Autechre Why do we love Autechre?

[Guest Spittal]

I've been thinking about this for a long time now; Why do we find Autechre such a lush and interesting act to listen to? Why do the sounds from Incunabula to Move of Ten (and anything in between) affect us so deeply, when to others it might as well just be white noise? I ask myself questions like "Do we have a more advanced brain?", and "Is it the technical aspect that attracts us to Autechre?"... All of these things I've been trying to figure out, using SCIENCE!

 

First we need to define what the general listener is attracted to, and this can be very roughly summed up into four things, -Timbre, -Repetition, -A good melody, and emotion. And while there are many more aspects than just these four, they will lay down a good foundation for how we respond to music.

 

The casual listener will attach themselves to an emotional vocal performance, they will groove to a simple four on the floor repetitive beat, they will rock out to the heavy timbres of heavy metal guitars, and will find themselves humming melodies of popular songs. These things satisfy their brain, for example; The repetition satisfies their cerebellum by providing a steady oscillatory pace that it can follow and anticipate when the next beat will come. The cerebellum is the part of the brain responsible for time keeping and when structures like the this and the frontal lobe get satisfied, it activates the nucleus accumbens to release dopamine into the brain... To be blunt the more organized the music is, the better it is.

 

This is where musicians step in, they are not so easily satisfied by such simple music. Some musicians prefer to have music much more complex, because they want music to challenge their expectations. Musicians can relate to what they listen to in a much more technical way than the average listener so they can sacrifice things like emotion, and repetition for the satisfaction of hearing a technically complex phrase or song. The comprehension of musical structure and meaning is carried out in the frontal lobe and when a complex phrase of music gets understood by that lobe it again triggers the output of dopamine. It could be considered even more rewarding to the brain when you "crack the code" of a complex piece (like a free jazz tune) because of the trials and toils you had to go through to fully comprehend it.

 

Of course I'm keeping all of these statements very broad, keeping in mind the size of this post. But my favorite thing about being a musician is playing music that impresses people with my skill. When I listen to a piece of music I love, I can see myself playing that particular piece of music to a fake audience in my mind, and that audience loves it. This gives me a lot of satisfaction, and continues to being me back to certain types of music. The strange thing is, is that Autechre doesn't fit into this category. I don't see myself performing most Autechre songs in front of this fake audience, and yet I still love the music.

 

When we look at Autechre we generally don't associate it with, a lot of things I described above. I mean the average listener won't say to you while listening to Gantz Graf "wow, this has a fantastic melody", there isn't much repetition in that song either, the timbres are all very abrasive and mechanical, and knowing that a good portion of it was made with heartless computer programming sucks the emotion right out of it. But then why is Gantz Graf one of the most popular Autechre songs?

 

Is it that we all find it so fascinating that the song was made with Max/Msp that we strive to understand how and what they did? But that explanation would mean that we all have some technical understanding of how computer programming works. A fact that I don't think is true of everybody on this sub-forum.

 

Maybe it is the complex musical structure? Yet again, that's assuming we all have some form of musical background, which is not true.

 

To me, I love Gantz Graf for its Timbre, Repetition, Melody and Emotion. I believe that all of it is there: The cold timbres evoke emotions no other song could, finding the subtle repeating phrases is so satisfying, and maybe there isn't a traditional melody to that song, yet it seems to get stuck in my very often, just like a catchy melody would. You have to keep in mind though, all of this took some time, I needed to "break open" Gantz Graf for it to reveal these aspects to me. But in the end the reward is so much more satisfying!

 

 

Let me quote Daniel J. Levitin from the book "This is Your Brain on Music"

 

Music appears to mimic some of the features of language and to convey some of the same emotions that vocal communication does, but in a nonreferential, and nonspecific way. It also invokes some of the same neural regions that language does, but far more than language, music taps into primitive brain structures involved with motivation, reward, and emotion. Whether it is the first few hits of the cowbell on "Honkey Tonk Women," or the first few notes of "Sheherazade," computational systems in the brain synchronize neural oscillators with the pulse of the music, and begin to predict when the next strong beat will occur. As the music unfolds, the brain constantly updates its estimates of when new beats will occur, and takes satisfaction in matching a mental beat with a real-in-the-world one, and takes delight when a skillful musician violates that expectation in an interesting way--a sort of musical joke that we're all in on.

