Autechre - PLUS 20.11.20

[eclipsis]

1 hour ago, ignatius said:

it's not surface noise.  i'm well acquainted with that. this is possibly artifacts in the pressing. maybe not. could've just been wicked static electricity.  but the []pusher record played perfectly.  

years ago i got some test pressings back and they were covered with the same type of noise. we didn't accept them and cancelled the order and got refunded. then found someone else to press the vinyl which was 100% right move.  i spoke w/a few people about this and turns out when lathes get old the cutting needle introduces lot's of artifacts like this.  you ever here DC voltage pop into a speaker? it's like a smaller version of that. 

idk what your issue sounds like but my copy of SIGN (not PLUS, that one is ok) sounded terrible af. no scratches on any of the discs and no visible dust particles. i did a quite thorough cleaning in the antistat liquid and it sounded superb after.

[ignatius]

4 minutes ago, eclipsis said:

idk what your issue sounds like but my copy of SIGN (not PLUS, that one is ok) sounded terrible af. no scratches on any of the discs and no visible dust particles. i did a quite thorough cleaning in the antistat liquid and it sounded superb after.

that's kind of my guess is that it's static. or my hope anyways. it was the first listen of the vinyl. when removing the vinyl from the sleeve the sleeve wanted to stick to the vinyl. i need some humidity in this motherfucker! 

i'll give it a wipe or something and listen again. then hopefully post back here that i over reacted and everything is fine. 

[eclipsis]

1 hour ago, ignatius said:

i'll give it a wipe or something and listen again. then hopefully post back here that i over reacted and everything is fine. 

fingers crossed!

[Roo]

FYI Auzzies, got my PLUS CD yesterday.

I'm saving that and a few other used ebay CDs in mail for bday/xmas though. Too close to silly season to unwrap lol. Even from mine truly.

[Limo]

Postman just delivered my vinyl copy. Only took PostNL two and a half weeks. Impressive, of course, as distances in the Netherlands tend to be huge and infrastructure is sketchy at best. Once packages arrive at Rotterdam port or Schiphol airport (which is usually very quick), they are then loaded on caravans of anemic goats that slowly meander through the soggy marshlands in the general direction of where it is the packages need to go.

[Soloman Tump]

Urgh,... I really cannot decide whether I like SIGN and PLUS, or not.... they don't set well with me yet.

I find it hard to place them in the catalogue, they feel like bits of previous albums mashed together.  I have not felt that from previous autechre albums before.

Sorry

[Hugh Mughnus]

7 minutes ago, Soloman Tump said:

Urgh,... I really cannot decide whether I like SIGN and PLUS, or not.... they don't set well with me yet.

I find it hard to place them in the catalogue, they feel like bits of previous albums mashed together.  I have not felt that from previous autechre albums before.

Sorry

I'm starting to feel this way now too after repeat listens and the honeymoon phase kinda wore off.

Edited December 5, 2020 by Hugh Mughnus

[toaoaoad]

They went in opposite directions for me. I wasn't really feeling SIGN when it came out so I didn't listen to it much in those first few weeks, opting to only do so when I could give it attention and see what there was to like about it. PLUS came out and I "caned it", probably listening to it four or five times straight on the first day alone. The novelty kinda wore off and it became more apparent that it had that "collection of outtakes" feel to it and that some tracks felt somewhat underdeveloped. In the meantime SIGN has really grown on me, and taking the time to pay attention has revealed that there is a lot of detail in it (duh it's Autechre). PLUS still reveals new things too but as many others have said it just doesn't seem to hold together as An Album as well as SIGN, which feels much more like a cohesive statement with more thought put into the pacing of the track sequence. 

Neither of them brought in anything hugely groundbreaking but those synth pads are definitely new. And besides, if they've spent years and years building a system why would they abandon it for something entirely brand new? I kinda enjoy finding those bits and pieces that echo earlier tracks.

In conclusion, they're both Autechre albums so it goes without saying that it's great music either way and very rewarding of attentive listening. In the other thread I had to vote for both equally.

