elseq 1-5

[Alcofribas]

"Hey Alco, what's your favorite band?"

 

"well, autechre but they're not so much a band as an improv-psychedelic duo using digital instruments."

Edited May 25, 2016 by Alcofribas

[spunktronics]

I think theyve already done all this stuff before with Quadrange.ep.ae nothing new, some beautiful moments by the sounds of it but its just a bit meh.. could have probably reduced all these ideas into a mind blowing double album

[coax]

autechre have released on a variety of different media. in addition to cd, vinyl and cassette they also released a minidisc and sean seemed to flirt with the idea of releasing a dat at one point and said he thought serious music listeners should have a dat machine

 

now, i'm totally on board with this new shit being totally digital, zero complaints from me. but to suggest that physical releases are "antithetical" to the autechre project is utterly ridiculous. the brothers are obviously interested in experimenting with the possibilities unique to different formats.

 

yes, well said!

[Alcofribas]

I think theyve already done all this stuff before with Quadrange.ep.ae nothing new, some beautiful moments by the sounds of it but its just a bit meh.. could have probably reduced all these ideas into a mind blowing double album

 

 

mods pls ban

[Poimandres]

I love defensive Ae fans get when someone turns round and says actually some of these tracks are a bit wank...

 

example: TBM2 6 mins beat not going anywhere?

 

you sure theyre not trolling?

Eh, I'm not into that track but "they spent half as long making this as Oversteps" is tales from your arse!

 

There have always been Autechre tracks that I don't enjoy as much as others. Strokes/folks.

[jaderpansen]

but to suggest that physical releases are "antithetical" to the autechre project is utterly ridiculous.

 

yeah well, i said leaving the physical format behind fits their modus operandi imo but it's not the same as claiming the opposite, that would be obviously wrong as you pointed out (i actually had to think about the surface noise thing, too). it's not like music downloads are 2016+, so they could have switched long ago. anyway i wouldn't be suprised if they settled down with dls for a while. see quaristice release related quote etc... i just think it's silly to question the "properness" of this release based on the fact it's not wrapped in paper or shit. you pay for the music.

[spunktronics]

Ae fan boys ahoy!

 

cleary i'm just not into this album and i think it's a bit overkill.

 

if they released this one part at a time everyone would have a different opinion..

 

Doawnloading wavs to burn to CD for the car, it best be a moment of holy glory when i drive home.

[eugene]

autechre have released on a variety of different media. in addition to cd, vinyl and cassette they also released a minidisc and sean seemed to flirt with the idea of releasing a dat at one point and said he thought serious music listeners should have a dat machine. they've also designed some of their own album art which included frosted jewel cases, embossed sleeves and sean claimed that for a time lp5, which utilized special material for the cd and uniquely curved sleeves for the lps, was his favorite of ae's album art. additionally we are familiar with the whole "incomplete without surface noise" indication.

 

now, i'm totally on board with this new shit being totally digital, zero complaints from me. but to suggest that physical releases are "antithetical" to the autechre project is utterly ridiculous. the brothers are obviously interested in experimenting with the possibilities unique to different formats.

 

people who are self righteous about formats are boring as fuck.

not that donating members of the joyrex-sony-playstation-corporate-industrial complex need to be taken seriously, but the minidisc (with its instant switch from track to track) and surface noise served some musical goals, but i doubt artwork design was ever a necessity for them, it was simply a fact on the ground they had to deal with somehow.

[Poimandres]

Ae fan boys ahoy!

 

cleary i'm just not into this album and i think it's a bit overkill.

 

if they released this one part at a time everyone would have a different opinion..

 

Doawnloading wavs to burn to CD for the car, it best be a moment of holy glory when i drive home.

I don't think Autechre is above criticism, and honestly I'm probably going to end up focusing on certain tracks when all is said and done.

 

But... give it a bit of time and some more listens before giving the final verdict. This is a lot of music and it hasn't even been out a week!

[Alcofribas]

@jaderpansen, it was caze who claimed physical formats were antithetical to the ae project so i was speaking to that idea directly there. imo there's no reason to complain one way or the other. this is an incredible release and it is only available digitally. i don't see the problem. if it was also available on physical formats, well, then also cool.

