Autechre Known (1)

[thehauntingsoul]

I hear the cheesy ish sounding phaser that was being discussed earlier. It's not really that noticeable but I'll see if it sounds different in 320kbps

[Guest extherium]

is that the one with the high pitch glitchy bell thing?

 

Sounds more like they processed that farting sound from when you pinch the neck of a full balloon.

[TwiddleBot]

passing on final judgment before i hear the .wavs or lps.. the sonic aspects that i find bizarre might be fixed when i'm not listening to a transcoded .mpa

[Guest maus]

hey maus, nice to see you in the autechre sub forum, i agree that this track in particular sounds more deliberate. which tracks on the album do sound Koan-y or generative/stochastic to you (if any)?

 

i haven't bothered to separate out the tracks to different ones yet, i've just been listening to it as a whole from time to time, but it's a general feeling about the album - as well as some of the other more recent autechre stuff. the melodies take twists that seem more to be defined by programming than by intuition, to my ears.

 

i fired up noatikl again yesterday just to play around with it (partly inspired by talking to oo00oo), and setting up a couple of voices and routing them to my mac's wavetable synth gave me some pretty oversteps-sounding stuff. of course there's more to it than that, but in terms of melodic and harmonic structure, it was remarkably similar (again, to my ears.)

 

some of oversteps just has that "aleatoric, but within constraints" type of a feel / sound to its progressions and melodies. now, rob and sean might just have brains that work that way melodically, but knowing their penchant for wierd sound programming tools, it doesn't seem like much of a stretch for them to be using generative stuff for the melodic elements, just as they use unorthodox programming for their sounds. it doesn't take away from what they're doing, though, or lessen it in any way for me.

 

so yeah, that's why known(1) sticks out a bit... that main "GM-sounding" riff feels more like it's thought through and played by a human, but that might just be luck of the draw... the timing of some of the notes in the progression are still pretty wacky, so who knows.

[Guest Greg Reason]

Yeah I like that known(1) sticks out... Gives a bit of variety on what is otherwise a fairly consistently samey record. Not that that's too much of a problem but I like that they broke things up a little bit, even if it is early on in the piece.

 

As for the notes, as I mentioned in my review (lost somewhere in the Oversteps shitstorm/thread) I get a distinctly Olde English vibe from the note choices and it's remarkably more diatonic than most of their other work. This naturally adds to the Coil feel they've already set up by a) opting to use the fake guitar sounds and b) using the heavily treated phaser/flanger sound.

 

But all Coil-ness aside, I like this for other factors as well. I like the modulation mid-song, I quite like the repetition of certain melodies and yeah the timings are whack but it's ae, that's what they do. And that sickening flanging sound is truly wonderful I reckon, espcially seeing as the timings are so off compared to the more static "guitar" parts.

[futureimage]

I get a distinctly Olde English vibe from the note choices and it's remarkably more diatonic than most of their other work.

Music theory nerd hat on:

Don't you mean modal?

[Guest Greg Reason]

Modal and Diatonic could imply the same thing. All Diatonic means is confined to a predetermined scale or mode rather than chromatic.

[six]

This track has grown on me a lot, I kinda like it now. It's delightfully weird and I like how much parts of it remind me of Sega Genesis music.

[Guest vomikronnoxis]

I love this track, actually.

 

~rl

[Salvatorin]

I just heard a preview and this sounds beautiful, I don't know what yurr all talkin bout

[baph]

I don't have any idea bout what's goin on.

[sysyphus]

I don't have any idea bout what's goin on.

[Guest theSun]

basscadet? on oversteps? whaaaaA?

[kaini]

basscadet? on oversteps? whaaaaA?

 

[Guest theSun]

hahahahahahaha

[splesh]

It's really not that bad!

 

 

 

 

[baph]

basscadet? on oversteps? whaaaaA?

 

 

:legitimate spit-take:

[Guest Calx Sherbet]

i just heard this track for the first time. haha what the fuck is up with it? i have a feeling it'll grow on me. i haven't stopped it yet

[beerwolf]

On first play this track does seem very awful, so much so I am dying to play it again....Ahh, Autechre mindgames!

 

On track 7 Treale at the moment. On first impressions this album seems to have a very stoned, downtempo feeling to it.

[auxien]

yeah, so i just heard this track (yeah, i waited. i've got patience) and it's pretty awesome actually. the background rolling melody is a little cheesy, but the bell like lines/stabs that runs through it all is nice...and the fucking squelchy lead is gorgeous. loved that shit.

 

just my first impressions.

[Lianne]

It sounds no better on the official wavs. Obviously. But I don't hate it as much as I used to...

 

It seems a little loud to me, too. Something about the bass is a bit clippy.

 

Lucky pt2ph8 is such a beautiful follow up track.

[Blir]

So, people hate this track!? A track that's on the same album as pt2ph8? What the fuck is wrong with people?

[Lianne]

On first impressions this album seems to have a very stoned, downtempo feeling to it.

 

That's my feeling too.

[mcbpete]

It seems a little loud to me, too. Something about the bass is a bit clippy.

I think there's something wrong with your setup, I'm listing to 24bit wavs and the bass aint clippy at all here ... Funky little track this - this is only my first listen but I have no idea what the haters here are on about

[Guest frits]

I love this track and the 24 bit wave version sounds five times smoother and more delicious.

Autechre ALWAYS has that "annoying melodic track" on their albums. This is definitely one of the better ones.

 

The track afterwards is hands down the best track on the whole album. Actually one of my favorite Ae tracks overall. Just love me some robot jazz.