Blir Posted November 10, 2009 Share Posted November 10, 2009 In all seriousness though if there is a comprehensive guide to electronic music genres somewhere out there (with samples!!!) then that would be a really interesting and enlightening thing for me to read. Anybody know of something like this? Too many genres and sub-genres to keep track of it all...but stupidly enough IDM has still not really been divided into sub-genres which it needs more than any other parent genre http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/music.swf Enjoy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Calx Sherbet Posted November 10, 2009 Share Posted November 10, 2009 what is leftfield Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragon Posted November 10, 2009 Share Posted November 10, 2009 OK, on the advice given to me by you guys, I have finally listened to Untilted in full. It's great to hear something fresh by Autechre, and I can't wait to spend the coming months and years slowly beginning to appreciate all the complex patterns and hidden noises going on in this album. I think I'll wait a little bit before I write a full review, since me and Untilted have a lot of catching up to do, but I would just like to say that Ipacial Section is fucking AWESOME! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dale Posted November 10, 2009 Share Posted November 10, 2009 This thread is proving to be quite popular so far among other album threads during this ae cycle - I think the general consensus is that most enjoy Untilted Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thehauntingsoul Posted November 10, 2009 Author Share Posted November 10, 2009 what is leftfield As I understand it, its pretty much just another name for IDM that isn't as gay as a 16 man circle jerk. I'm not sure where I first read about it but if you check Discogs.com alot of the Ae releases are tagged as Leftfield and alot of other IDM artists are as well. Leftfield is an unbelievably better genre name than Intelligent Dance Music or Braindance, both of which make me cringe with embarrassment whenever I use them to describe my preferred music to friends. Also Dragon: Yeah Ipacial Section is fucking tighter than a shrink-wrapped cock. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
awepittance Posted November 10, 2009 Share Posted November 10, 2009 I gotta ask what all of you think about Autechre eras at this point. I know every album is a new exploration but do you ever see things as easier to bunch together than others? I feel like Untilted and Quaristice might have more in common than, say, Untilted and Draft. I'd imagine that Untilted + Quaristice have more in common as opposed to Untilted + Draft, due to the fact that after Draft, they made a conscious decision to going back to using hardware for producing their music, lending it a more immediate air. I see it as much more a Confield + Draft + Untilted trifecta . Quaristice is the start of a new era if you will. The reason i don't entirely buy the 'Autechre went back to hardware after Draft' is because Draft is filled to the brim with Nord Lead synthesis, where as Untilted a lot of the melodic aspect of it seems like it could be anything (software or hardware) but Draft has a very distinct nordy sound to it, which i personally love. Untilted was the first album where they really focused on using the Machinedrum, and also keep in mind AE says they did most of the sequencing to their machinedrums and hardware on this album with software sequencing (not on the drummachine itself) I think the strongest evidence for Quaristice being the start of a new era is they pretty much totally got rid of any 'drum farting' as well as purposefully off kilter and triplet switch up rhythms, which was still was very prevalent on Untilted albeit more rigid and minimalist (confield, draft and untilted all share this specifc trait) & the fact that autechre says Quaristice is the first album where they are truly collaborating in real-time rather than trading sounds/unfinished tracks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
six Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 I would not say its techno in any way shape or form. I would say IDM/Leftfield/Glitch/Experimental but not techno, god no lol, are you just calling any mainstream electronic music "techno" or are you actually talking about proper techno, primarily Detroit and Berlin based from the late 80s to early 90s? If you're just generalizing I'd recommend you check out some real techno before dissing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sneaksta303 Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 The Trees was the 1st song to grab me, as it was one of the more "immediate" tracks imo, but yeah, this album is pretty epic if you're in the right head-space for it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJW Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 Up until now this is my fav Ae album. The way Lcc gets less and less uptight before finally mellowing out and letting your muscles relax after the hectic initial workout. Other stand out tracks for me are most definately Pro Radii, Iera, The Trees and Sublimit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modey Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 I would not say its techno in any way shape or form. I would say IDM/Leftfield/Glitch/Experimental but not techno, god no Also I think I figured out the reason behind Sublimit's name. For those of you who don't know much about music synthesis, a limiter or cutoff is how you create distortion, like normally a sound wave has lots of