Jump to content
IGNORED

Exai Alcofribas Review

Alcofribas

By Alcofribas
in Autechre

Recommended Posts

Alcofribas Grand Master

Alcofribas

Posted
Posted
ok. i just got back from a trip to manchester and sheffield where i was studying idm, a trip which culminated in me playing two 10hr radio mixes live with the 'chre a couple weekends ago. there i learned that the ae bros will soon be releassing a new album called "excite." having earned the respect and in some cases intimate friendship with some in the most elite idm circles i was able to score a copy of this new album without any problems which should be arriving shortly via amazon. i figure there's no reason to delay any longer and i'll just write a review now. i'll also be including some choice bits from two 10hr interviews i did with sean and rob last weekend.


first track, "FLeure" is a pretty weird way to start off. first of all, i'm almost positive the "FL" is capitalized to suggest that they used "Fruity Loops" to compose this. there's heavy use of piano roll and i'm hearing a lot of signature vst sounds as well as controllable parameters. the title also signifies charles baudelaire's famous collection of poems "les fleures du mal" from which rob is reading throughout the track, with a little bit of phasing on the vocals. i've listened carefully and can tell they've changed the lines a little, so that everything rhymes with "exai," which i do not get at all. the fuck is "exai?"


like, what is this?:


"Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,

Luxe, calme et volupt et exai."


anyway, yeah on to track 2. "irlite (get 0)" so the first part i get "irl" = in real life. my guess, after doing math on this, is that the rest is "ite" = i think exai...and then "get 0" = get out. so, in real life i think exai (get out!). now, i can't tell if they mean, "get out" like when dj tanner says that after you tell her the beach boys are coming over or if they mean like gtfo or what. it's a cool track. basically sounds like the first one.


"prac-f" at first i'm pretty confused about how i'm already on the last track of the album but i'm listening really close since this is it and it's almost over. i honestly can't really tell the difference between this and the two previous tracks. i'm seriously disappointed bc this album is only like 15 minutes long WTF!!!


the album ends with a little static poping loop thing that literally went on for like an hour. was still going when i turned off my phonograph.


idk, 3/10 i guess.


edit: a little embarrassed to say that this was my first time listening to vinyl. was not aware you had to turn it over!


***


so, on to "jatevee C". this one is dope. shout out to the watmm C family? or AlCofribas??? thx mates ;) yeah, so it starts off with some trance pads. then it's basically a trance tune. i mean, it's the 'chre so they switch it around. like, for instance, they switch the 909 kicks with the pads so instead of kicks you have 4/4 pads and instead of pads you have a kick on 1/4 of each bar and then for the 16th note hihats it's a farty bass. pretty stupid actually wtf is this shit?


"T ess xi" ok i get the title for this. "xi" = "exai." now it all makes sense. wicked! this is where things really turn around for me. i'm starting to hear all kinds of little hidden things, like LOTS of MIDI through on here. i asked sean about their use of MIDI thru. "This is the part you don't understand. You don't know what you're talking about. Do you know anything about generative music?" damn sean, what's wrong with you??


"vekoS" starts off with some really cool synth chords. then some dope beats kick in. whatever, lush synths, farty beats. yeah, so basically just regular idm. i asked sean why this sucks so much ass..."Anality's pretty cool, innit?" he says with a smirk. uh, wtf mate?


"Flep" at first i thought this was gonna be really annoying but then in the end there's this reverby thing that just goes on and on, like they're playing reverb like a synth with lfo modulating the pitch and shit like that. but then this sound just never really stopped. like, even after i turned off my stereo. had to get another hifi system. not sure if that's really cool, like "mental, how'd they fuck up my gear?" or if it's like "hey, maybe i should call warp."


"tuinorizn" twin horizon? idk. anyway. this piece is very cool, i remember hearing a lot of mixer artifacts, like, you can hear them switching to SOLO, there's clearly some phantom power in action, obviously some of the tracks are muted throughout the whole song, and i'm pretty sure they have a light plugged into the board. this gives everything a really cool feel, like very visual as though you were watching them play this on their mixer in their bedroom or whatever. is it a mackie cr1604? i went straight to the source and asked sean how he did all this. ""I was too young to understand what was going on but I knew it was amazing." word


"bladelores" best track by far. basically, because they use lush pads. clearly rob was awake for the recording of this. since i knew he was responsible for the lush pads and emotional vibes on their previous records, i asked rob how he felt about this track in particular and how he gets things so lush. "I am a really bad programmer; I’m just a straightforward person when it comes to that. I’m not that boffin when it comes to scripting in C or C+ (sic) or whatever." wtf is boffin? but yeah, lesson learned: if you're not that good at computer programing you still have a shot at doing lush pads and stuff.


"1 1 is" hmmm...i'm not sure if it's just the political climate these days or what but i was getting a very "gay" vibe from this one. like, it's got this guy whispering "IDM, I'd do him." over and over which was weird. then there's this grunty synth that sounds kinda like a guy panting. hmmm. and the track title, is 1 + 1 two members of the same sex? i felt this couldn't be mere coincidence so i asked sean. "I might consider like, a person. I don't consider like, a thousand people. You can't consider 20,000 people who are into the sort of things we're into. You can't really reach out with people. We don't really make an effort to try. That's not really the sort of people we are. We want people to feel good. I just don't know if we do it the same as everyone else." does that clear it up? i can't tell. great track tho.


"nodezsh" i know this probably sounds mental but after "11 is" i spent a long time browsing the net looking up articles about gay marriage and watching that sean penn film "milk." so, i wasn't exactly "listening" to the album after this point. nodezsh...pretty good i guess.


"runrepik" -- "YJY UX." yeah, so these all kind of blended together which is fine because honestly, who really listens to a whole autechre album anyway? their shit is more for when you want to weird people out in the cafeteria when they see you drawing in your sketchbook with headphones on and they ask what you're listening to so you turn up "rettic ac" and hand over the headphones and she's just like "wtf? sounds like it's broken" and you're just like "ha! wicked, ae strikes again PWNT" and mostly people just think you're either some weird school shooter or some nerdy IT guy or basically just really pretentious and you walk around saying shit like "i don't like music with lyrics, it's too literal, i'm more interested in pure sound that isn't trying to tell me what to feel." you also probably use "chiastic slide" when you're setting up a new sound system as your test record, not because it's the perfect test record but just so you can play it really loud and center the chair perfectly between the speakers for like 15 minutes and your girlfriend with think it's so cute but then a year later she's like "i feel like i don't exist" and you're just like "i'm sorry but music is important to me, i'm not going to give that up just to go out to some stupid twilight movie" or whatever. you'll break up. well whatever, good album but it's not like i'm going to flip the vinyl over 8 times or something. just listen to the C-D side, best one innit? 9/10.


sean just wanted to add this: " I've just been getting into trees recently, the way that a tree branches - decisions, splits. I love Oak trees. The most amazing thing about plants is that they don't ever get old; they 're so much better than animals."

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest

Guest

Posted
Posted

yes but the coherity of Oversteps one is a subtle coherence, although reading throught the excite review i am finding little gems in it, for example the word "lush".

thank you

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Guest CobalTim

Guest CobalTim

Posted
Posted

this is IDM. Id do him.

 

I'm just a lurker, but what happened to your Yoda Dog?

 

By the way, @alcofribas, nice review.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.