Hi everyone!
I just finished no small feat; for two weeks, I listened to nothing but Autechre’s discography in chronological order. I created a playlist of my favorite tracks and I’d like to share them here. I’m hoping others will share their favorites as well.
For those who don’t know, Autechre is an electronic duo from the UK. They started making music in the late 80s, and are known for their forward-thinking experimental electronic music. They are usually lumped in with other early/mid 90s Warp Records roster along with Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin. Although, I always found Autechre’s sound to be far more alien and abstract than either.
What I listened to: All major albums, EPs, and some singles/compilation tracks.
What I skipped: All remixes, live albums
The final playlist count is 83 songs, 11 hours 22 min
Spotify does not have the Quaristice [Special Edition] or the Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae, so I had to leave them out. If you haven’t heard them, I highly recommend them.
HELL YEAH
Thanks for starting this thread @Gadfly this is awesome!
I know i’ll probs get some snooty sneers for this but LP5 has traditionally been my favorite by them:
along with Amber:
And my reasons for that are mostly nostalgic, because when I first heard it I was a teenager and was like WTF IS THIS. Nowadays anyone can make music like that with a DAW and some plugins, but back in the 90s it was way more time-consuming to do make shit like that.
however I definitely love Oversteps because for me that is around the time they said fuck it and broke heavily into the abstract style that also attains a sound that is purely THEM and it’s something that really cannot be matched. Like for me, it’s their Sargent Peppers but I could be wrong:
2nd track ilanders is a masterpiece in my opinion. sure it’s quite tonal for them but I want that piece played at my funeral.
Excellent choices!
I can’t make up my mind of my favorite album by them but LP5 is top 3 for sure, along with Quaristice and Exai. My least listened to are Confield and the Granz Graf EP.
I stumbled into Autechre in my early 20s, when I first discovered the Warp Records catalog. I actually didn’t like them, it made no sense to me, it sounded like a computer having a seizure! I decided to give them another shot, and something clicked, all of a sudden the random noises and rhythms morphed into alien patterns I could recognize. It was like looking into those old Magic Eye pictures and seeing the image behind the noise.
Now I absolutely love them for their brilliant sound design work.
Yeah it’s a special language of music that definitely doesn’t do well at parties haha. I don’t think most people truly get them until the spend some time with it. On the orchestral end, AE reminds me of how most people feel about Boulez, Xenakis, Messiaen, Elliot Carter… artists from those mid-century schools of music.
It’s challenging music, people don’t always want to be challenged by music.
I used to put on Autechre when I was closing the bar at 2am on weekends. Worked great.
If I had to introduce someone to Autechre now, after listening to all their stuff. I’d pick this track. It’s something about the build up on the first half into this dark funkiness I absolutely love. It’s a long track, but it doesn’t feel it to me.
Hey, nice list! I’ve been on a bit of an AE kick myself lately and have been meaning to make a similar playlist of favourites. It’s hard to pick a favourite album, but I’m currently really into Chiastic Slide. To me it sits at this great midway point between their early, more hiphop/electro influenced stuff and their newer work, which is even more abstract. I also love the crusty texture of that album, probably thanks to the hardware they were using at the time.
I completely agree! There is just something about that midway point in like 1997-1999. Chiastic Slide, Envane, Chichli Suite before they fully embraced the more cold calculated digital sound that is super interesting. The timbres they were getting out of their hardware was really something else.
Oh yeah, they’re great, I went through their discography about 8 years ago and sometimes I’d struggle to move on to the next album because I couldn’t get enough of the last one. I have a few vinyl of theirs too. Tri Repetae so I could hear that surface noise, Chiastic Slide (one of my favorites), Confield and L-event. I like to listen to them during the winter months.
Envane and Ciccli Suite are my 2 favorite EPs. The former has some of the grit of Chiastic with more hip hop, and CS… is just nice, clean and very digital sounding.