 

To me this concept is what makes Autechre so seductive. They have the ability to violate our expectation in such a way that it is satisfying to listen to. They are not blunt about their violations like free jazz is, the point of free jazz is simply to violate, but the point of Autechre is to be entertaining. Booth and Brown have found that perfect sweet spot between insanity and safety that is very attractive to us as Autechre listeners. Their songs are complex enough to feel extra satisfying when you "crack the Autechre code" and use timbres and beats that are approachable by non-musicians and non-computer coders.

 

Once I got the feeling of "understanding" Autechre it was such an amazing satisfaction that it bordered on addiction. This is partly to blame for why Confield and Draft 7.30 are so highly regarded by me, because once I felt like I understood it, the reward was amazing.

 

So, to wrap things up. What makes us, the listeners of Autechre so unique? --We are people who love originality, people who can truly appreciate the balance between insanity and beauty that Autechre have struck, we come from rich musical backgrounds, and, of course, we love Autechre. (Or we have serious drug addictions, and Autechre makes us trip out)

 

 

Let me know what you guys think.

[xyrofen]

I've been thinking about this for a long time now; Why do we find Autechre such a lush and interesting act to listen to? Why do the sounds from Incunabula to Move of Ten (and anything in between) affect us so deeply, when to others it might as well just be white noise? I ask myself questions like "Do we have a more advanced brain?", and "Is it the technical aspect that attracts us to Autechre?"... All of these things I've been trying to figure out, using SCIENCE!

 

Dude, Lego Feet? haha

 

The "advanced" brain part sounds a bit elitist, but I'm sure you're kidding and just laying out an introduction to your topic at hand. Most of my friends regard them as ticks and tacks, my dad relates a lot of "IDM" percussion to bugs, which he hates.

 

First we need to define what the general listener is attracted to, and this can be very roughly summed up into four things, -Timbre, -Repetition, -A good melody, and emotion. And while there are many more aspects than just these four, they will lay down a good foundation for how we respond to music.

 

If someone could explain to me exactly what timber/timbre is, I'd appreciate it.

 

The casual listener will attach themselves to an emotional vocal performance, they will groove to a simple four on the floor repetitive beat, they will rock out to the heavy timbres of heavy metal guitars, and will find themselves humming melodies of popular songs. These things satisfy their brain, for example; The repetition satisfies their cerebellum by providing a steady oscillatory pace that it can follow and anticipate when the next beat will come. The cerebellum is the part of the brain responsible for time keeping and when structures like the this and the frontal lobe get satisfied, it activates the nucleus accumbens to release dopamine into the brain... To be blunt the more organized the music is, the better it is.

 

Maybe that's the deviation amongst some of us fans. I hate overt simplicity (though I can appreciate minimalism). I like having to concentrate on music, not just have it run by or go "OH I LOVE THIS ONE LYRIC." Most of my friends can't find the loop or beat in my songs and I have fun with that.

 

This is where musicians step in, they are not so easily satisfied by such simple music. Some musicians prefer to have music much more complex, because they want music to challenge their expectations. Musicians can relate to what they listen to in a much more technical way than the average listener so they can sacrifice things like emotion, and repetition for the satisfaction of hearing a technically complex phrase or song. The comprehension of musical structure and meaning is carried out in the frontal lobe and when a complex phrase of music gets understood by that lobe it again triggers the output of dopamine. It could be considered even more rewarding to the brain when you "crack the code" of a complex piece (like a free jazz tune) because of the trials and toils you had to go through to fully comprehend it.

 

I felt like I'd accomplished something when I finally understood Quaristice, which was my first album. @_@ I went backwards, started with Quaristice since I couldn't find LP5 for sale anywhere, which was a unique experience to start with something that abstract and disjointed.

 

Of course I'm keeping all of these statements very broad, keeping in mind the size of this post. But my favorite thing about being a musician is playing music that impresses people with my skill. When I listen to a piece of music I love, I can see myself playing that particular piece of music to a fake audience in my mind, and that audience loves it. This gives me a lot of satisfaction, and continues to being me back to certain types of music. The strange thing is, is that Autechre doesn't fit into this category. I don't see myself performing most Autechre songs in front of this fake audience, and yet I still love the music.

 

Since I got into electronic music I've started regarding it more as a performance art than I probably would have had I not gotten into electronic stuff. The way these odd sounds were made fascinated me. It's like a thrill of the chase, it's deadly fun when you find out where a sample came from (especially with Boards of Canada) or can say "I know how to make that!" With certain things like Merzbow and Autechre, it's just interesting to think about how they even ventured on to a sound or way they decided to do something. As if it were process based.

