Log #196 - Textstar

Loscil - Submers

 Autechre - Tri Repetae

Autechre - LP5

Fennesz - Venice

Farben - Textstar

Arovane & Mike Lazarev - Aeon

Farben is another name for German glitch producer Jan Jelinek (him of the classic 2001 Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records album which came close to being my album of the year on my discovery a few years back).

Whereas Jelinek centres more on ambience and minimalism under his own name his Farben pseudonym is home to more upbeat house beats (or micro house I've heard it called sometimes, although yet to understand what that means). 

[Jeez, that wiki definition talks about Bit Pop and something called Yorkshire Bleeps and Bass. Ed] 

However although there are more straight forward kicks and dubby basses there are still plenty of Jelinek's trademark clicks and crackles over down tempo organ tones. Textstar (2002) offers a worthy companion piece to its more famous cousin.

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Log #195 - Glitches In Time

Autechre - Confield

 Autechre - Amber

Autechre - LP5

Tim Hecker - Harmony In Ultraviolet

Oval - 94Diskont.

Biosphere - Substrata

I've previously been scared off by Autechre. My introduction to the "band" was through their uncompromising 2005 Untilted album - a grating uncompromising assault on the senses. 

However it is time for a reappraisal - the 3 albums here are all excellent and I'm now really starting to "get" Autechre. Amber is the earliest one (1994) and the gentlest (there is even some conventional easy listening (relatively) ambience on here), Confield is probably the most challenging and the latest in this selection (2001), and LP5 comes in between both in sound and time (1998). It is complicated music but rewards detailed listening.

With its hypnotic machine music based on the sound of CD skips and errors, German experimental act Oval’s album 94diskont always seemed to be looking ahead to what the world would become—and now that world is here. 

Mark Richardson, Pitchfork

Another fine album by Tim Hecker and two new listens for me - the glitchy Oval and the very pleasing ambient Biosphere. The latter's album Substrata is listed in some "greatest ambient lists" I am inclined to read and the former's 94Diskont. is explained in great detail in this excellent article >> 

https://pitchfork.com/features/resonant-frequency/9730-a-glitch-in-time-how-ovals-1995-ambient-masterpiece-predicted-our-digital-present/

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Log #194 - From Canterbury To Hatfield

I was recommended (well not I personally as it was a youtube video) Panda Bear. On hearing they were part of Animal Collective (who are apparently much revered, but in my view much overrated) I was wary (this wariness had been amplified by attending a music panel discussion once where one particularly drunk and boorish panel member banged on about Animal Collective).

My wariness was confirmed. I didn't like it. I can't remember it already. I think it was fairly lightweight pop electronica masquerading a bit as IDM? Who knows. Moving on...

Boris Salchow - Stars

Panda Bear - Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper

National Health - Of Queues and Cures

Hatfield And The North - The Rotters' Club 

Autechre - Confield

Autechre - Amber

The Canterbury Scene is more my thing although I have not studied it at all consciously before. I'm aware of some of the bands and like some Soft Machine and a lot of Gong. These bands here, National Health and Hatfield And The North, are entirely new to me. In fact I'm not sure I've even heard of them before, let alone heard anything by them.

Both bands were quite short lived. National Health 1978 - 82, Hatfield And The North 1974 - 75, so both relatively late starters in the 70s prog rock movement. I prefer the Hatfield record - it's very jazz rock fusion like Mahavishnu Orchestra or something. The National Health record is nearly all instrumental - the musicianship is top notch but the music didn't grab me too much. In fact for the first half of Of Queues And Cures I would have thought I was listening to Camel (another band associated with the Canterbury scene, who in fact came from Guildford). I put this to a Canterbury Fb forum to predictable consternation and position defending. I admitted I didn't know anything about National Health but did know Camel well and this record did remind me of Camel, particularly early Camel circa The Snow Goose etc, so there.

Confield is a fascinating listen. It's really growing on me. Like a lot of Autechre it's not the easiest stuff to listen to but I'd say this is relatively accessible. Each track seems to follow a similar path - starting fairly straight and then decaying as the beats fall apart and the distortion and glitch takeover (or vice versa). The whole album merges nicely as one. One of the best Autechre records I've heard. In fact I think after a few more listens I may be considering this album a work of genius. It's that unusual. 

Amber (pictured up top - one of those fascinating pictures where you can't tell the scale - it could be a mountain or a sand dune) is another one of their more popular ones - an early release when they were a little more straight forward, this one has more elements of ambience with a flavour of Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works. Apparently the band somewhat write off their early material as being a bit too "cheesy" - this almost certainly means it's a good place to start with Autechre whose definition of cheese is relative.