Edited December 5, 2020 by toaoaoad

[misuta Go]

just because there is a repeated notion that sign and plus will reveal themselves over time and we‘ll eventually “get it”…

some of us have listened extensively to it, hundreds of time and really “get it”, it’s just that we don’t like it. it happens you know.
i still dislike oversteps (except for os veix 3) after all these years. that doesn’t mean anything bad about Ae, au contraire.
i am more than happy that they still do whatever the fuck they feel like, whether i like it or not, who cares.

and after oversteps came exai, which blew my fucking mind, so i’m not worried about anything and shit.
plus the oversteps tour was amazing, top-5 Ae set ever.

i still have a selection of 9 tracks from sign/plus that sound to me like NTS Session 5 and i enjoy but that's about it...

[dcom]

Although Autechre has been one of my favourite artists for almost 30 years, it hasn't been without bouts of self-doubt and cognitive dissonace. At times listening to the most challenging releases and/or tracks have brought on a crisis of musical identity - do I really like music like this? Why am I listening to something that irritates me? Am I into this only because it's something I've been into for so long that I'm tolerating it because it would be more painful to let go of something that has been an indelible part of my musical environment? Do I listen to things like this because it disturbs others and makes them think I'm weird?

Listening to something repeatedly will habituate the listener to whatever they're listening to - it doesn't mean that they actually like it, but that they've adapted their mindset to tolerate and discard the dissonance brought on by the listening.  It's a behavioristic jedi mindtrick, sometimes bordering on learned helplessness - that's how pop hits are made, by repetitive exposure creating the feeling that because you've heard something so many times it must be good. I know this is a pessimistic view, but it is a part of the adage "you just have to work on it" by giving it more listens. There's also peer/group pressure, we WATMMers feed on each others' opinions and there's not a lot of explicit dissent - especially with canonised artists' releases - so it's not always easy to say that I don't like something that a most of us seem to like a lot. Doling out facepalm reactions on dissent is a fine way of making sure that people are wary of it.

I've always overcome the internal issues I've had with the music I seem to like - Autechre is still my favourite - but I've also toned down my intense interest towards some of the artists in the canon (RDJ), and I'm fine with that. I listen to a myriad of music all the time, I don't spend my days with Autechre on repeat because I want (or need) to come here and say that yeah, I get it why people say you have to give it some more listens to get it.

Edited December 7, 2020 by dcom

[mushroom]

i fuckin love ii.pre esc

[Lexicon]

On 12/5/2020 at 4:24 PM, Soloman Tump said:

Urgh,... I really cannot decide whether I like SIGN and PLUS, or not.... they don't set well with me yet.

I find it hard to place them in the catalogue, they feel like bits of previous albums mashed together.  I have not felt that from previous autechre albums before.

Sorry

If suffering these symptoms, seek help immediately. 
 

[zkom]

On 12/6/2020 at 2:11 PM, dcom said:

Listening to something repeatedly will habituate the listener to whatever they're listening to - it doesn't mean that they actually like it, but that they've adapted their mindset to tolerate and discard the dissonance brought on by the listening. 

Doesn't really work with annoying pop music for me. Repeated listens will make me just hate it more. If I had to listen to Crazy Frog raping the Axel F for 10.000 times it wouldn't suddenly "click" but more likely I would snap and there would be some kind of murder-suicide thing happening. And with catchy songs it's more like the opposite. If something is really catchy I like it initially but it will wear out really fast.

Also the way Autechre clicks with me is not by repeatedly listening to it, but it's more like leaving the whole thing alone for a longer period, like a year, and then when coming back I suddenly "understand" it. I can't really force it by just repeated listening.

Well, that's just my personal experience anyway. I just like Autechre. Why does something like Untilted sound so fucking good to me? IDK, it just does. Generally also I've noticed that analyzing my tastes endlessly doesn't really make me enjoy something more, it's more the complete opposite.

[Draft78]

...in my case the tracks click when I stop listening to them analytically. It's not the amount of listening, but the way of listening. It happened to me recently with ecol4: with careful listening I was led to divide the beats from the melody, and so I had a 4/4 with some tricks, and reverse feedback over all... nothing special after all. Then, a few days ago, I was working on a graphic, and Plus did its job ... I was focused on a defect in the paper, and I certainly didn't pay attention to ecol4, and that's how it clicked: I felt it as a whole, spontaneous, and it was another thing. Analytical listening turns out to be interesting only after the first step: each previous attempt is just a boredom exercise. This is a phenomenon that happens to me only (or almost) with Ae, and I don't think it happens because I forced myself to like them, but rather, it is the reason why I like them with such a lasting effect. Or am I trapped in a labyrinth of mirrors between will and pleasure and it is no longer possible for me to discern what is the effect and what is the cause?

