AE_LIVE

[goDel]

Awesome post, cygnus! Love it!

 

This might be kind of 'off topic' but do you guys think this is a new way autechre are releasing an 'album' so to speak? Might there be tracks coming after in the form of vinyl/cd? (From there new live patches/software)

Id be happy to wait until mid next year for say a 10 track LP, but not another 3 years! That's for sure.
What do you guys think/know about this?
We've all wanted this to happen though - so great to have it finally released, it's wonderful, but I'd always want me an Lp -> Ep vinyl/cd release with the artwork to admire and treasure.

 

There are a couple of reasons I'd love to see a new album besides these livesets. Old-fashioned perhaps, but here it goes.

 

Most important reason is that, imo these sets are filled with tunes to be heard on a huge set in the dark. This is not your average listening autechre, imo. This is turn up the volume, turn off the lights and feel the music autechre. Stop listening but be immersed and feel the bass. That's all bloody brilliant, but I'd like to have an album worth of listening tunes from ae as well! That means not the banging AE-tunes from these sets dominating your mind while you're playing it, but rather the stuff which can also be played in the background. Somewhat lighter. Perhaps more ambient. More melodic. Music made for smaller speakers, so to speak. (yeah, i'm prolly an effeminate sexist fruitcake)

 

Second, I'd like to be able to listen in smaller doses. Which is exactly what an oldfashioned album with individual tracks brings to the table. And I'm not interested to cut these livesets up myself. Although at times I'm pretty close at giving that idea a go.

 

Third, I'd like it if these tracks had some sort of definite shape. Again, old fashioned, but I'd like these experiments to lead into some final endstate where you can say: "ok, this is it. now move on to something new."

 

Anywhos. Loving these sets. And hoping a new album will see the light of day pretty soon too.

[sweepstakes]

I'm thinking of chopping these all up in the Octatrack and amusing myself by making permutations of the recorded material. Not even as a means to create some kind of megamix, just to better understand the material. Because what we have right now is awesome but it's also hard to process, impenetrable in a way none of their other work has been for me.

 

The big picture does seem to hint at their own perspective on their music somewhat. Especially when you think of some of the stuff they said in AAA, like how they have 350 hours' worth of jams just from one year. What the fuck.

[goDel]

If there was some timetable to cut these sets into individual tracks, I'd be all over it. I actually hate skipping through these sets, and I can rarely finish a set in one sitting. It's like being forced to eat an entire chocolate cake, when you're only interested in eating one piece.

[triachus]

when we were in chicago (@ the metro) sound checking, sean & rob were playing that banging middle track to get a feel for the space w/ jamie harley our soundguy, and for whatever reason it was taking a bit longer than usual ( maybe the levels were off or something like that, to me it was perfect, i was standing alone in the middle of the room by myself) they were playing the second movement of that beat (the part when the bassline kind of gets acid filtered/Highpassed or whatever and the cymbal/knife sound gets more flangey), and they played just that one movement for at least 10 minutes without stopping. just that one part alone, with all sounds activated. over and over, w/ the loop just regenerating itself in different permutations & shapes each time, kicks pounding like plastic explosives, and that bassline ,reason enuff to commit ones self to an asylum after hearing

 

i mean this with no minutia of hyperbole, exxageration, or pretense- it was, without question, one of the most unutterable and unspeakable circumstances i have ever found myself in, and could ever attempt give expression to thru thought and word. i have probably never experienced anything so ferociously alien & hilariously dope in my 31 trips around the sun. like literally under pressure my desire to dance transformed into something alien and external to myself - i thought i would grow 2 extra arms and levitate off the ground, legs crossed & my eyes would blacken like a grey and my dredlocks would grow 10 feet long. i dont think (+ im not sure if) they intend for that track to be heard that way & for that i felt like i was partaking in some sort of endurance experiment. it cannot be described what it was to get absolutely rekt by that loop so many times in a row at full volume on pounding PA and that wasn't even the only time that something like that happened. something split open between the kicks & that knifing,metallic spraypaint can flange and i absolutely fuckin lost it, when it was over i flipped my bag over my shoulder and went "jesus fucking christ"