By the way, anyone know how to pronounce Autechre? I say Awe Teck Crrre (as in crumb) in my head but I've heard someone online saying Awe Tech Er as in Tim Hecker. I doubt the band themselves have ever given a straight answer considering their weird formats and track titles.

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Log #110 - Autechre - Incomplete Without Surface Noise *

The blog magazine has remained remarkably constant over the last few weeks as I explore my current interest in electronica, minimalism and IDM (apologies for regular readers waiting for some americana or good old rock music - it will come, I'm only honestly reporting what happens to be in the player each week).

Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds Of (CD 1)

Stars of the Lid - The Tired Sounds Of (CD 2)

Autechre - Tri Repetae

Manitoba - Start Breaking My Heart

Jan Jelinek - Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records

Emeralds - Does It Look Like I'm Here

Texas ambient duo Stars of the Lid retain their place for the third straight week with their gorgeous double album The Tired Sounds Of. 

Manitoba aka Caribou refuse to be budged too. Each time the magazine runs through the slots and Start Breaking My Heart comes on I want to hear it again and again. It's a superb record of easy listening jazz tinged electronica, probably closest to the Blue States sound I revisited a few weeks ago. There are only a couple of tracks that grate a little being more experimental and seeming out of place in the context of the overall easy vibe of the album.

And the Jan Jelinek is a stone cold classic. I've heard music like this before but generally only by the track. Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records succeeds so well as it maintains such a consistent atmosphere throughout all it's tracks (there are 8 but the theme is so strong that it is really like listening to one piece of music). I'm so pleased to have discovered this record which adds something almost entirely new and original to my collection - it will certainly feature in my year end review.

On to the new entries (or reentries). Cleveland trio Emeralds make a reentry after a first listen a few weeks ago. Does It Look Like I'm Here has grown on me and I've enjoyed some long solo car journeys with the album at high volume. It is a loud record that creates a dense wall of sound of thick keyboard arpeggios, bass, and guitar. I know I said this in my previous review but as well as a few Terry Riley loops it is most like Tangerine Dream after they went a little more commercial around the time of Tangram or White Eagle. Again, though, like the Jelinek, Emeralds do retain a sound of their own and I could put this record on in a few year's time and instantly recognise them. Actually let's do the music map on them:

Well, that's interesting. I don't think I recognise any of that at all apart from Popul Vuh partially obscured at the bottom.

The new album this week is Autechre's third Tri Repetae from 1996. It is more consistently rhythmic than Untilted which I reviewed back in log # 61. In fact many of the tracks lock into a groove for 7 or 8 minutes without really going anywhere in terms of unexpected shifts of key or rhythm. As such I must admit feeling slightly disappointed on the first few listens having expected Autechre to live up to their reputation as trail blazers in the industrial-techno field. 

This is mostly the case with opener Dael which is relatively uninteresting with a repetitive bass riff which goes on a bit. Things pick up with the powerful Clipper which would make an amazing Science Fiction film soundtrack (think U-ziq). Leterel is a fusion of Boards of Canada and Aphex Twin (music map please. Ed). Rotar is again U-Ziq like or Squarepusher. 

The second half of the album is more interesting beginning with the amazing near 10 minute Stud which sounds like being trapped deep in a cave. We then move firmly into Aphex Twin territory, first with some short rhythm pieces then with the lovely hypnotic Overand which could have come right off Selected Ambient Works II. 

No major surprises there on the music-map and interesting to see Mouse On Mars referenced.

Despite this lukewarm initial reaction I am confident Tri Repetae will be one of those records I will return to and discover new delights, and possibly more often than the more difficult Untilted (2005).

* The CD issue of Tri Repetae is marked with the words "Incomplete Without Surface Noise". The vinyl version is marked "Complete With Surface Noise".

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Album Review: Untilted by Autechre

In #Log 61 Eddy likened listening to Autechre's Untilted album to being hit over the head with a baseball bat. Guest reviewer Colin Buttimer agrees it is a testing listen but gives a more measured perspective on the album.

A New Form of Frenetic Starkness

With the lowest of warning rumbles LCC launches forward like a rocket-propelled train on dangerously uneven track. The track's structure, streamlined to facilitate maximum forward momentum, communicates a sense of great urgency. LCC might be a study in entropy: by its close the tempo has slowed to a trudge, weighed down by drowsy, quavering synthetic tones. The initial velocity of both this first track and its successor, Ipacial Section, recalls Jungle's urgency circa 1992/93, except that the ruffneck attitude of yore is here extruded into a parallel universe, viral rhythms unfolding in a fractal rapidity that mutates inexorably.