[dingformung]

Dunno, to me it's just fascinating, hypnotising sounds arranged in the most interesting ways, hard to resist. I suck it in like it's breast milk.

[Alcofribas]

On 12/6/2020 at 6:11 AM, dcom said:

Although Autechre has been one of my favourite artists for almost 30 years, it hasn't been without bouts of self-doubt and cognitive dissonace. At times listening to the most challenging releases and/or tracks have brought on a crisis of musical identity - do I really like music like this? Why am I listening to something that irritates me? Am I into this only because it's something I've been into for so long that I'm tolerating it because it would be more painful to let go of something that has been an indelible part of my musical environment? Do I listen to things like this because it disturbs others and makes them think I'm weird?

Listening to something repeatedly will habituate the listener to whatever they're listening to - it doesn't mean that they actually like it, but that they've adapted their mindset to tolerate and discard the dissonance brought on by the listening.  It's a behavioristic jedi mindtrick, sometimes bordering on learned helplessness - that's how pop hits are made, by repetitive exposure creating the feeling that because you've heard something so many times it must be good. I know this is a pessimistic view, but it is a part of the adage "you just have to work on it" by giving it more listens. There's also peer/group pressure, we WATMMers feed on each others' opinions and there's not a lot of explicit dissent - especially with canonised artists' releases - so it's not always easy to say that I don't like something that a most of us seem to like a lot. Doling out facepalm reactions on dissent is a fine way of making sure that people are wary of it.

I've always overcome the internal issues I've had with the music I seem to like - Autechre is still my favourite - but I've also toned down my intense interest towards some of the artists in the canon (RDJ), and I'm fine with that. I listen to a myriad of music all the time, I don't spend my days with Autechre on repeat because I want (or need) to come here and say that yeah, I get it why people say you have to give it some more listens to get it.

this is a very interesting post and i identify with what you're saying. when i was younger i was definitely more impressed by the "fucked upness" of certain artists, whereas this quality does not suffice for me these days and is often something i perceive as a drawback. if something is more simple or understated i'm more likely to check it out. recent albums i've been obsessed with are barker's "utility,"  jessica pratt's "quiet signs," or the vast array of chihei hatekayama records. i see this kind of stuff as more emotionally rich and less wow check out this wild thing i can do. on the other hand, i haven't enjoyed a squarepusher record in many years - i simply don't find myself in the mood for any of that lol.

for me autechre has remains one of the most pure examples of music that i find very challenging, that pushes me to the limits of what i understand about what i like, while remaining entirely convincing on a level of craft and integrity. i'm always willing to go on an ae journey and continue to give it more listens even if i'm not comfortable with it up front and i think the main reason for this is that they have remained so consistently devoted to just making really good music free of bullshit and their personal standards seem insanely high. this ends up giving the music some kind of heart, i think. lots of other avant garde music tips over too completely into extremes but i think ae always have this core "roots" element of popular music like hip hop and early electro - this kind of prevents them from dipping entirely into wankery imo. and it's also just really compelling to me that they put out records with such humility in the sense that it's just like here's the new record by autechre and we're not faced with multiple paragraphs of why this is so important, culturally significant, how it covers the well-worn electronic music tropes of the future, memory, nostalgia, how they spent a year in x-country studying topic y, etc. idk, there's just something very real about it to me. i think i have always been rewarded by going deep into autechre albums and i continue to learn new shit and be blown away by their entire catalog.

your comment about group think is one i've seen expressed recently (by fumi i think) and i'm not sure i entirely agree. not that i don't see what you're saying but it seems there are tons of people constantly complaining in the subforums about new music (or, in the case of boc, being utterly enraged that they haven't released something) so it's hard to navigate what's really happening with thoughtful dissent. at the same time i often feel it can be hard to go against the grain of a particular thread and it can be awkward to try to open up a more critical conversation in a thread where everyone is ejaculating to something. while we're on the topic i actually think the facepalm emoji is really lame and if i ever use it please ban me immediately.

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Alcofribas

[jaderpansen]

2 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

while we're on the topic i actually think the facepalm emoji is really lame and if i ever use it please ban me immediately.

one couldn't survive the "Now That Trump's President..." thread without it tho.