The main albums I listen to by them are Chaistic Slide and LP5
I kinda like the weird glitch stuff and the fact that I dont have any idea how its being made.
Im not as super deep into their discography as a lot of others are, but i haven’t found much like them. Their use of ambience, synths, and weird hardware noises makes them real different.
LP5 is one of my favorites by them! I suggest you check out NTS Sessions if you like the weird glitch stuff…or you can just check out the playlist I made, it covers all their main albums/EPs so you can dig deeper if you’d like.
As for how they make it, I’m not entirely sure. I know the earlier stuff they used hardware like the Roland R-8. At some point they started using music coding programs (such as Csound). Now I believe they use custom hardware to control custom software that they created designed themselves. I’m not 100% sure on that though.
Not like we’d be able to see each other. They play in darkness!
Last time I saw them, I brought a friend with me who knew absolutely nothing about Autechre. He comes to the show completely stoned out of his mind.
I think he lasted 20 min before turning to me and saying something to the effect of: is this how it always is?
I reply yes, and he stood there for another 5 minutes before saying: this is too intense, I gotta get outta here. He just walked out and didn’t come back.
Hahaha that’s so great I love it. I will never forget seeing them in complete darkness, with only an exit sign in the corner of the room being the light to guide those that needed to use the restroom or step outside for a smoke. No one, not one person, pulled out their phone. No screens up in the air recording, no flashes from cameras, no selfies, and very minimal and careful use of phone flashlights when needed. It was proof to me that maybe all is not lost.
In a different setting, the videoing and documenting thing doesn’t bother me at all, for the most part. but with Autechre there was this unified sense that in this situation doing such would ruin the experience not only for yourself if you did that, but also for everyone else.
Your story reminds me of last year on my bday, I took my buddy to his first DnB event (Goldie was headlining) at Public Works in SF. It was so fucking good. He was definitely stoned, on multiple things, but at one point I found him leaning up against a pillar with his eyes closed and I nudged him like, “you aight brotha?” and he looks at me and says, “the music’s in charge.” I’m like hahaha hell yeah dude. He then asked, “is it always like this?” fuck yeah it is dude. I’ll never forget that. He might not either.
@Gadfly The burning question is, how many tracks did you skip? I love Autechre, but there are many tracks that I would skip.
Please excuse grammatical errors as I am using speech to text
I have also seen Autechre in the dark, twice. First time was about eight years ago. Second time was about a year ago. The first time was better, it was a new experience and they went to great lengths to put black plastic bags over the exit sign, which is illegal. The second time was a bit underwhelming. Of course they couldn’t cover up the sign this time. There were many people holding their phones up which Might not bother Wayne but itbothers me. I mean, why the fuck would you be trying to Record video footage in Complete darkness? It’s not just the light that’s annoying. It’s the idiocy. Anyway, I have control of my eyelids so I just closed them. These days mostly I have to wear earplugs. I usually use my AirPods Pro 2 which allow me to toggle between Complete noise cancelling and adaptive transparency mode, depending on ear fatigue. Such a remarkable piece of Tech, boggles my mind how they transparency mode works at zero latency, considering the a/D conversion then D/a conversion again. Anyway off topic.
I’m kinda over this whole Complete darkness thing. I’d rather just listen to the Early Autechre that I like in a good set of headphones with my eyes closed in a comfy chair. The generative nonsense is just a bit too soulless me
Great question, I skipped absolutely none! The goal was to listen to each song from start to finish in chronological order. That being said, I only listened to full officially released LPs and EPs, I did not listen to all the remixes or live albums they have.
I also didn’t listen to anything else during those two weeks so I can get thru faster. I completely immersed myself with headphones whenever possible. It was an interesting experience to hear there evolution thru the years.
Whenever I’ve seen them live you do still get light from the exit signs, and whenever someone opened the door. I agree though, why take video of a dark space, are you really going to listen back to the distorted sound you recorded later? Just enjoy the experience now.