The opening section of Pro Radii displays a condensed textural fascination that's closer to Untilted's immediate predecessors. The momentary sliver of a rapper's exclamation grounds the enterprise in Autechre's hiphop roots, even though the music accelerates away into bitmapped canyons and everglades. Augmatic Disport pummels the listener repeatedly with concentrated beats which act as brief regulating grids between subsections that rapidly coil and uncoil in full claustrophobic effect. The result is simultaneously nightmarish and exhilarating.

If one of the primary concerns of Autechre's previous release, Draft 7.30, was texture, Untilted is very much fascinated with rhythm and metamorphosis. It also marks a further waystation in the rejection of melody in favour of a percussive (hyper)activity. This has seen the group gradually simplify their melodies until they appeared strangely out of place paired with the complexity of their rhythmic and textural experimentation. This stripping away prompts a sense of lack and a concommitant uncertainty that makes Untilted initially difficult to assimilate. Given persistent listening, however, an unsuspected sense of logic gradually reveals itself.

Untilted marks a new form of frenetic starkness that might be compared to Alva Noto's output, except that Autechre's sound is less clinical and more viscerally muscular. It succeeds in challenging, frustrating and exciting while conveying a sense of teemingly intense vitality. The eighth and final track, Sublimit, underlines this. At 15.52 minutes it may just be the longest track Autechre have released. It's also arguably the most pared down and variegated composition the group have produced.

Untilted may test many listeners yet again, some will applaud it as a return to what Autechre does best, others deplore it for its rejection of whatever they perceive as the group's core values. As with every previous release, the fascination lies in the music's singularity and its continuing challenge, surely a result of the duo's fastidious single-mindedness.

***

Shared under a Creative Commons licence. The original review by is Colin Buttimer is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/jqjw/

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Log #62 - Two Very Different Crooners

First up this week we have Sheffield crooner Richard Hawley. Hawley was a member of 90s Britpop band The Long Pigs who I know absolutely nothing about. I think his greater claim to pre-solo fame may have been his subsequent stint in Pulp. For both bands he was on guitar duties. I wonder if his lovely baritone voice lay undiscovered until he branched out as a solo artist in 2001 with debut Late Night Final. I also wonder how many other bands have failed to unearth vocalists within their ranks that could possibly have been better than their chosen lead singers - Jarvis Cocker was undoubtedly a great front man but was he the best singer? 

Richard Hawley with Jarvis Cocker playing for Pulp

Such comparisons are at best unfair and at worse irrelevant. I argue the singer is the most important component of a band's character, and therefore the most irreplaceable.  Could Led Zeppelin or the Arctic Monkeys for example have continued without Robert Plant or Alex Turner respectively? What about drummers John Bonham and Matt Helders, or bass players John Paul Jones and Nick O'Malley? Sure the musicians have their own characters and styles and are essential components of the group, but a different singer is more immediately noticeable than a different drummer or bass player. Take Black Sabbath - when Ozzy left them they pretty much became reincarnations of the Ian Gillan Band and the Ronnie James Dio Band playing Sabbath covers. When the original band reformed with Ozzy, but minus drummer Bill Ward, they sounded like Black Sabbath again.

Jarvis Cocker and Richard Hawley are different types of singers fronting bands playing different types of music.

Richard Hawley in his more natural habitat

Coles Corner is a real place as pictured on our head album cover above. In a bygone era courting couples would meet on the corner outside the old Coles Bros department store in Sheffield. Here we see Richard waiting with a bouquet of flowers below his own name in lights. Today the actual corner building houses a very unromantic HSBC bank and Starbucks. I don't think Richard Hawley, or Coles Corner, is famous enough to warrant fan pilgrimages to the location like a Ziggy Stardust or Freewheelin'!

Coles Corner, Sheffield, yesteryear and today

I know what it's like to live here in Sheffield and therefore it seems perfectly logical to write about it.

The music is old time romantic - rich velvety vocals, reverberating Gretsch guitar, and lush strings. Check out The Ocean. Lovely. A pop star, like many, not accustomed to modesty, the aforementioned Alex Turner of Arctic Monkeys, on acceptance of the 2006 Mercury Prize for best album, stated that Hawley, whose album was also shortlisted, had been robbed.

Hawley would be nominated again 6 years later for his atypical electric guitar freakout Standing at the Sky's Edge album. I would have felt sorry for folks attending gigs during that tour expecting Coles Corner!