sharp peaks and if you make a cutoff or limit, you are esentially flattening the peaks at a certain level resorting in crunchy distortion. The best example of this is any standard distortion on an electric guitar, works exactly that way. Also you probably noticed that if you play music too loudly through speakers they get all distorted, this is via the same mechanism of cutting off the frequencies that go too high on the scale. I think Sublimit is named because they put a limit on the sub. If you listen carefully, instead of the bubbly slick bass sounds that Ae normally uses, we have a really overdriven, muffled and distorted bassline. My thoughts are that Sublimit = Sub(bass) Limit i don't mean to be an asshole, but: i don't think i've ever heard cutoff used in a way that has anything to do with distortion. also a limiter sounds more like a compressor than a distortion, i think you're talking about clipping. it's nothing to do with cutting off frequencies that go too high, that's called a filter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AJW Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 Everyone is getting very hung up on terms and genres with all the humbug of language pinning down and creating various expectations to what the music is gonna sound like. be gone with these lingo based premenitions! That's why I always loved the notion of Autechre music being....Autechre. Vast and encompassing enough to be a general statement defining only what IT actually is. A sweet science of itself hanging in a self creted VIP section of musics galaxy. Impenetrable to the likes of other musicians. mmmm fruit tea... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thehauntingsoul Posted November 11, 2009 Author Share Posted November 11, 2009 Holy shit so we got lots of animosity towards TheHauntingSoul in this thread today. Most of it was because of a few unsupported claims which I will now concede: In all seriousness though if there is a comprehensive guide to electronic music genres somewhere out there (with samples!!!) then that would be a really interesting and enlightening thing for me to read. Anybody know of something like this? Too many genres and sub-genres to keep track of it all...but stupidly enough IDM has still not really been divided into sub-genres which it needs more than any other parent genre http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/music.swf Enjoy. Holy shit so I just finished spending over an hour on that site. That is an incredibly informative and often entertaining little retrospective on electronic music. I feel like my head grew two sizes today. I would not say its techno in any way shape or form. I would say IDM/Leftfield/Glitch/Experimental but not techno, god no lol, are you just calling any mainstream electronic music "techno" or are you actually talking about proper techno, primarily Detroit and Berlin based from the late 80s to early 90s? If you're just generalizing I'd recommend you check out some real techno before dissing it. Yeah... before I checked out the above tutorial I was operating under the assumption that Techno was a very specific branch of Electronic Music and not that Techno is one of the pioneer descendant genres of EDM. After looking through the list I would have to say that Mainly I just fucking hate hardcore music, particularly happy hardcore and gabber, as well as pretty much ALL trance that isn't Psy/Goa, and generally speaking if the music is older than about 15-20 years it just sounds like shit to my ears. I know artists like Mantronix and The Orb and Kraftwerk are revered as some of the great pioneering electronica acts but to be honest I thoroughly dislike all three of them. I quite literally cannot begin to enjoy electronic music that's older than '91, but the vast majority of my preferences are from '95 onwards. Maybe it's just my generation and growing up with newer music though. i don't mean to be an asshole, but: i don't think i've ever heard cutoff used in a way that has anything to do with distortion. also a limiter sounds more like a compressor than a distortion, i think you're talking about clipping. it's nothing to do with cutting off frequencies that go too high, that's called a filter. Yeah this was something I wasn't really 100% sure of to be honest. I was indeed talking about clipping but I was under the assumption that cutoff = clipping and for some reason that cutoff = limiting. Looks like I made a bunch of assumptions today and made an ass out of myself in the process. Alright then, concerning my comments about the context of Sublimit's title, what would you pros say it is derived from? It seems alot easier to decypher than most of the titles on Untilted. So what have I learned today? When I assume I make an ASS out of U and ME I think this I've derailed this thread long enough for now though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thehauntingsoul Posted November 11, 2009 Author Share Posted November 11, 2009 Not that I just started, I've been doing it for about a year now but not very seriously so I guess yeah you could say I just started although I'm not a complete noob. When I was younger I would always picture Ae albums as these intricate journeys with narrative storylines to them, and that whatever main cast of characters were, that in Sublimit they had reached some point that was the lowest dimension of reality - the sublimit - and that they needed to travel through this realm to proceed. I don't know the whole thing is way too fucking abstract to try to wrap in a story like that so I abandoned that way of listening in favour of a more scientific and