Autechre. NTS Residency. (_O_)

[jasondonervan]

https://soundcloud.com/seaburn-1/allendlores

 

Combined all end with bladelores, enjoy!

 

[hello spiral]

lol

[mcbpete]

Still don't know how they're gonna tackle 'all end' on those analog vinals.

[hello spiral]

[mcbpete]

Maybe if the grooves looked like this it'd be OK:

 

[italiceyeball]

[Hk47]

Ahhh! Listening to that video was great. Thank you for sharing it.

...

Is it the end of next month yet?!

=X

=P

[Guest]

He's good at talking about Ae and music. It's not easy. Yeah, a fun listen, keeping up the hype level. I agree with him on tt1pd as maybe the not only best NTS track, but at least amongst the bestestest in their whole discography. NTS sent shockwaves. Nothing will never ever be the same. We still have to digest it. Will they ever create short tracks and albums again? Will life be the same? Is? Will? It's! Why R we? Is we? I guess NTS is the universal question to no answer.

[italiceyeball]

hows about some kind of ae penfield mood organ?

[d-a-m-o]

Revisiting nts 1-4 after a long break and damn, this is so good, thanks again Rob and Sean !

[AnwarAutokino]

nice to hear that this dude is sharing my enthusiasm for glos ceramic. such an incredible track

[dingformung]

He's good at talking about Ae and music. It's not easy. Yeah, a fun listen, keeping up the hype level. I agree with him on tt1pd as maybe the not only best NTS track, but at least amongst the bestestest in their whole discography. NTS sent shockwaves. Nothing will never ever be the same. We still have to digest it. Will they ever create short tracks and albums again? Will life be the same? Is? Will? It's! Why R we? Is we? I guess NTS is the universal question to no answer.

Yeah, he is good at talking about music but tt1pd their best track? Come on

[xox]

nts experience reminds me of twin peaks season 3

[ignatius]

nts experience reminds me of twin peaks season 3

 

 

it's a good show

[Hk47]

 

He's good at talking about Ae and music. It's not easy. Yeah, a fun listen, keeping up the hype level. I agree with him on tt1pd as maybe the not only best NTS track, but at least amongst the bestestest in their whole discography. NTS sent shockwaves. Nothing will never ever be the same. We still have to digest it. Will they ever create short tracks and albums again? Will life be the same? Is? Will? It's! Why R we? Is we? I guess NTS is the universal question to no answer.

Yeah, he is good at talking about music but tt1pd their best track? Come on

Subjective, yeah?

...

It is one hell of a 'banger'.

=P

[misc]

Pretty obsessed with fLh at the moment. Both this and bqbqbq are tracks that start out all happy and jokey but then by the end you feel kinda weird and on edge. 

[Hk47]

Pretty obsessed with fLh at the moment. Both this and bqbqbq are tracks that start out all happy and jokey but then by the end you feel kinda weird and on edge.

!!!!!

=D

 

 

I think I've just come across best friend material...

=X

[dingformung]

 

 

He's good at talking about Ae and music. It's not easy. Yeah, a fun listen, keeping up the hype level. I agree with him on tt1pd as maybe the not only best NTS track, but at least amongst the bestestest in their whole discography. NTS sent shockwaves. Nothing will never ever be the same. We still have to digest it. Will they ever create short tracks and albums again? Will life be the same? Is? Will? It's! Why R we? Is we? I guess NTS is the universal question to no answer.

Yeah, he is good at talking about music but tt1pd their best track? Come on

Subjective, yeah?

...

It is one hell of a 'banger'.