 

the only thing that compares to it was seeing DJ krush in 2004 at the Sandaga 813 in dfw (it was the Minc Lounge back then, I think) he got to a part where he played that track "Black Hole" from Message At The Depth (amazing album btw) and he was cutting, slicing and scratching on the decks and butt-fucking the beat on a mpc or sp-404 or something, and he destroyed that ridiculous shit for for what felt like 10-15 minutes without stopping. he would drop the kick and re-do the pattern and then bring it back in and each time everyone in the audience was like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" roaring like it was a football game . the energy in the room. he was just working the repetitions over and over again to fucking destroy the crowd. i was transformed when i saw that shit . do u guys know how fucking stupidly dope dj krush used to be live? i dont think he does that anymore but i could b wrong. hes mellowed out

 

anyways yea its one of those experiences where words are just ghosts; you cant describe it. pure energy

damn

[dr lopez]

 

 

the only thing that compares to it was seeing DJ krush in 2004 at the Sandaga 813 in dfw (it was the Minc Lounge back then, I think) he got to a part where he played that track "Black Hole" from Message At The Depth (amazing album btw) and he was cutting, slicing and scratching on the decks and butt-fucking the beat on a mpc or sp-404 or something, and he destroyed that ridiculous shit for for what felt like 10-15 minutes without stopping. he would drop the kick and re-do the pattern and then bring it back in and each time everyone in the audience was like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH" roaring like it was a football game . the energy in the room. he was just working the repetitions over and over again to fucking destroy the crowd. i was transformed when i saw that shit . do u guys know how fucking stupidly dope dj krush used to be live? i dont think he does that anymore but i could b wrong. hes mellowed out

 

holy shit this also sounds amazing

[zlemflolia]

Awesome post, cygnus! Love it!

 

This might be kind of 'off topic' but do you guys think this is a new way autechre are releasing an 'album' so to speak? Might there be tracks coming after in the form of vinyl/cd? (From there new live patches/software)

 

Id be happy to wait until mid next year for say a 10 track LP, but not another 3 years! That's for sure.

What do you guys think/know about this?

We've all wanted this to happen though - so great to have it finally released, it's wonderful, but I'd always want me an Lp -> Ep vinyl/cd release with the artwork to admire and treasure.

 

There are a couple of reasons I'd love to see a new album besides these livesets. Old-fashioned perhaps, but here it goes.

 

Most important reason is that, imo these sets are filled with tunes to be heard on a huge set in the dark. This is not your average listening autechre, imo. This is turn up the volume, turn off the lights and feel the music autechre. Stop listening but be immersed and feel the bass. That's all bloody brilliant, but I'd like to have an album worth of listening tunes from ae as well! That means not the banging AE-tunes from these sets dominating your mind while you're playing it, but rather the stuff which can also be played in the background. Somewhat lighter. Perhaps more ambient. More melodic. Music made for smaller speakers, so to speak. (yeah, i'm prolly an effeminate sexist fruitcake)

 

Second, I'd like to be able to listen in smaller doses. Which is exactly what an oldfashioned album with individual tracks brings to the table. And I'm not interested to cut these livesets up myself. Although at times I'm pretty close at giving that idea a go.

 

Third, I'd like it if these tracks had some sort of definite shape. Again, old fashioned, but I'd like these experiments to lead into some final endstate where you can say: "ok, this is it. now move on to something new."

 

Anywhos. Loving these sets. And hoping a new album will see the light of day pretty soon too.

 

I sort of halfway agree. There's a massive advantage in having fewer perceptible track separations, sometimes they blend together in the live sets. I do like having tunes with names to be able to digest them more easily instead of a big 1 hour 15 minute blob, or in this case 9 of them (oh my god ty s&r). there are advantages to both I've begun listening to all these live sets and trying to find differences. I almost want to cut them apart myself so I can more easily compare individual tracks over time and sort of gain a chronology of how they evolved but I feel that would be counter to what sean n rob intended by uploading them as 1h long tracks

 

also the mastering on them isn't the most amazing, I do feel they are still sort of meant for a large live environment and not as much a headphones listening environment, or maybe I'm wrong

 

these are amazing but I would be a tiny bit disappointed I will admit if they never released another "real" album again and only ever did soundboard recordings, but I highly doubt that will happen lol but just saying. because this is difficult to digest. maybe we should abandon digestion altogether and listen in the moment and nothing more without any intention of being able to predict exactly what is coming next down to the last sound like I always aim for in official released tracks

Edited December 8, 2015 by Zeffolia

[cygnus]

fantastic. please post more stories from the tour!

