Autechre. NTS Residency. (_O_)

[dr lopez]

hey jason

[Silent Member]

Ha

[jasondonervan]

hey jason

 

[oscillik]

 

*Nutechre exai-tement*

Oh man, you and your shoops have been missed

[zaizai]

Lol phling best ae meme

[goDel]

 

hey jason

 

 

 

Yo there's a friggin track on the first cat!

[jaderpansen]

 

flol.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Why do you think they stopped editing themselves? Doesn't "elseq" probably mean "edited live sequences"? I'm sure that they ARE able to go back and edit what they "jammed" live. Tho it's not really a jam as there was a long programming process beforehand.

 

 

 

slightly cleaning up live jams does not = painstakingly crafted music, which is what we had from 1993 to ~2012. 

 

when i play a random 30-second selection of anything from exai / elseq / ae_live / nts, there's just not enough difference, the sonic 'playground' is way too similar ... i.e., as i said, they're now enslaved to whatever weird semi-AI they've written in MaxMSP, such that they literally stopped buying hardware and don't make music outside of MaxMSP now.  

 

i mean, in general, i was intrigued by elseq and i think it was an interesting idea to edit live jams and release a massive mp3 album; not a bad idea, and the tracks are pretty good.  but they're literally just doing "elseq two: electric boogaloo" at this point, like, here's eight more hours of the same effing thing (obviously some differences but meh)

 

 

I think it still is painstakingly crafted, maybe even more than before. Everything they do happens within parameters they set, every detail is exactly how they programmed it. Sean says:

 

 

With this kind of algorithmic music, because the algorithms are made by people, it is people music! You get that thing of, "Eww, it's not human!" But that's so far off how I think of it. I think of it as being more human, because there's all these decisions in there, and they're human decisions. They're what people chose to do.

 

 Generating the music using their custom code is actually more expressive than placing every single sound by hand I believe.

 

 

 

Here's a link to their elseq interview in case anyone wants to read it again: https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2756

 

 

This.  I don't know how their system is designed but I assume they've created a very mature set of black box abstractions which they can hook together as they please.  This gives enormous flexibility and allows experimentation and orchestration at a much higher level, ironically reaching a much finer level of detail despite these finer details being abstracted away from the user.  

 

The balance between high and low level is always difficult.  Play instruments by hand is kind of like programming in some shitty inflexible language because you literally only have two hands and one instrument texture.  Programming sequencers is kind of like programming in C.  I assume they're created something like C++ where they can reach immense abstraction but also drop down to the metaphorical assembly level (sample-level math operations) any time they please through gen~

 

Instead of re-writing container classes all the time in C or using weirdly implemented once you can just use very clean and well defined std::vectors for instance.  Similarly in a well implemented Max/MSP framework you could create high levels of abstraction with regards to high level abstract DSP primitives

 

I assume that if they had to they could whip together something really abstract and weird in a short amount of time whereas most electronic musician's workflows would require them to work really hard to do that.  With a well designed system abstraction can be a primitive which can be manipulated in arbitrary but well defined ways whereas with typical synth programming you have to do everything, and this limits expressiveness because you have to express everything manually, whereas with abstract generative methods you can express broad abstract concepts with limited amounts of code

 

I'm probably projecting a lot and I'm a programmer not a musician so that influences my thoughts on the matter.  I wrote some rants on the matter years ago but never got around to actually implementing anything.  The Max half of Max/MSP is a pretty shitty programming language imo with a lot of weird hacks and unexpected behavior, I'd love it there was a more perfectly implemented version without the weird shit because it would increase agility tremendously instead of being a headache.  Ideally you can do this all in plain MSP but it requires much more processing power and you lose the nice event processing abstractions of Max. 

 

semi relevant useless trivia: according to them they actually do use some custom C externals.

 

 

We have only heard 25% of this release.

Amazing - let that sink in.

I will critique it when its all out!

 

Its the same as only hearing elseq1 and forming an opinion.

 

^sanity.

 

 

Don't worry about elseq, it was just a stepping stone to where they are now. This is the real shit.

 

[jules]

 

*Nutechre exai-tement*

yes!

 

welcome back!

 

and flol phling!!

Edited April 11, 2018 by jules

[mcbpete]

I don't understand the hate towards the maxMSP thing really.

I definitely think there’s a misunderstanding about what Max is and isn’t. I think there’s a view that it’s some magical software that you just feed sounds into and it magically just spits out superIDM™ out the other end, as opposed to just being a programming environment that allows you to make … well whatever you want it to make (hell you can use it to create Space Invaders if you’re that way inclined). It can be as ‘unobtrusive’ as just being something that can transpose the pitch of incoming midi notes, or be a full on sequencing environment (ideas for Ableton came about with Gerhard Behles and Robert Henke creating patches to do on-the-fly loop timestretching and launching patterns – essentially what became the ‘Clip View’).

 

So to say something sounds like Max/MSP is analogous to saying a game plays like it was written in C++, or that a film script appears like it was written in Final Draft. Max can create and manipulate sounds (and data), but it doesn’t have a sound.

[AJW]

cmon duderos ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

how long have u been listening to the bois

best way is always without any historic baggage

breathe

listen

cummmmm

Haha, yeah I guess that's the best way to approach it. We've been so spoilt with their back catalogue.

 

Been listening to it at work today. Feels pretty nifty while doing other things, not listening too intensely and just letting it wash around in the background.