[Alcofribas]

4 minutes ago, jaderpansen said:

one couldn't survive the "Now That Trump's President..." thread without it tho.

i refuse to enter cursed threads of that nature

[jaderpansen]

1 minute ago, Alcofribas said:

i refuse to enter cursed threads of that nature

wise choice.

on topic: as someone else stated earlier that benefit of doubt is something you have to earn first. it's like with opinions you don't agree with: you're naturally more likely to engage with them when expressed by someone close to you. yeah this whole "hypnotize yourself into liking shit by listening to it over and over"-meme is basically bull, but of course i am inclined to give ae's stuff more than one chance since that simply has proven to be fruitful. not always, mind you, but that's ok, too, at least they consequently do whatever the fuck they want obviously giving their all, what more can you ask for from an artist.

[coax]

2 hours ago, Alcofribas said:

this is a very interesting post and i identify with what you're saying. when i was younger i was definitely more impressed by the "fucked upness" of certain artists, whereas this quality does not suffice for me these days and is often something i perceive as a drawback. if something is more simple or understated i'm more likely to check it out. recent albums i've been obsessed with are barker's "utility,"  jessica pratt's "quiet signs," or the vast array of chihei hatekayama records. i see this kind of stuff as more emotionally rich and less wow check out this wild thing i can do. on the other hand, i haven't enjoyed a squarepusher record in many years - i simply don't find myself in the mood for any of that lol.

for me autechre has remains one of the most pure examples of music that i find very challenging, that pushes me to the limits of what i understand about what i like,

 

I can relate to this as well, especially when Untilted came out as I immediately loved lcc but the rest seemed barren. However I must say I have never had any doubt about the tracks that I liked on first listen. I always had that with ae, huge standout tracks that were like enormous peaks, and then the other tracks were either neutral or downright annoying/. But the cool thing about the standout tracks as well is that they were always complex enough that they were challenging to learn and remember fully. And ae for me is about very focused listening where every second and "event" counts, and so there is a huge wealth of 'moments' to enjoy. 

I also never learned to love Untilted for its structure, not even to this day, same with NTS except a few tracks and standout moments. PLUS and SIGN were definitely a lot more immediate and I think stuff like the second half of ecol4 is amazing, plus many other tracks. 

Edit: although to add, I also have had several times not liked something and then had to come back months/years later and liked it, who knows what that is about,

 

Edited December 8, 2020 by coax

[dcom]

10 hours ago, jaderpansen said:

yeah this whole "hypnotize yourself into liking shit by listening to it over and over"-meme is basically bull [...]

It's called habituation, a psychological learning process where response (dislike, irritation) to a stimulus (music) decreases with repeated exposure (more listens); coupled with the mere-exposure effect, processing fluency, availability heuristic, and familiarity heuristic it leads to "hypnotizing yourself into liking shit by listening to it over and over". It doesn't mean that you actually like something after umpteen listens, it means that you've grown accustomed enough to it which opens a pathway to having a preference for it, because you're no longer getting an adverse reaction from the exposure; you could also call it acquired taste, generalized to apply to other things besides food. It is also expressed by the Wundt curve (that paper's title is Repeated Listening Increases the Liking for Music Regardless of Its Complexity: Implications for the Appreciation and Aesthetics of Music), which states that a pleasurable stimulus becomes more pleasurable with familiarity until reaching a ceiling and dropping off, as happens with songs on heavy radio rotation.

The previous reference to Crazy Frog is an appeal to the extreme, and as such a reductio ad absurdum - of course there are absolutely ridiculous examples that invalidate the habituation process for some, but not for everyone - there are people who actually like gimmicky music like that, and I would wager there are lots of people who have grown to like Crazy Frog because they've been exposed to it repeatedly ad nauseam. I would also think that a sizable portion of us here on WATMM might not be susceptible to habituation as such in relation to the music we're listening and discussing because we tend to very explicitly choose what we listen to (I don't listen to radio, randomized/machine-learning generated playlists, other people's mixes without track listings etc.).

Nevertheless, habituation is not a meme, it's science (although memetics is a (pseudo)science, but let's not go there now).