 

edit: @cygnus

i could write a 400 fucking page book about the whole 4 month period beginning with my dad being diagnosed with cancer and the tour wrapping up. i feel like a black hole that sucked in all the rest of the black holes -- i have no idea what is positive,negative, at all. everything is just held in this weird centre. to attempt distinguishing results in failure, so i just hop on the machines and make a track about it from time to time. i have no idea what i am doing. i really miss hanging out with the tour crew. every day. i havent talked much about the tour cause tbh i dont want to appear braggadocious & i dont want to give word to things indescribable and ruin them for myself, or misrepresent them to other ppl. btw have y'all listened to 199X yet ??? :) <--- lets see who gets that

 

i want to share stories from the tour but wana keep most of the best memories for myself. but then i realize that i have so many stories that its ridiculous and i can share some. its in the spirit of the tour anyway, i'm afraid theyd care but i dont think theyd care . they know whats up. b4 i really say anything, the basic idea that all the words orbit around is that i hope all of you are doing well and are seriously happy, if any of your relatives or friends are sick or anything like that, or if youre having to make trips to the hospital to see someone special to you, i know its inappropriate to even go here publically but man, i fucking love you and i know what youre going through and i'm right there with you. life is an indescribable mystery and aint it strange that it comes with pain too? its like a hyperreal video game where you can actually get hurt. hang in there and everything will be fine, there are people there for you to carry you if you let them, and just take it day by day. whether u believe in god or not doesnt really matter, cus atheist or theist you are surrounded by supportive loved ones and you should reach out to them, be with them. they love u and even if u dont think they do, they think about you before they go to sleep at night and wonder how you are feeling. if you lost something in the past or someone special to you, man i know that pain. that is terrible. i would listen to you talk for hours about it and it would be easy because it would be my own words becuase i have lost so much myself. lost everything except my rhythm. i dont know what the fuck i will do when i lose that LMAO, ill just post tracks on bandcamp that are all silence and ask for money. it's "art " tho

 

anyway the funniest thing that happened on tour was actually on the very first night. we didn't have a bus yet, we were in Portland. i'll start from when i left from dallas. actually i'll just describe the entire day. this is super emotional for me. any single day i pick out from the tour is super emotional and it's weird, even one of the travel days where we weren't doing anything but lounging on the bus. so i wake up at my girlfriends place around 9am that morning and i grab my bags, we hop in her car and it's off to DFW. my composure is stable but theres a television set in my brain scrolling a ticker and it reads "you are about to go on a tour with a band you have idolized for 15 years. you are going to live with them and be in the company of nothing but complete strangers for 30 days. have a panic attack you bitch" and my blood pressure spikes, the readout for my blood pressure wouldve said "999999999 PSI" or whatever. my girlfriend drops me off at the airport, im concealing a panic attack the same way id be concealing a bomb and i'm at an airport which kind of makes me laugh internally, i calm down a bit. TSA fuck with me a little bit about my pelican case which has my elektron rytm,analog4,blofeld,mixer,tb3 and mpc in it. it's just over the weight that prices it at 60 or 70 dollars. bitch weighs 80 pounds and is not very easy to drag around. probably at 30-40 pounds, yeah, but at 70-80, its just unweildy.

 

my girlfriend says very warm/honey/milky things to me , she loves me so much man, she's crying because we're going to be apart for a month. we say goodbye and the last thing she says is "they chose you, because you are awesome. if you were not awesome you wouldn't have been chosen. believe it." i'm holding back, at that point, tears, a panic attack, my knees are vibrating. i'm only mildly harassed for being brown by the TSA security check and then i hop on the plane. i'm seated next to a guy in a yellow shirt. TV screen ticker in my head starts scrolling "you are 30 thousand feet off of the ground, have another panic attack bitch", so the last panic attack goes nuclear. i order a gin & tonic, it subsides. i order another gin & tonic, its calm. panic attack goes from being a lion and i turn it into a soft little baby kitten. success. drink another one and I'm passed out. remember what i said in the last paragraph because everything in this paragraph basically means what i said there, the words are just orbiting and theyre meaningless. i wake up in portland, i text my girlfriend saying i landed, etc. i call mark parsons, our tour manager, get directions to the hotel we're staying at. marks voice is a lot deeper than i expected it to be.