[Guest]

me irl cumminh to ae

 

[xox]

So to say something sounds like Max/MSP is analogous to saying a game plays like it was written in C++, or that a film script appears like it was written in Final Draft. Max can create and manipulate sounds (and data), but it doesn’t have a sound.

Well itz not the same ...until you know how to programm every possible type of synth and effect in max as good as it was made with c/c++ as a 'regular' vst/vsti

[mcbpete]

Well itz not the same ...until you know how to programm every possible type of synth and effect in max as good as it was made with c/c++ as a 'regular' vst/vsti

But what if you just use those VSTs in Max ( https://docs.cycling74.com/max5/refpages/msp-ref/vst~.html ) - You don't have to program every synth and/or effects if you already have ones you want to use. That's the point of Max - you can get as abstract or as low level as you want to go

[Soloman Tump]

lol

 

 

lol

 

 

[xox]

 

Well itz not the same ...until you know how to programm every possible type of synth and effect in max as good as it was made with c/c++ as a 'regular' vst/vsti

But what if you just use those VSTs in Max - You don't have to program every synth and/or effects if you already have ones you want to use. That's the point of Max - you can get as abstract or as low level as you want to go

Thats a different story... And then you could call it oversteps

[mcbpete]

u ok hun ?

[xox]

u ok hun ?

Waa? Wa

[hello spiral]

Welcome to the spergadome

 

Join me in the spergatory

[xox]

Aspermadome

[Silent Member]

*shame.gif*

[Draft78]

i wouldnt place this release (so far) on the same level as their 'proper' album/ep releases. non of this tracks are not even close to elseq or exai or overmoves...tracks. remember pendulu hv moda, elyc6 0nset, foldfree, latentcall, oneum? or irelite, bladelores, 1 1 is and cloudlines? remember cep puig, see on see and treale?

hey faaaq remember recks on and yjy ux?! 

 

i like this release so far and i believe that we can expect nothing short than pure bliss and excellence this month but i also believe that a 'proper' release is on its way

I'm pretty sure that, time three years, and will be written the same recriminations for Fiftvlent (16 hours of improvisation via Cam4), remembering with nostalgia Carefree Counter Dronal and debris_funk, as peaks now unattainable.

[EXTRASUPER81]

+1 for bbqbbq. I dig how people can find the bleepy bloops irritating at first, but then they lose prominence in the mix and are washed over by the lush pæds, and it's super nice.

[Hk47]

Most definitely. Those pads and that melody are absolutely beautiful.

[sweepstakes]

let's say that I'm a novelist, and that I invented an absurdly complicated word processing program, and then used that program to write a few long, rambling first-draft novels that didn't break any new ground ... would it matter how complicated my word processing program was?  I don't care if Rob and Sean are literally creating a new programming language from scratch, the music is all that matters

Have you a sequencer/synth before? Like the kind you can (somewhat) tweak in real time? There's stuff you naturally gravitate toward doing based on the interface. Basically you have a feedback loop between you and the machine - action, result, response. You're constantly observing/listening (unless you are really taking the piss and just randomly deaf-tweaking) and adjusting. The problem is that basically all these systems are deeply flawed - they lead you in one direction or another, and there's always some friction involved in getting them to do what you want, or at least to get the workflow you want. In order to sell at scale and turn a profit, the tools have to be fairly general-purpose, which means you have to configure them for your tastes and needs, and they almost always still come up at least somewhat short. You've got your Elektrons at one end of the spectrum which are intuitive and great fun but limited and fixed architecture, and your DAWs at the other which can do just about anything but in order to get there you have to jump through hoops of stopping the sequencer, mouse clicking, copy+pasting, browsing libraries of samples/plugins, etc. The way I see it, they have learned from those limitations, and then thrown them in the garbage and created something that gives them the best of all worlds - control, capability, a tight feedback loop, and reconfigurability. 

 

With this novel-writing program you're talking about you wouldn't necessarily even have to read the resultant novel, if I'm understanding your analogy correctly. Although this could be interesting if you were able to set up models for each character, plot line, etc. and see what it spits out - it just doesn't seem to me like prose lends itself to this sort of feedback loop. Even the act of reading it seems to interrupt that flow. Maybe it would work, though. I would definitely read such a novel (or at least a short story) out of curiosity. Also "algorithmic composition" has certainly been used in novel writing before - see Burroughs and the cut-up method.

 

It's not the complexity of their system that's interesting to me, it's that they created it based on their own tastes and needs instead of resigning themselves to the bullshit the off-the-shelf market has to offer. That is coming through in the music to me, this sense of freedom and ownership. That said, it is quite possible that I am projecting my own assumptions onto it, or even that they are trolling us.

 

(inb4 "yeah but now I are a saesoned ae fan I just know man")

troofans know the aeffect and won't whinge "it's not the saaame" until it's simmered for a few weeks/months.

[EXTRASUPER81]

Autechre (/ɔːˈtɛkər/) are an English electronic music duo consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, both from Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Formed in 1987, they are one of the most popular acts signed to UK electronic label Warp Records, through which all of Autechre's full-length albums have been released beginning in 1993 with Incunabula. They have also worked closely with the label Skam.

The music of Autechre has shifted gradually throughout their career, from their earlier work's roots in techno, electro, and hip hop to later albums often considered experimental in nature, featuring complex drum programming, subdued melodies, and few stylistic conventions.^[1] Their work has been heavily associated with the 1990s electronic genre later known as intelligent dance music (IDM)

Lol