dissectional approach to listening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ataraxy2 Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 I quite literally cannot begin to enjoy electronic music that's older than '91, but the vast majority of my preferences are from '95 onwards. Maybe it's just my generation and growing up with newer music though. Kraftwerk's Autobahn Tangerine Dream - Virgin & Blue years Brian Eno My love for Iera is now like my love for Bine. Also, I was under the impression Autechre didn't have meanings for their song titles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thehauntingsoul Posted November 11, 2009 Author Share Posted November 11, 2009 Well they do and they don't. It really depends on what you're definition of meaning is. They don't have meanings in the sense that there is some actual thought or idea that is meant to be conveyed, but they have said in interviews that their track titles are generally either plays on english words or references to the samples or equipment they used for the tracks. Generally speaking you can't figure out what most of them are with a few exceptions but off the top of my head all I can really think of is that Bike is supposed to be about Albert Hoffmans bike ride (I think) and Theme of Sudden Roundabout is referencing a Roundabout in a town called Sudden. Here and there you will see some uncertain possibilities like Rpeg is probably a reference to RPG video games, considering it uses the classic 8-bit type of sound. Also Chiastic Slide is a reference to the fade sliders on the mixing boards or some shit like that. It was in that interview that's bundled with the Radio Promo CD Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modey Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 Theme of Sudden Roundabout is referencing a Roundabout in a town called Sudden. Here and there you will see some uncertain possibilities like Rpeg is probably a reference to RPG video games, considering it uses the classic 8-bit type of sound. Also Chiastic Slide is a reference to the fade sliders on the mixing boards or some shit like that. It was in that interview that's bundled with the Radio Promo CD i always thought rpeg was a reference to the main melody being an arpeggio. and yeah sudden roundabout was a place where all the graffiti/tagging crew used to use as a reference point, with people spraypainting arrows for directions to raves and such. or so i've been told. and re: not being into electronic music pre-1991, that's ridiculous! have you heard harmonia? their album 'musik von harmonia' is like a 70s version of autechre! you must hear it! also tangerine dream are really awesome, but i have no idea where to start with them, i only have phaedra but it's trippy as fuck. oh and, no offense intended re: my earlier comments, i'm just trying to get the facts right! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thehauntingsoul Posted November 11, 2009 Author Share Posted November 11, 2009 Theme of Sudden Roundabout is referencing a Roundabout in a town called Sudden. Here and there you will see some uncertain possibilities like Rpeg is probably a reference to RPG video games, considering it uses the classic 8-bit type of sound. Also Chiastic Slide is a reference to the fade sliders on the mixing boards or some shit like that. It was in that interview that's bundled with the Radio Promo CD i always thought rpeg was a reference to the main melody being an arpeggio. ARGHHHHEGHLLLLL!!!!!! You have ousted me twice in a row and I will have my revenge, mark my words. have you heard harmonia? their album 'musik von harmonia' is like a 70s version of autechre! you must hear it! also tangerine dream are really awesome, but i have no idea where to start with them, i only have phaedra but it's trippy as fuck. alright then, I am [acquiring by legal methods] both of those albums right now and will report back oh and, no offense intended re: my earlier comments, i'm just trying to get the facts right! no not at all man I know. We is all bruvvas here edit: jesus christ I've done it again and made a huge post with nothing about untilted. so Augmatic Disport is apparently too awesome for my iPod or iTunes because both of them skip around randomly in the second last chunk of the track (with crazy glitchiness). It's weird because I bought those mp3s from bleep, but they burned to a CD perfectly fine. VLC has no problems with them either. At times I almost start thinking that my copy of Augmatic was damaged somehow because of how savagely glitchy it gets. Does it do all the strange disk skip type of brief loud blips on everyone else's copies? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Calx Sherbet Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 I quite literally cannot begin to enjoy electronic music that's older than '91, but the vast majority of my preferences are from '95 onwards. Maybe it's just my generation and growing up with newer music though. Tangerine Dream - Virgin & Blue years pink is good too. i was born in '91 and i seem to have no trouble with it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Calx Sherbet Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 Also, I was under the impression Autechre didn't have meanings for their song titles. i don't think i ever believed they did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest theSun Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 guys i know what all the titles mean it's so easy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capsaicin Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 They named Augmatic Disport after