 

@eugene, well that's pointless speculation. sure, they may have approached physical releases as some necessity over which they had no control but nevertheless they took it seriously and devoted themselves to carefully designing the physically-specific art and playing with what could be done with physical products. exai was a 4 disc album that had very beautifully printed sleeves and space enough for the upcoming l-event ep. no one could look at that and intelligently conclude that it's irrelevant to ae and that they were just responding to a physical limitation of some kind. they clearly like vinyl and wanted to do something cool. you don't like it, sure. but i'm afraid that's your conclusion does not follow the evidence. you recall that exai was described as a series of 12"s. this implies an approach to listening, one with a vinyl-specific context. i don't think your tiresome notion that downloading files to your junky plastic commodities via corporate service providers is the only valid way to experience a record bro.

[sweepstakes]

The Analords made sense on vinyl because they were each somewhere between an EP and a single, and they were pretty clearly each their own little distinct thing with separate release dates. With elseq I feel like the distinction between parts of a whole and 5 different coexisting sub species is intentionally blurry.

 

And if this is taken as a whole it seems ridiculous to get up and flip over the record, what, 20 times? Even for CDs you'd change the disc 4 times which is more akin to educational material on that format.

 

With this and the live material they are pretty clearly trying to see what they can do with the digital format. Like any great artist, they think deeply about the medium. They embrace of the lack of boundaries throughout the music itself as well and even the artwork suggests this ambiguity.

[Alcofribas]

definitely agree ^^

[spunktronics]

this is clearly split in to small chucks like long ep's there no way you would listen to the whole thing in one sitting

 

it's probably the most gescom release theyve done, hearing it now

[caze]

@jaderpansen, it was caze who claimed physical formats were antithetical to the ae project so i was speaking to that idea directly there. imo there's no reason to complain one way or the other. this is an incredible release and it is only available digitally. i don't see the problem. if it was also available on physical formats, well, then also cool.

 

I wasn't complaining, just pointing out interesting facts.

 

Also, physical media made sense in the past, I think it's antithetical today given the nature of the music itself, the way in the music industry has changed and various other factors.

 

It's fine for people to have irrational emotional connections to vinyl or whatever, it's not a problem, they just need to understand it for what it is, and not make silly demands of artists who obviously don't care about that shit any more.

[Alcofribas]

 

@jaderpansen, it was caze who claimed physical formats were antithetical to the ae project so i was speaking to that idea directly there. imo there's no reason to complain one way or the other. this is an incredible release and it is only available digitally. i don't see the problem. if it was also available on physical formats, well, then also cool.

 

I wasn't complaining, just pointing out interesting facts.

 

Also, physical media made sense in the past, I think it's antithetical today given the nature of the music itself, the way in the music industry has changed and various other factors.

 

It's fine for people to have irrational emotional connections to vinyl or whatever, it's not a problem, they just need to understand it for what it is, and not make silly demands of artists who obviously don't care about that shit any more.

 

 

 

lol

[eugene]

@eugene, well that's pointless speculation. sure, they may have approached physical releases as some necessity over which they had no control but nevertheless they took it seriously and devoted themselves to carefully designing the physically-specific art and playing with what could be done with physical products. exai was a 4 disc album that had very beautifully printed sleeves and space enough for the upcoming l-event ep. no one could look at that and intelligently conclude that it's irrelevant to ae and that they were just responding to a physical limitation of some kind. they clearly like vinyl and wanted to do something cool. you don't like it, sure. but i'm afraid that's your conclusion does not follow the evidence. you recall that exai was described as a series of 12"s. this implies an approach to listening, one with a vinyl-specific context. i don't think your tiresome notion that downloading files to your junky plastic commodities via corporate service providers is the only valid way to experience a record bro.

there's no contradiction here. i guess their logic could be "if the label requires a physical format then let's make it cool and meaningful", but now that they are free of that (are they really? is their blerpstore/thmselves independent of warp now or what? i'm not sure) they consciously decided not to release it on physical, i doubt they were unable to. vinyl twerps would pay a lot of money for that stuff and they obviously realize that.

Edited May 25, 2016 by eugene

[coax]

A weird effect about this release is that after a few days, it doesn't seem too long or overwhelming at all.