 

im feeling pretty stabilized after a bowl of soup at a restaurant in the airport. i lol to myself when i realize i'm in portland and there's an actual open mic with a dude playing the guitar in the airport terminal. straight out of portlandia. i catch a cab, we're driving to the hotel and the landscape just catches me. if you 've not been to dallas, tx - it is a godforsaken flatland, covered in concrete, buildings. there are some places with greenery, plant-life, but it's rare. and i mean it doesn't really count because someone put it there, right? i take out my phone and make a video . i arrive at the hotel , pay the cabbie with my card. first being i see walking to me is rob brown, wearing a white t-shirt and khaki's and sunglasses. gives me a huge hug and a welcome, warm smile . asks me how was my flight, i tell him it was good - takes me over to a courtyard where sean and rob hall are chilling. sean & rob are wearing sunglasses, the chairs are black, metal, the walls of the courtyard are short, its small - there's bees flying around. i'm talking with the guys, while i think mark is trying to find out which hotel room is mine for the night. feels like i'm hanging out with good old friends/brothers/comrades and all sense of panic or psychic destabilization subsides completely. it's around 4 or 5 pm. we all go to my hotel room, i drop my suitcase and gear off. we're all chilling in my room for about 2-3 hours just talking. me & sean vaping, rob halls talking about skam, rob b's talking about autechrey stuff, sean goes into it about electro in the 80s, man parrish, and autechrey stuff. rob browns talking about sound mixing. i could outline everything said cause i know u would want to read it i just dont feel like indexing all of that. they tell me about jamie harley (the sound guy), mark. from this point until i went home a month later i would have no sense that i was hanging out with idols or celebrities but brothers, friends, but even more importantly humans - good humans - because that's what you need. thats whats important ultimately in any scenario you get into in your life. you want to be around good people, people who you vibe well with and feel relaxed around. it is as important as oxygen imo.

 

i want to expedite the part of setting up for the show when we get to the venue because its very routine -- except for one part when sean & rob were opening up their mixer and sean couldnt open the box with a knife, rob gives it a try and then gives it back to sean , leaving to retrieve something else. mark asks sean "what are you moaning about " and he's on stage with his arms at his side standing above this box with their mixer in it, frustrated af "I couldn't get the box open even with this knife, I felt like I might as well just start stabbing me-self in the face with it" causing me to laugh my ass off

 

we play the gig and it's awesome . first gig of the tour, goes off great. we pwn everybody - my set is like 100 times better than i was thinking it would be. rob hall plays in the room adjacent to the stage @ holocene in his own booth. he kiled both nights with his sets even tho not too many people danced. visual crowd. anyways yea my sets were dope - elektron gear rly needs good subs to represent that bass but also needs something else, a kind of sweet spot that can single out the transient in the kick drum. i learned so much just on the first day from sean & rob & rob hall & jamie about sound mixing ,it was like space oddyssey 2001 when the apes find the obelisk. i'm like shit i've been doing that wrong for 5 years? ok. lol. after the gig i meet and hang out with claude young, golden donna (you guys hear of him? joel? from portland. hes dope, look him up) i get invited by some complete fucking rando's to go to a weird after party type thing. i don't.

 

ANYWAY. we get crammed into a van because its first day of tour and we don't have a bus yet. me and sean are in the back and rob hall & rob brown get into the next row. rob hall puts his seat back as he's in front of sean. sean's obviously cramped to shit with his backpack in his lap and his legs folded like an armchairs almost. he goes, "What am I? A fucking mongoose?"

 

for so many reasons, exhaustion related and just the visual image of a mongoose transposing over his cramped legs, and because mongoose aren't birds but have the word "goose", i died laughing . i literally was like lmao until we got back to the hotel. and thats is what i wrote all of this stuff just now for.

 

the human mind is something indescribable, something u cannot put to words because for all the effort and writing i just did, i mean, all of that , with all of its emotion, the thoughts, is literally not even .001% of the total experience of just that first half of the day, or the gig, or after it . not even close. could literally write a 900 page book

[Guest WNS000]

To me, standard albums are important because, in general, they are more thought-out and composed. And I am sucker for perfectly composed music with a lot of subtlety which is exactly what Ae are capable of on their studio releases. That being said, I love the jams too. Two different things for me. So I hope for both.

 

EDIT:

 

Thanks for all the read, cygnus. Very interesting. Power to your dad.

Edited December 8, 2015 by Jev

[Ivan Ooze]

wow fuck, Dour is on it, can't believe it!!! was there with my mates this summer, they played just after hatebreed in a hot tent all dark and blew everyones minds to shreds! best thing i was at this year

i can't wait to hear it again, thank you autechre!!!!!

[styrio]

So is it that although these are live sets, Sean and Rob are actually presenting the new album in different permutations. I say that after only listening to Krems from the new batch released yesterday and the previous 4 from October. If the source material is essentially the same across the sets could this be their intention? I know it could be said that every tour would then constitute a new album, but they haven't presented us with any old sets like they have here and god knows the demand has been there for ages from all of us. So maybe this is the new Album we are actually hearing. 9 variations on theme as has been mentioned in this thread.