=P

 

I dunno, the first part of tt1pd sounds very angry in a funny way, kinda infantile like a kid stamping its feed on the ground but not in a bad way. Second part sounds very different and less playful, much darker and a bit formless and I like that part a lot more. It's definitely a good track but not the kind of vibe I like most about AE

[Embers]

interview in The Australian around their studio methods and upcoming Australia tour. Quote here because paywall. https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/music/uk-electronic-duo-autechre-a-good-fit-for-dark-mofo/news-story/4891d8a017c356016d7769ccb50d54d9

 

 

 

UK electronic duo Autechre a good fit for Dark Mofo

 

It’s a show business routine observed countless times around the world every night of the year: when the performers take to the stage, the lights dim to momentary darkness and the crowd is conditioned to understand that the performance is soon to begin.

 

When English electronic music duo Autechre is about to play, however, there’s one major difference: once the lights go out, they stay out.

 

Most major touring artists — in the spheres of pop, rock, dance, heavy metal and everything in between — put quite a lot of thought and effort into their light show. For some, the timing of certain ­visual effects is just as important as hitting the right musical notes at the right time.

 

Accordingly, an entire profession has emerged around this skill: that of the lighting engineer, whose job it is to make the on-stage happenings look as beautiful and compelling as possible at all times, in the hope that the entire concert experience leaves an indelible impression on the minds of those who paid to see it.

 

Autechre is different in many ways, but in the live arena, it might be the only popular act to take this singular approach of removing all light sources. This policy, dating back years, has become an attraction in its own right.

 

Picture it: a dance floor filled with bodies moving to loud, disorienting, shapeshifting sounds composed by two men who have devoted their lives to learning and mastering a sequencing software whose limitations are boundless.

 

On stage, their screens are dimmed to the lowest possible setting, and only the booming speaker system gives you a sense of where they are positioned in the room. But otherwise? Total darkness, for an hour or more. To the inquisitive music fan, doesn’t that sound like just the sort of thing that should be experienced at least once in your life?

 

“There’s something more cinematic about not being able to see it, paradoxically,” says Rob Brown, who formed the duo in 1987 with Sean Booth.

 

“Because you’re listening to the music, and you don’t have to close your eyes; we’ve done you that favour. It’s almost like everyone was listening to a really high quality headphone mix, but with that anonymous kind of group dynamic in the room.

 

“Taking the lights out really does give people something else — which is really backwards, but it works,” says Brown via Skype from his home in Bristol.

 

“There’s something about following that line with us for an hour or longer: we’re in the same place together, and it’s not like there’s any border any more. With lights, it almost defines the border between the ‘them’ and the ‘us’. With this, it’s more immersive, it’s more inclusive, and there’s really no compass whatsoever.”

 

There was a transition period towards darkness, of course: the duo didn’t just flick a switch from one show to the next.

 

After its 1993 debut album, Incunabula, was released on independent label Warp Records — home to Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada, among others — Brown and Booth followed up with Amber the following year.

 

While touring that album, they played under amber tones, but began to query their lighting engineer about exploring the darker end of the spectrum. They knew red occupied the lowest frequency, but entire shows dren­ched in that one hue wasn’t quite working for them. Brown recalls: “Sean was getting to the point of saying, ‘F..king hell, just turn the lights off.’ ”

 

So they did, and so it has continued, though not without slight difficulties in booking venues that agree to the unusual blackout request. It’s fitting, too, that one of Autechre’s three Australian shows this week is part of the Dark Mofo festival in Hobart.

 

Another way in which Autechre is not your average electronic music act is the fact that its most recent release, NTS Sessions 1-4, is an eight-hour collection of music that was first broadcast live on digital radio station NTS in two-hour blocks on four consecutive weekends in April.

 

“Some people will take it and run with it, and they’re our kind of people,” says Brown of the eight-hour duration. “That’s what happens when you expose yourself to certain things: at first it might seem daunting, but afterwards, you realise: Actually, well, why isn’t all stuff like this?”

 

Though Incunabula and Amber were rooted in electro, hip hop and industrial music, it was 1995’s Tri Repetae that truly announced the duo as creators of a sound that is entirely and unmistakably its own.