[spunktronics]

maybe they didn't release it on vinyl cause they didn't thnk it was good enough?

 

just needed the cash?

 

I take it all back, just got to the end of 13x0 step and it's making sense now lush vibez

Edited May 25, 2016 by miim

[Guest]

yeah I doubt exai was the last physical ae release..

 

some people think that this is not actually a "real" album, maybe there is something to that... Maybe the album will drop sometime this year... elseq obv is strongly connected to ae_live, both are in this kind of obscure self-curated self-release format.. both don't seem to have any sort of 3rd party (warp) promotional efforts behind them, safe for the radio plays where at least the 2nd one was deliberately obscure... seriously, nobody except true fans will buy this...

 

but ugh, this ultimately is about rad sonic adventures recorded by the sim and the bub, so maybe just listen with an open mind...? The files permit listening in manifold situations, pro tip: try a few of them.

 

(personally I don't care about physical, haven't bought cd/vinyl in the last 10 years or so... been probably even longer since I've burned anything to a disk, I mean lol? People still have computers which can do that..? seems as backwards as printers to me....)

[Alcofribas]

 

@eugene, well that's pointless speculation. sure, they may have approached physical releases as some necessity over which they had no control but nevertheless they took it seriously and devoted themselves to carefully designing the physically-specific art and playing with what could be done with physical products. exai was a 4 disc album that had very beautifully printed sleeves and space enough for the upcoming l-event ep. no one could look at that and intelligently conclude that it's irrelevant to ae and that they were just responding to a physical limitation of some kind. they clearly like vinyl and wanted to do something cool. you don't like it, sure. but i'm afraid that's your conclusion does not follow the evidence. you recall that exai was described as a series of 12"s. this implies an approach to listening, one with a vinyl-specific context. i don't think your tiresome notion that downloading files to your junky plastic commodities via corporate service providers is the only valid way to experience a record bro.

there's no contradiction here. i guess their logic could be "if the label requires a physical format then let's make it cool and meaningful", but now that they are free of that (are they really? is their blerpstore/thmselves independent of warp now or what? i'm not sure) they consciously decided not to release it on physical, i doubt they were unable to. vinyl twerps would pay a lot of money for that stuff and they obviously realize that.

 

 

 

you're presumption that they released elseq as a digital work bc they are finally "free" from the requirement to release physical shit is kinda dumb. just bc this is a digital release does not suggest they think vinyl is an inferior way to release their music. i'd be willing to bet that they're cool with both formats and their recent output from the past year suggests that they've been exploring long form clusters of work that make more sense digitally. this is cool. but it doesn't support your tiresome "vinyl twerps" tirades.

 

my guess is that they're cool with vinyl and digital. this particular release and the live sets are much more appropriate from an artistic standpoint to be released digitally. but imo they probably also like releasing lush vinyl albums just as much as ever. it's kind of sad to see people so fiercely against vinyl, bolstering their half-baked opinions with half-baked pop psychological commentary and vague, unsophisticated notions about emotions, the environment, copying, etc.

 

digital is cool. vinyl is cool.

 

and elseq is absolutely fucking incredible.

Edited May 25, 2016 by Alcofribas

[blos]

if i want to listen to the highest quality i need some ridiculous DAC attached to my stereo

 

uh, do you know how a CD player works?

[Guest]

A weird effect about this release is that after a few days, it doesn't seem too long or overwhelming at all.

 

true!

I think I've got a better "spatial" sense of this than I do with Exai....

isn't there something about human brains being able to deal with small quantities up to 4/5ish intuitively? It's probably way easier to make sense of it since it's split into 5 chapters...

Edited May 25, 2016 by Guest

[blos]

Ha - they've come a long way since this! Is elseq likewise incomplete?

Edited May 25, 2016 by blos

[jaderpansen]

this is clearly split in to small chucks like long ep's there no way you would listen to the whole thing in one sitting

 

hey, i already did... 4 times so far in fact. (fanboisting)... works great as one journey imo.

[spunktronics]

 

if i want to listen to the highest quality i need some ridiculous DAC attached to my stereo

 

uh, do you know how a CD player works?

 

Yea it's limited to 16bit 44.1khz