 

Saying that a new album would be nice. lol

 

All in all these are truly glorious times. And this Krems set is doin the business. Long may this sort of thing continue.

Edited December 8, 2015 by styrio

[goDel]

@cyg: good luck with your dad. i hope the diagnose was early and his outlook is great, given the circumstances.

[sweepstakes]

Something that really strikes me about this material, and someone else may have mentioned this already, is that the individual techniques they're using aren't all that complex. But they're combining them into configurations (and rearranging those configurations) that would be horrendously difficult to set up with traditional DAWs. Like the stuff they're doing with AM or audio-rate gating, delay lines, filtering, etc. It only works because the whole system is so interconnected, the pieces are aware of the other pieces and are being driven by the same data. Lots of the trippiest parts seem to be fairly simple combinations of processes but the settings are based on very precise harmonics and timing that creates this extra "living" element.

Also thanks cygnus, I know you do and will hold a lot of these experiences close to your heart and don't want to do your memories a disservice but I appreciate you sharing what you can.

[cygnus]

 

Thanks for all the read, cygnus. Very interesting. Power to your dad.

 

he died just before i went on tour. i appreciate your kind words tho man very thoughtful of u. peace & love

[zlemflolia]

 

 

Thanks for all the read, cygnus. Very interesting. Power to your dad.

 

he died just before i went on tour. i appreciate your kind words tho man very thoughtful of u. peace & love

 

 

[goDel]

damn

[ambermonk]

 

i could write a 400 fucking page book about the whole 4 month period beginning with my dad being diagnosed with cancer and the tour wrapping up. i feel like a black hole that sucked in all the rest of the black holes -- i have no idea what is positive,negative, at all. everything is just held in this weird centre. to attempt distinguishing results in failure, so i just hop on the machines and make a track about it from time to time. i have no idea what i am doing. i really miss hanging out with the tour crew. every day. i havent talked much about the tour cause tbh i dont want to appear braggadocious & i dont want to give word to things indescribable and ruin them for myself, or misrepresent them to other ppl. btw have y'all listened to 199X yet ??? :) <--- lets see who gets that

 

i want to share stories from the tour but wana keep most of the best memories for myself. but then i realize that i have so many stories that its ridiculous and i can share some. its in the spirit of the tour anyway, i'm afraid theyd care but i dont think theyd care . they know whats up. b4 i really say anything, the basic idea that all the words orbit around is that i hope all of you are doing well and are seriously happy, if any of your relatives or friends are sick or anything like that, or if youre having to make trips to the hospital to see someone special to you, i know its inappropriate to even go here publically but man, i fucking love you and i know what youre going through and i'm right there with you. life is an indescribable mystery and aint it strange that it comes with pain too? its like a hyperreal video game where you can actually get hurt. hang in there and everything will be fine, there are people there for you to carry you if you let them, and just take it day by day. whether u believe in god or not doesnt really matter, cus atheist or theist you are surrounded by supportive loved ones and you should reach out to them, be with them. they love u and even if u dont think they do, they think about you before they go to sleep at night and wonder how you are feeling. if you lost something in the past or someone special to you, man i know that pain. that is terrible. i would listen to you talk for hours about it and it would be easy because it would be my own words becuase i have lost so much myself. lost everything except my rhythm. i dont know what the fuck i will do when i lose that LMAO, ill just post tracks on bandcamp that are all silence and ask for money. it's "art " tho

 

anyway the funniest thing that happened on tour was actually on the very first night. we didn't have a bus yet, we were in Portland. i'll start from when i left from dallas. actually i'll just describe the entire day. this is super emotional for me. any single day i pick out from the tour is super emotional and it's weird, even one of the travel days where we weren't doing anything but lounging on the bus. so i wake up at my girlfriends place around 9am that morning and i grab my bags, we hop in her car and it's off to DFW. my composure is stable but theres a television set in my brain scrolling a ticker and it reads "you are about to go on a tour with a band you have idolized for 15 years. you are going to live with them and be in the company of nothing but complete strangers for 30 days. have a panic attack you bitch" and my blood pressure spikes, the readout for my blood pressure wouldve said "999999999 PSI" or whatever. my girlfriend drops me off at the airport, im concealing a panic attack the same way id be concealing a bomb and i'm at an airport which kind of makes me laugh internally, i calm down a bit. TSA fuck with me a little bit about my pelican case which has my elektron rytm,analog4,blofeld,mixer,tb3 and mpc in it. it's just over the weight that prices it at 60 or 70 dollars. bitch weighs 80 pounds and is not very easy to drag around. probably at 30-40 pounds, yeah, but at 70-80, its just unweildy.