Rob's dog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ataraxy2 Posted November 12, 2009 Share Posted November 12, 2009 I quite literally cannot begin to enjoy electronic music that's older than '91, but the vast majority of my preferences are from '95 onwards. Maybe it's just my generation and growing up with newer music though. Tangerine Dream - Virgin & Blue years pink is good too. i was born in '91 and i seem to have no trouble with it Yeah I didn't understand Hauntingsoul's comment. I was born in 1992. With Tangerine Dream you really can't go wrong with those first... years (whatever it is). Although 1988 Optical Race is nice they begin heading into... "typical cheesy 80s" sound (and in the 90's no less). The Five Atomic Seasons however is mostly good. But: I'm not helping throw the thread back on track. I did a track by track summary already so there's not much more I can add. I guess Pro Radii is starting to grow on me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Redruth Posted November 13, 2009 Share Posted November 13, 2009 Holy shit so we got lots of animosity towards TheHauntingSoul in this thread today. Most of it was because of a few unsupported claims which I will now concede: In all seriousness though if there is a comprehensive guide to electronic music genres somewhere out there (with samples!!!) then that would be a really interesting and enlightening thing for me to read. Anybody know of something like this? Too many genres and sub-genres to keep track of it all...but stupidly enough IDM has still not really been divided into sub-genres which it needs more than any other parent genre http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/music.swf Enjoy. nicely designed site, aesthetically it has a bit to be desired but wow, what a download of information. thnx. Best Autechre album, now and almost certainly in the future. The ultimate Techno record. please for the love of god don't call this album TECHNO +1 !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thehauntingsoul Posted November 13, 2009 Author Share Posted November 13, 2009 It is time, Watmm LCC is an awesome opener to the album and does a good job at introducing the sonic pallet and atmosphere that is present on this album. Very bouncy and danceable Ae. You gotta love that fuckin snare pop 3 times in a row, its great. The first time I heard this track I didn't get it but its fairly coherent 4/4 pretty much all the way through. I love the way the beat wraps around over itself and adds tons of layers of intricate sound that interacts with all the other sound. I love the way the track glitches out and gets all insane around the middle, and then begins a descent of simultanously winding down while also getting deeper and heavier. Like the track is growing, becoming denser and huger. The pads that come in towards the last third of the track are so creepy and perfect, great fucking atmosphere here. My fav part for sure is right around 5:23 when the bass drops down another octave and the bass drum gains a shitload of prominence. After that I'm thoroughly bobbing my head the whole way out. Also I love the shy croaky bass melody that peeks in very slightly a few times right at the end of the track. Overall I thoroughly enjoy this track although it seems to lack a specific sonic theme like most of the other tracks instead in favour of weaving a melting pot of the Untilted styles which I think makes this an excellent opener. Ipacial Section is one of the greatest Ae tracks of all time, and definitely the best on the album. I love how they manage to create such an intensely energetic track using that single repeating ting note. The spasticity of the track lends itself to repeated listens which will almost always result in new discoveries. I fucking love the switch up they do from time to time that briefly pops out of sync with the beat (first occurrance 0:55) and the beat just becomes more insane and warped as this chunk progresses. Then you have the chimes with the extremely drawn out wheezing snare. I noticed that the chimes have a quieter second voice that actually pitch bends down, you have to listen really carefully to notice it but check around 3:26. Then at 5:27 one of the sweetest melodies pops in, its the repeating ninininininininininin, wawawawawawawawawa deal. Great shit. The ending is even better than anything up until this point. Great fucking warped ass beat, almost like the track begins to turn itself inside out around 8:02, and fully becomes inside out at 8:43. Fucking christ I love this track and I LOOOVE the ending! Pro Radii is an awesome ridiculously low and bassy track. The drums sound so huge and hollow, it really makes you wish you had that drum in your house to wail away on along with the track. This track likes to jump back and forth between 6/4 and 4/4, try and see if you can notice when it switches because it's done rather sneakily. The melody that pops in around 2:00 in really reminds me of one of the tracks from the original Doom . Really dark and creepy. Then all of the sudden at 3:35 the track trips on a root and realizes it is at the edge of a cliff and falls right the fuck off. This part is brilliant, and although the timing can be tough to decypher you just need to listen a few times. Pay attention to the bass drum and you will fall right into the groove. Also of notable mention is when they repeat the last beat of the measure 5 times after it happens to hammer it right in (we're talking 3:53). Then you get those x-file like chords that are so creepy and perfect. Fucking brilliant. I love this track and again I love how it switches time