 

When we look at Autechre we generally don't associate it with, a lot of things I described above. I mean the average listener won't say to you while listening to Gantz Graf "wow, this has a fantastic melody", there isn't much repetition in that song either, the timbres are all very abrasive and mechanical, and knowing that a good portion of it was made with heartless computer programming sucks the emotion right out of it. But then why is Gantz Graf one of the most popular Autechre songs?

 

I don't really like Gantz Graf as much as most people, but I do not feel electronic stuff is generally emotionless (some Proem stuff is very moving, for example) unless it sounds like a pisstake. Even if something is very algorithmic, there was someone back there doing something and they had some connection with it in order to release it if they just set an algorithm and left if for awhile. Even if that seems emotionless, I love mathematics, so that part always leaves me interested, especially when I started learning logic gates and how Max/MSP works.

 

Is it that we all find it so fascinating that the song was made with Max/Msp that we strive to understand how and what they did? But that explanation would mean that we all have some technical understanding of how computer programming works. A fact that I don't think is true of everybody on this sub-forum.

 

My Calc. teacher thought Max/MSP and the EP7 covers were cool.

 

Maybe it is the complex musical structure? Yet again, that's assuming we all have some form of musical background, which is not true.

 

To me, I love Gantz Graf for its Timbre, Repetition, Melody and Emotion. I believe that all of it is there: The cold timbres evoke emotions no other song could, finding the subtle repeating phrases is so satisfying, and maybe there isn't a traditional melody to that song, yet it seems to get stuck in my very often, just like a catchy melody would. You have to keep in mind though, all of this took some time, I needed to "break open" Gantz Graf for it to reveal these aspects to me. But in the end the reward is so much more satisfying!

 

Most of my musical knowledge as of late is trying to remember stuff from when I was forced to learn stupid-fucking-piano as a kid and from listening to stuff. I basically only retained how to read notes from all those lessons, never learned time signatures and never knew what a lot of the symbols were.

 

Subtle melodies are amazing, like near the end of The Trees.

 

Once I got the feeling of "understanding" Autechre it was such an amazing satisfaction that it bordered on addiction. This is partly to blame for why Confield and Draft 7.30 are so highly regarded by me, because once I felt like I understood it, the reward was amazing. So, to wrap things up.

 

What makes us, the listeners of Autechre so unique? --We are people who love originality, people who can truly appreciate the balance between insanity and beauty that Autechre have struck, we come from rich musical backgrounds, and, of course, we love Autechre. (Or we have serious drug addictions, and Autechre makes us trip out)

 

Draft 7.30 was amazing once it clicked.

 

 

I get bored and obsessive, never touched a substance either. I got turned on to Autechre by "Dropp" because it conjured such vivid images in my head and moved me with how it was so mechanical yet human. Something in it made me want more of it and more of everything ever done by this strange name I didn't know how to pronounce. Imagine how I felt when I put Quaristice in and was used to songs from Untilted and EP7! It was so strange to have these meandering, ambient, abstract pieces with bits of clusterfucked beats (plyPhon weirded me the hell out, IO scared me, yet they ended up being my favorite tracks).

 

Cool thread, though a bit fanboyish, haha.

 

 

Stupid WATMM making me ruin my formatting.

[chassis]

Ah here, tl;dr.

 

My answer is Chiastic Slide.

[Guest HWNDarkside]

Autechre = IDM

[beerwolf]

I am having massive love for Autechre at the moment.

 

In the last couple of weeks Untilted and Confield have 'clicked' with me. So this is just blowing my mind. Then I put on Move of Ten and I love that too.

 

I think they are sonic magicians, who are years ahead of everyone.

 

I have listened to Warp for about ten years now and I never thought I would say it but AE are taking over AFX as my fav artist, though that might have something to do with the amount of new stuff I am emmersing myself in.

 

Either way, I love them more now than I ever have.

[soundwave]

Sean and Rob do whatever they fuck they want to do and what they do is almost always interesting in some way

 

they also know how to push technology in new areas intentionally or not rather than trying to perfect the same idea or rehash old ideas in a different way

 

surfing the technology wave is a razors edge as you can crash from quite a distance if the wave has swept you more than your skill at riding it however Sean and Rob would be those hardcore aging surf bums that have done it all yet still know where the challanges are

[jaderpansen]

shit's good, y'know.

[sysyphus]

i think chord resolution is what keeps me coming back. the song can be all over the place with ideas, but it always ends up landing on that final resolve and you get this immense feeling that what you just listened to was complete, like a nice little package being handed to you.