 

my girlfriend says very warm/honey/milky things to me , she loves me so much man, she's crying because we're going to be apart for a month. we say goodbye and the last thing she says is "they chose you, because you are awesome. if you were not awesome you wouldn't have been chosen. believe it." i'm holding back, at that point, tears, a panic attack, my knees are vibrating. i'm only mildly harassed for being brown by the TSA security check and then i hop on the plane. i'm seated next to a guy in a yellow shirt. TV screen ticker in my head starts scrolling "you are 30 thousand feet off of the ground, have another panic attack bitch", so the last panic attack goes nuclear. i order a gin & tonic, it subsides. i order another gin & tonic, its calm. panic attack goes from being a lion and i turn it into a soft little baby kitten. success. drink another one and I'm passed out. remember what i said in the last paragraph because everything in this paragraph basically means what i said there, the words are just orbiting and theyre meaningless. i wake up in portland, i text my girlfriend saying i landed, etc. i call mark parsons, our tour manager, get directions to the hotel we're staying at. marks voice is a lot deeper than i expected it to be.

 

im feeling pretty stabilized after a bowl of soup at a restaurant in the airport. i lol to myself when i realize i'm in portland and there's an actual open mic with a dude playing the guitar in the airport terminal. straight out of portlandia. i catch a cab, we're driving to the hotel and the landscape just catches me. if you 've not been to dallas, tx - it is a godforsaken flatland, covered in concrete, buildings. there are some places with greenery, plant-life, but it's rare. and i mean it doesn't really count because someone put it there, right? i take out my phone and make a video . i arrive at the hotel , pay the cabbie with my card. first being i see walking to me is rob brown, wearing a white t-shirt and khaki's and sunglasses. gives me a huge hug and a welcome, warm smile . asks me how was my flight, i tell him it was good - takes me over to a courtyard where sean and rob hall are chilling. sean & rob are wearing sunglasses, the chairs are black, metal, the walls of the courtyard are short, its small - there's bees flying around. i'm talking with the guys, while i think mark is trying to find out which hotel room is mine for the night. feels like i'm hanging out with good old friends/brothers/comrades and all sense of panic or psychic destabilization subsides completely. it's around 4 or 5 pm. we all go to my hotel room, i drop my suitcase and gear off. we're all chilling in my room for about 2-3 hours just talking. me & sean vaping, rob halls talking about skam, rob b's talking about autechrey stuff, sean goes into it about electro in the 80s, man parrish, and autechrey stuff. rob browns talking about sound mixing. i could outline everything said cause i know u would want to read it i just dont feel like indexing all of that. they tell me about jamie harley (the sound guy), mark. from this point until i went home a month later i would have no sense that i was hanging out with idols or celebrities but brothers, friends, but even more importantly humans - good humans - because that's what you need. thats whats important ultimately in any scenario you get into in your life. you want to be around good people, people who you vibe well with and feel relaxed around. it is as important as oxygen imo.

 

i want to expedite the part of setting up for the show when we get to the venue because its very routine -- except for one part when sean & rob were opening up their mixer and sean couldnt open the box with a knife, rob gives it a try and then gives it back to sean , leaving to retrieve something else. mark asks sean "what are you moaning about " and he's on stage with his arms at his side standing above this box with their mixer in it, frustrated af "I couldn't get the box open even with this knife, I felt like I might as well just start stabbing me-self in the face with it" causing me to laugh my ass off

 

we play the gig and it's awesome . first gig of the tour, goes off great. we pwn everybody - my set is like 100 times better than i was thinking it would be. rob hall plays in the room adjacent to the stage @ holocene in his own booth. he kiled both nights with his sets even tho not too many people danced. visual crowd. anyways yea my sets were dope - elektron gear rly needs good subs to represent that bass but also needs something else, a kind of sweet spot that can single out the transient in the kick drum. i learned so much just on the first day from sean & rob & rob hall & jamie about sound mixing ,it was like space oddyssey 2001 when the apes find the obelisk. i'm like shit i've been doing that wrong for 5 years? ok. lol. after the gig i meet and hang out with claude young, golden donna (you guys hear of him? joel? from portland. hes dope, look him up) i get invited by some complete fucking rando's to go to a weird after party type thing. i don't.