signatures a bunch of times. Augmatic Disport is a mind fuck and a half. Pretty nifty beat weaved around a standard 4/4 time sig. This is not really one of my favs on this album as there is just too much focus on the glitchyness with abandoning the structure of the track. That being said, the ending is fucking brilliant pretty much from when that high pitched squeaky glitch deal starts, continuing on to the bassy part from the Confield live set. I don't really want to say much more about this one because honestly I don't think I'll ever really be able to vocalize what is actually going on here. Iera is actually probably my fav on the album over Ipacial now that I think of it. The beginning has a sick acid line, but the thing i fucking love about this track is that it is a can of ticking crackling bugs. It sounds like a mechanical centipede or something. Jets of steam puff out of it from time to time. I love how the melody that starts at the beginning slowly climbs down into the lower octave where it becomes a really dark and awesome bass line. Pay attention to it starting at 2:21 and follow along if you don't know what I'm talking about. I fucking love how they glitch the track out at the end of almost every bar, and again I just love how theres so many fucking layers of clicking. The melody here is fucking perfect, brilliant and probably one of the creepiest things I've ever heard. The ending is fucking sick as well, and even though I can totally follow the beat and beat box to it in time and everything, I can't even begin to count it. Great use of slow down-speed up and really I think I should just stop now because otherwise this is going to get repeditive. Fucking love this track though. Fermium only recently grew on me. It's a fairly simple enough beginning but if you really wanna get into it you need to listen beyond the melody and see what sorts of subtle noises that begin to creep in and syncopate with the rhythm. To me, this track symbolizes decay of radioactive material. Fermium is the 100th element in the periodic table and is highly radioactive and has hardly ever been produced or isolated. The track quickly becomes fucked right the hell up and decays into a cacophony (I like that word) of noise and glitch. At the end, after all of the energy is released and the Fermium particles have all decayed into their daughter particles, the track lays dormant with the loud hum of intense radioactive energy pulsing into your ears. The low grumble right at the end is fucking great, so low and growly. This track is actually not half bad at all. The only thing I can't stand is the chords that repeat over the melody. I mean... so dull! They really could have switched it up, even made the chords like 8/4 or something. The Trees is another one of my favs on here. Its seriously tied with Iera and Ipacial Section. This track is pretty flawless. It takes a really cool sonic pallet and crafts a really interesting and quirky beat that shifts styles a few times throughout the track. It starts out 4/4 but shifts to 6/4 around the middle, and back to 4/4 towards the end. I love when Ae switches up the timing because generally its pretty hard to notice until you listen a few times. The melody at the end is really awesome too. The digital-sounding synth that writes a melody purely out of octave-jumping on the same note, its brilliant. There is nothing really bad I could say about this track, I fucking love it. I also like how the melody from The PLC creeps into the end of this track for a while. Sublimit is once again a fucking brilliant album closer. This is one of the deepest tracks Ae has done, and it probably has the most recognizable beat on the album. This track is very typical of live Ae style which is awesome because they hardly ever incorporate tracks of that nature. This track has an insane amount of layers and you really need to listen a few times to decypher them all. Unfortunately I feel like there is not much more I can say about the track at this point, as I feel the more abstract they get, the less I am able to coherently explain the aspects of the tracks that I enjoy. Also today I noticed that the tempo for Sublimit makes it a perfect track to jog to (nice and long too). So overall Untilted is probably the most consistent Ae release in my opinion. A very solidly thought out sonic backdrop and atmosphere mixed with meticulously programmed beats and a good serving of glitchyness and absurdity to give it some flavor. If you don't like the album, you probably just need to hear it a few times because it's definitely the easiest Ae album to groove to, and has the most solid consistent beats since Tri Rep. Next week we have Quaristice tastiness, and although I love that album I'm starting to feel dizzy at the amount of writing I'm going to have to do (Quar, Versions, Quadrange) but I'll do my best. Hope you guys liked this one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest theSun Posted November 13, 2009 Share Posted November 13, 2009 good review, i'm not so sure those sig changes are entirely accurate. i mean, i guess it's all relative and they can achieve the same effect by doing a few different things, but imo it moves from 4/4 in a 4 or 8 or 16 bar phrase to 4/4 in a 3/6/12 bar phrase. i only say this because it sounds to me like they are just adding an extra bar in certain sections, and i would assume if it was a written score it wouldn't change sigs. again, not like it matters but that's what it feels like to me. different way of thinking about the same thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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