[Guest Greg Reason]

Their music makes me feel a certain way inside, a very strange, peculiar feeling that I also get from Coil. Like reality is warping.

 

I'm not that into most "IDM" artists because I find a lot of them to be cheap and cheesy. Autechre never strike me that way, their stuff seems to be constructed with different intent. I don't think they have ever made anything sound complicated simply to be impressive... It all seems to me to be constructed the way it is in order to elicit a certain response.

[Guest Greg Reason]

If someone could explain to me exactly what timber/timbre is, I'd appreciate it.

 

Timbre (tam-ber) is the qualities of a sound. So by way of example, a distorted guitar could have a thick, rich timbre while bagpipes could have a shrill, harsh timbre*.

 

 

 

*I actually quite like bagpipes

[oscillik]

Sean and Rob would be those hardcore aging surf bums that have done it all yet still know where the challanges are

probably one of the best ways to describe autechre. ever.

 

If someone could explain to me exactly what timber/timbre is, I'd appreciate it.

timbre is the difference between the real amen break, and some fool thinking he can do the amen break on his own drum kit

[crono3]

Very interesting read!

 

For me, I think one of the reasons I love ae so much is BECAUSE I have almost no understanding about how they make this stuff. I listen to other types of music and you can imagine the band members playing the instruments... you know where most of the sound is coming from, it's familiar. Just the opposite with ae... since their sounds are so unique & alien to me I can truly get lost in it. My imagination is free to conjure up far away worlds or even just shapes & colors relating to the sounds. Which leads me to another reason (perhaps the strongest) I love ae.... their SOUNDS. They feed my brain with sounds I don't hear in the natural world. I can't even really come up with good words to explain it, but the sound design aspects of ae intrigue me more than the musical aspects.

[beerwolf]

Very interesting read!

 

For me, I think one of the reasons I love ae so much is BECAUSE I have almost no understanding about how they make this stuff. I listen to other types of music and you can imagine the band members playing the instruments... you know where most of the sound is coming from, it's familiar. Just the opposite with ae... since their sounds are so unique & alien to me I can truly get lost in it. My imagination is free to conjure up far away worlds or even just shapes & colors relating to the sounds. Which leads me to another reason (perhaps the strongest) I love ae.... their SOUNDS. They feed my brain with sounds I don't hear in the natural world. I can't even really come up with good words to explain it, but the sound design aspects of ae intrigue me more than the musical aspects.

 

Ditto.

 

Because I have never made music myself, it intensifies the mystery. Their stuff sounds like it comes from nowhere on Earth.

[Guest victorian sewer rituals]

Originality.

 

Natural skill.

[Guest Calx Sherbet]

we take the time to try something knew, and keep an open mind. ae (and others) are weird, and different. and that kinda thing scares the shit out of people.

[manmower]

Bocworthy thread.

[Guest ruiagnelo]

no more autechre love threads please

[markedone]

I don't know why, but apparently I reeeeaally love to listen to Autechre. I just consulted my play counts the other day.. and they have more than TWICE as many plays as the next best [aphex twin] who in turn has over TWICE as much as the next most listened artist.

 

They have this ineffable quality that a) keeps me listening and b) keeps me coming back.

 

surfing the technology wave is a razors edge as you can crash from quite a distance if the wave has swept you more than your skill at riding it however Sean and Rob would be those hardcore aging surf bums that have done it all yet still know where the challanges are

I really like this metaphor :)

[tipper]

they make music that seems like it is music made by robots

[Guest sirch]

..coz they're Bad Ass. it's not even their originality or competence, it's just that they don't give a flying fuck! lol. that's why i love them. :)

[xyrofen]

It's interesting to be able to listen to them and distinctly tell it's them apart from obvious imitators and stuff (though people imitating produces some great tracks at times).

[lumpenprol]

I love Autechre because I once told a girl I was Sean Booth and she sucked my cock. Thanks, Ae!

[Guest ruiagnelo]

I love Autechre because I once told a girl I was Sean Booth and she sucked my cock. Thanks, Ae!

 

[amnesia]

I have loved Autechre since day dot. Why?

 

Because they are what electronic music should be = THE FUTURE IN SOUND/ COMPOSITION

[lumpenprol]

I love Autechre because I once told a girl I was Sean Booth and she sucked my cock. Thanks, Ae!

 

 

yeah her name was Mira something, I forget.