 

That intent has certainly carried through to NTS Sessions 1-4, which received a near-perfect rating on influential online music magazine Resident Advisor, which defined the style of music using just one word: Autechre.

 

“A lot of people were really enamoured by that moment, because it was finally not IDM,” says Brown, referring to the “intelligent dance music” label with which the duo has been laden for many years, alongside Aphex Twin and others. “It was finally not ‘glitch’, not ‘electronica’. I think we’ve always seen (our music) like this; we’ve always seen it as us.”

 

Between those early releases in the 1990s — which are easily accessible to anyone familiar with the concept of using computers for sound composition — and today, Autechre has released an extraordinary amount of material.

 

During their 31-year partnership, Brown and Booth have amassed what Resident Advisor has described as “one of the most labyrinthine sound worlds in modern music”.

 

It is music created without instruments, as such, but instead programmed using software called MaxMSP, which essentially operates as something of a third member. As they pass files between their home studios in Bristol (Brown) and Manchester (Booth), the software is constantly responding to their individual habits and instructions.

 

“It’s hard for me to describe it as ‘learning’ from what we do,” Brown says of MaxMSP. “If anything, we build systems that actually register the kind of things we like in music, or the things we would do. It sort of impersonates us. It’s a system that gets more and more vast and increasingly complex, but is actually built on doing the things that we like to do. Sometimes we’ll connect certain modules and patches — and then there’ll be two things playing off each other, like me and Sean playing off each other.”

 

Brown compares the software to the concept of building with Lego: with enough blocks, the possibilities are limitless. While that blank-slate approach to composing and arranging music might be terrifying to some, for these two friends — who met through Manchester’s graffiti scene in 1987 — the software has enabled a perfect fit between two men and their machines.

 

“We love it,” says Brown. “I think we’re both quite easily distracted, and we like to get our teeth into something that appears to be new. I think that’s why we’re not getting bored at any point soon. The way I see it, I’m not a programmer; I’m not even a musician. We’re just inquisitive.”

 

It is that sense of boundless curiosity and exploration that Autechre will bring to Australia this week, for its first visit to these shores in eight years. When the lights go out, and stay out, do not be alarmed.

 

Autechre will perform in Sydney on Wednesday, followed by Melbourne (Thursday) and Hobart (Friday).

Edited June 18, 2018 by Embers

[entropi]

Thanks Embers!!!

[Bodhidharma]

"im not even a musician" hahahaha these guys 

[auxien]

^^^thanks for posting that Embers :)

[dingformung]

thanks

[Draft78]

^^^thanks for posting that Embers :)

[jasondonervan]

"im not even a musician" hahahaha these guys 

 

carefree casual

 

For all the academic style of discourse that ae have attracted, it always pleases me that they've never once given off an air of elitism with it - when they have far more legitimacy to do so than many musicians who do play that angle. There's a quiet satisfaction of workmanship to their craft, that is less about hiding the method, and more about letting the music speak for itself.

 

“Some people will take it and run with it, and they’re our kind of people,” says Brown of the eight-hour duration. “That’s what happens when you expose yourself to certain things: at first it might seem daunting, but afterwards, you realise: Actually, well, why isn’t all stuff like this?”

 

We've all been versed in long-form Autechre, and while NTS is the longest to date, it certainly wasn't daunting to me. Few people will ever listen to it in its entirety in one sitting, but why shouldn't something with an 8-hour duration be out there, and why does it have to be treated as 'too big'? Collectively dwindling attention spans in our modern age may be somewhat responsible for some of the response to NTS' length. There are those who will reach for the dial when a track exceeds 4 minutes in length, and would baulk at the notion of listening to even a hour-long album.

 

NTS will soon exist in physical form, and while you could argue that they are grandiose as a singular 'album', if the 4 sessions were released separately - spaced out over a year or two, with no mention of being part of the same release (ie they were all given unique album titles, artwork, etc.) - I wonder how they would be perceived without the mental weight of being associated to a defined large body of work.