Edited December 9, 2020 by dcom

[jaderpansen]

1 hour ago, dcom said:

It's called habituation, a psychological learning process where response (dislike, irritation) to a stimulus (music) decreases with repeated exposure (more listens); coupled with the mere-exposure effect, processing fluency, availability heuristic, and familiarity heuristic it leads to "hypnotizing yourself into liking shit by listening to it over and over". It doesn't mean that you actually like something after umpteen listens, it means that you've grown accustomed enough to it which opens a pathway to having a preference for it, because you're no longer getting an adverse reaction from the exposure; you could also call it acquired taste, generalized to apply to other things besides food. It is also expressed by the Wundt curve (that paper's title is Repeated Listening Increases the Liking for Music Regardless of Its Complexity: Implications for the Appreciation and Aesthetics of Music), which states that a pleasurable stimulus becomes more pleasurable with familiarity until reaching a ceiling and dropping off, as happens with songs on heavy radio rotation.

The previous reference to Crazy Frog is an appeal to the extreme, and as such a reductio ad absurdum - of course there are absolutely ridiculous examples that invalidate the habituation process for some, but not for everyone - there are people who actually like gimmicky music like that, and I would wager there are lots of people who have grown to like Crazy Frog because they've been exposed to it repeatedly ad nauseam. I would also think that a sizable portion of us here on WATMM might not be susceptible to habituation as such in relation to the music we're listening and discussing because we tend to very explicitly choose what we listen to (I don't listen to radio, randomized/machine-learning generated playlists, other people's mixes without track listings etc.).

Nevertheless, habituation is not a meme, it's science (although memetics is a (pseudo)science, but let's not go there now).

Yeah. What i meant is mainly the notion of some kind of peer or internal pressure to do so, as in: ppl forcing themselves to like something, "cheating" their "genuine" tastes (which can be aquired fo sho). dunno, to me at least it doesn't feel that way.

[dcom]

1 hour ago, jaderpansen said:

Yeah. What i meant is mainly the notion of some kind of peer or internal pressure to do so, as in: ppl forcing themselves to like something, "cheating" their "genuine" tastes (which can be aquired fo sho). dunno, to me at least it doesn't feel that way.

I have a recurring innate need to try and understand music (and other things) that doesn't click easily; e.g. it is established that Miles Davis' Bitches Brew is a masterpiece, but there are parts of it that I just can't get over unless I force myself to. Having studied music for well over a decade and playing a couple of instruments myself I completely understand what kind of mastery you need to create and play a piece like that; I appreciate the skill and talent required, but I don't listen to Bitches Brew for shits and giggles - it's an intentional exercise to habituate myself to something that's acknowledged to be one of the definitive instances of the genre. I would prefer to listen to Giant Steps, which is sometimes called the most feared song in jazz due to its difficulty - but to me it's way more approachable and definitely not as intimidating as Bitches Brew (although it's a bit unfair to compare pieces with a length difference of over 100 minutes). I do this with a huge spectrum of different music, because I want to expose myself to the widest possible swath of musical expression to really understand what I like, why I like it, to be able to express the relative merits of the pieces and to express my preference of X over Y. I don't think there's an innate musical taste (you're born with), we're all brought up and live in an environment where we're exposed to certain kinds of cultural things that mold our conscious and unconscious preferences, to go beyond them and expand our preferential horizon requires explicit, concentrated effort. This might not apply to anyone else, it's how I've ruminated over these things over the years - I've always been fascinated by the whys and wherefores of personal taste.

I wouldn't discount the effects of peer pressure, WATMM caters to very specific tastes and people are intensely into some of the artists and music featured herein, and sometimes heresy and differing opinions are frowned upon. We're a community, and acceptance within a close-knit one is preferred, if not explicitly sought, so after you've been slapped with a ruler a couple of times you tend to conform or watch what you say lest you make a faux pas.

But I digress, carry on.

Edited December 9, 2020 by dcom

[dingformung]

Your dedication is fascinating. I think Bitches Brew is a masterpiece and possibly my fav by Miles. Not gonna claim I understand all the intricacies and music theoretical concepts behind it, but it's pleasant to listen to.

 

I wonder if AE listen to much jazz and if it has influenced them.

[brian trageskin]

i for one genuinely like crazy frog, fell in love with it since first exposure

i even bought the ep at a discount store, used to play it at every party when i was like 17 and although it was out of irony, i genuinely liked the tune and always will

it's catchy and it's fun, what more can you ask from a tune