Are Ae getting better as they age?

[Candiru]

Quaristice is dope. Overall, I'm not a huge fan of EP7, Confield, and Untilted. They're a bit drab overall, but Draft 7.30 has some bangers. They seem to be having more fun these days, I dunno. 

[d-a-m-o]

That being said I'd like warp to drop the next repress wave !

[doorjamb]

We’ve definitely seen drastic stylistic transformation from them over the years, but I have a hard time seeing it as genuinely linear, logical, or progressive (except in terms of technical expertise), so it feels weird to say they have or haven’t “gotten better.” For the most part their marked shifts seem more on the level of genre or palette than quality. For example, it’s not like Oversteps is structurally or texturally richer than Untilted; it’s just aiming to be something completely different. Quaristice is another good example: initially, I thought, ”Oh, cool, they got sick of autistic slice’n’dicery, & instead had some fun w/ their pre-/epi-Autechre loves (hip-hop, acid, etc.),” but soon I realized the same attention to detial/nuance that’s so front-&-center in Draft/Untilted is there in Quaristice too, only the traditional simplicity of the latter’s main genre tropes demanded understatement, reserve, & to some extent even deliberate obscurantism. Whereas Oversteps & especially the Elseqs are shooting for an almost completely antithetical vision, i.e., all texture & detail, with almost no adherence to recognizable generic structures or tropes. Like, the pendulu(m) casually swung hard one way, then even harder another.

 

TLDR: The boys aren’t getting objectively “better” over time; they’re just accumulating technical & artistic mastery, while simultaneously working really hard to avoid doing the same thing twice (unless/until they feel they can significantly outdo a previous effort in the same vein).