 

ANYWAY. we get crammed into a van because its first day of tour and we don't have a bus yet. me and sean are in the back and rob hall & rob brown get into the next row. rob hall puts his seat back as he's in front of sean. sean's obviously cramped to shit with his backpack in his lap and his legs folded like an armchairs almost. he goes, "What am I? A fucking mongoose?"

 

for so many reasons, exhaustion related and just the visual image of a mongoose transposing over his cramped legs, and because mongoose aren't birds but have the word "goose", i died laughing . i literally was like lmao until we got back to the hotel. and thats is what i wrote all of this stuff just now for.

 

the human mind is something indescribable, something u cannot put to words because for all the effort and writing i just did, i mean, all of that , with all of its emotion, the thoughts, is literally not even .001% of the total experience of just that first half of the day, or the gig, or after it . not even close. could literally write a 900 page book

 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. Thx for sharing Cygnus, even tho you had reservations about doing so.

 

I still remember when the two of us were shooting the shit on aphextwin.nu (b4 it became xltronic) and autechre.nu back in 2002, as long ago as that was. Not trying to be a stalker or anything, but even back then was good times. (I was "pachI")

 

Hell of a show you and the crew put on this year. Best musical performance I've seen in my life, and that's no exaggeration. And you have my condolences about your Dad. Nearly lost mine three years ago.

 

Just keep doing what you're doing, and continue keeping us all posted on your live and studio recordings and all of your future works and tours. Peace and love.

[cygnus]

Something that really strikes me about this material, and someone else may have mentioned this already, is that the individual techniques they're using aren't all that complex. But they're combining them into configurations (and rearranging those configurations) that would be horrendously difficult to set up with traditional DAWs. Like the stuff they're doing with AM or audio-rate gating, delay lines, filtering, etc. It only works because the whole system is so interconnected, the pieces are aware of the other pieces and are being driven by the same data. Lots of the trippiest parts seem to be fairly simple combinations of processes but the settings are based on very precise harmonics and timing that creates this extra "living" element.

 

 

me & sean talk about that quite a bit how its kind of like how when u listen to Dilla or Metro's beats (actually idk if sean is into metro) its really not about the complexity or intricacy but kind of like creating a dynamic situation whereupon emphasis&focus can be placed on certain sounds . and i mean from my point of view that's completely ancient, call & answer style rhythm programming. i was asking him once on tour about what his setup does and what does what and etc and he was like "ok so this thing does this, this other thing effects the other thing" and it seems to be kind of like a neural network. different from a traditional drum machine or groovebox where the human is deciding what happens in time and the sounds really have no choice it seems (to me and i could be completely wrong) that theyve given the sounds the freedom of choice in a kind of diminished way, not that the sounds are thinking. from hearing their set live with full dynamics on huge PA's i kind of get the idea that the sounds are aware of each other and interact with a modicum of intelligence, A.I. if you will . not super smart like a search engine or facial recognition but things like time are considered. whats interesting is that compression makes sounds "think " about each other and considerations are made about the dynamic interaction of sounds but its more political at that level, the compressor is kind of like a really stupid dictator, idk. sean & rob are fucking hackers tho because when u listen to the sets on headphones or on some nice headphones the trax take on a completely different form - when you hear it live you might come to the conclusion like me that the sounds are engineered to exploit the PA. like i said in a post in the AMAA i wish i had been able to ascertain the details of anything they are doing in max/msp but i just dont know enuff about it to prevent exhaustion and nausea from trying to understand it i feel like i might vom all over my jeans already starting to feel light headed from visualizing their rig . i dont get it

Edited December 8, 2015 by cygnus

[Guest WNS000]

 

 

Thanks for all the read, cygnus. Very interesting. Power to your dad.

 

he died just before i went on tour. i appreciate your kind words tho man very thoughtful of u. peace & love

 

 

Oh shit man, I am sorry. Power to you then.

