, but I was listening to some tod dockstader the other day and was suddenly hit with a very familiar sound. Check out 2:27 in this track, sounds uncannily similar to the synth that runs through eastre. https://dockstader.bandcamp.com/track/two-moons-first

This fuckin book. Finished it about a week ago and not been able to get it out of my head. I really wasn't sold on it for maybe about 200 pages, but then suddenly I was completely hooked. Could not stop thinking about it. I have so many questions, and I'm sure none of them really have answers, but I don't remember the last time I was this wrapped up in a world created by a book. The mystery is so delicately woven throughout the pages that it becomes so difficult to distinguish what is important and what's not. Makes it feel like even the minutest detail is somehow relevant to unlocking what's going on. Also the sense of time is done so well. It's a long book of course, but it does such a great job of making you feel like you've been in bellona for a long long time. So many great characters as well. Honestly I can't recommend this book enough. Anyone who's read it got any recommendations for similar sci-fi?

Just listening to his latest one and it's seriously brilliant. Can't believe this guy isn't getting more exposure. He keeps pumping out these epic, evolving ~10 minute tracks, and they're all top tier stuff. https://exmat.bandcamp.com/album/34 This one's still free as well btw.

Nice! Just added it to the list

I'm about 100 pages into Dhalgren after seeing a recommendation in this thread a while back. It's good! Some bits are a bit cringey but really enjoying the mystery of the whole thing.

@MIXL2 Just went back and checked: kieselguhr kid: what became of the zoviet*france / AE collaboration - any chance of hearing any of that material (if it actually exists) ? Sean Ae: ben's got the DAT every time i ask him to send it over he goes 'yeah' and then doesn't, so i haven't heard any of it since we did the gigs