[cygnus]

i feel the same way about rob hall with his DJ sets - the tracks he chooses and the way he DJ's he is basically transforming the tracks into songparts. Love how he will play a raw riddim track and just space out the rest of the mix. He is basically up there jamming away and you can never guess that he's playing other pppls tracks. Before we went on tour I'm on facebook and I see him post "So we're about to go on tour across the united states! If you want me to play some of your tracks, send me a .zip file" and gives his email address

 

So it's the 5th or 6th day on tour, we're in Chicago unpacking in the hotel room, and I ask Rob about that and he went "Fucking hell, that was the worst Idea ive ever had, Ive received over 500gb of music and couldnt possibly play half of it" or something like that , I lmaoed

Edited December 8, 2015 by cygnus

[Guest WNS000]

 

Something that really strikes me about this material, and someone else may have mentioned this already, is that the individual techniques they're using aren't all that complex. But they're combining them into configurations (and rearranging those configurations) that would be horrendously difficult to set up with traditional DAWs. Like the stuff they're doing with AM or audio-rate gating, delay lines, filtering, etc. It only works because the whole system is so interconnected, the pieces are aware of the other pieces and are being driven by the same data. Lots of the trippiest parts seem to be fairly simple combinations of processes but the settings are based on very precise harmonics and timing that creates this extra "living" element.

 

 

me & sean talk about that quite a bit how its kind of like how when u listen to Dilla or Metro's beats (actually idk if sean is into metro) its really not about the complexity or intricacy but kind of like creating a dynamic situation whereupon emphasis&focus can be placed on certain sounds . and i mean from my point of view that's completely ancient, call & answer style rhythm programming. i was asking him once on tour about what his setup does and what does what and etc and he was like "ok so this thing does this, this other thing effects the other thing" and it seems to be kind of like a neural network. different from a traditional drum machine or groovebox where the human is deciding what happens in time and the sounds really have no choice it seems (to me and i could be completely wrong) that theyve given the sounds the freedom of choice in a kind of diminished way, not that the sounds are thinking. from hearing their set live with full dynamics on huge PA's i kind of get the idea that the sounds are aware of each other and interact with a modicum of intelligence, A.I. if you will . not super smart like a search engine or facial recognition but things like time are considered. whats interesting is that compression makes sounds "think " about each other and considerations are made about the dynamic interaction of sounds but its more political at that level, the compressor is kind of like a really stupid dictator, idk. sean & rob are fucking hackers tho because when u listen to the sets on headphones or on some nice headphones the trax take on a completely different form - when you hear it live you might come to the conclusion like me that the sounds are engineered to exploit the PA. like i said in a post in the AMAA i wish i had been able to ascertain the details of anything they are doing in max/msp but i just dont know enuff about it to prevent exhaustion and nausea from trying to understand it i feel like i might vom all over my jeans already starting to feel light headed from visualizing their rig . i dont get it

 

 

Can you elaborate the part about the compressor? I don't understand what compressor means in this context. Like a typical audio compressor?

 

Something that really strikes me about this material, and someone else may have mentioned this already, is that the individual techniques they're using aren't all that complex. But they're combining them into configurations (and rearranging those configurations) that would be horrendously difficult to set up with traditional DAWs. Like the stuff they're doing with AM or audio-rate gating, delay lines, filtering, etc. It only works because the whole system is so interconnected, the pieces are aware of the other pieces and are being driven by the same data. Lots of the trippiest parts seem to be fairly simple combinations of processes but the settings are based on very precise harmonics and timing that creates this extra "living" element.

 

Also thanks cygnus, I know you do and will hold a lot of these experiences close to your heart and don't want to do your memories a disservice but I appreciate you sharing what you can.

 

Yes, it "just" seem to be really cleverly programmed with a good music in mind. I like that point of view. I believe there is a lot of taste involved even when programming algorithms. It is very easy to program non-sense generative patches in PD/MAX but it takes some thinking, and even a bit of music theory to program something clever and tasteful. Lots of the philosophy seem to be not too much different from working in a DAW. The taste and ideas is everything.

Edited December 8, 2015 by Jev

[colunga]

Edited December 9, 2015 by colunga

[xox]

Cygnus, youre a beautiful human being. Happy to know you, even like this.

[rekosn]

 

fantastic. please post more stories from the tour!

 

edit: @cygnus

i could write a 400 fucking page book about the whole 4 month period beginning with my dad being diagnosed with cancer and the tour wrapping up. i feel like a black hole that sucked in all the rest of the black holes -- i have no idea what is positive,negative, at all. everything is just held in this weird centre. to attempt distinguishing results in failure, so i just hop on the machines and make a track about it from time to time. i have no idea what i am doing.

 

ace mega post. thank you :)

Edited December 9, 2015 by rekosn

[thehauntingsoul]

At this point they might as well drop a couple quaristice and oversteps soundboards amirite?

[Guest bitroast]

Thx for sharing that cygnus :cygnusface:

fun read getting that insight. looking forward to hearing 199x and keeping tabs on new tunes :)