~

1. Beck - Guero

2. Beck - Mutations

3. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On

4. Richard Hawley - Coles Corner

5. Nick Cave - The Lyre of Orpheus

6. Autechre - Untilted

~

In a similar vein to Coles Corner we have Marvin Gaye's classic album What's Going On. (By the way shouldn't that be a question? Maybe not). It took me years to get this and a few more years to get it, literally. It's nice background music, easy listening. More depths to be discovered over the years no doubt. Rarely does an out and out classic fail to deliver in the long run.

Marvin Gaye and that raincoat

A few more plays of the Autechre album and it starts to make a bit more sense. I'm still trapped in the metal shipping container but I can get some sleep despite the chill as my mind locks into some semblance of repetitive beats and patterns.

Relief this time comes in the unlikely form of The King of Goth and Doom, The Prince of Darkness, Nick Cave - a possessor, like Hawley, of another deep baritone, but somehow very different, voice. But this album is anything but depressing... surely one of Cave's most accessible and pleasing albums and representing (along with its twin release Abattoir Blues) a high watermark in his creativity. Great songs with brilliant melodies including pop songs like Breathless, piano ballads like Easy Money, bloody narratives like the title track The Lyre of Orpheus, rock anthems like Supernaturally, and banked choir epics like Carry Me and O Children. This album pretty much has it all. In fact I can't get over how good this is - is there any other songwriter of Cave's equivalent working today? Get yourself a copy right now!

Eurydice appeared brindled in blood

And she said to Orpheus

If you play that fucking thing down here

I'll stick it up your orifice!

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Log #61 - Grounded in the Sands of Time

More raw americana from Green on Red this week including a solo effort from their guitarist Mr Chuck Prophet, local loveliness from acoustic duo Scott and Maria, an early album from the ever consistent Beck, a psychedelic classic from space rockers Hawkwind, and a frankly bonkers album of clicks and beats from electronic veterans Autechre!

1. Green on Red - Here Come The Snakes
2. Chuck Prophet - Homemade Blood
3. Scott and Maria - Bright Star
4. Hawkwind - In the Hall of the Mountain Grill
5. Beck - Mutations
6. Autechre - Untilted

Chuck on Red

Unfortunately following the roaring success of Here Come The Snakes last week my filing system has failed to uncover any further Green on Red albums (so far) but consolation arrives in the form of one of their guitarist's solo albums - Chuck Prophet's Homemade Blood released in 1997. A cool title, a cool cover, and by the way a cool name Mr Prophet too.

Green on Red guitarist Chuck Prophet on vocals

A good solid rock guitar album which could be Green on Red, except, of course, the vocals aren't the same. If a Green on Red hadn't come before, Prophet's smoother voice would not suffer from comparison with Dan Stuart's compelling bark.

Those Psychedelic Warlords

Here we have a mid 70s Lemmy infused Hawkwind demonstrable through the heavy distorted bass and most obviously where Lemmy takes lead vocals - Lost Johnny a case in point and a clear sign post to Motorhead who actually went on to cover this very track.

Classic track is the opener The Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear in Smoke) - this title pretty much sums up what Hawkwind were all about and could have been their calling card if it hadn't have been for the single success of Silver Machine. Dave Brock's driving rhythm guitar riffs on two chords over Lemmy's three note bass (this period Hawkwind seemed to be almost entirely devoid of electric lead guitar with melodic breaks provided by synthesizers, sax or flute).

The longer guitar driven tracks are interspersed with some beautiful instrumental passages courtesy new member Simon House excelling on violin and keyboards.

Early Hawkwind with Lemmy on location with Game of Thrones

The title is an obvious riff on Greig's famous classical piece of similar name - the Mountain Grill was apparently a West London cafe frequented by the band. The image couldn't be further from the brilliant album art work by Barney Bubbles depicting a crashed spaceship grounded in the sands of time.

275 Portobello Road

Beck Mutates

Beck's albums are consistently good. They draw on various styles, usually between albums rather than within the albums themselves. Was n't he another one of those hailed as a new Hendrix or Dylan when he burst upon the scene with Odelay (the one with the shaggy dog doing the high jump) in 1996? Mutations came just two years after that breakthrough and reminds me of the Beatles - mostly the more psychedelic John Lennon stuff like Tomorrow Never Knows. Great melodies and even some harpsichord! Take the very 60s feel of Lazy Flies as an example.

Golden Boy Beck

The Yes of Techno

After listening to Autechre I feel a bit like I did with Yes last week where I wrote:

What to make of them? Are they musical geniuses or just random noodlers? Does their music have structure and form or is it all over the place without any context or continuity? 

That statement can pretty much apply to their Untilted album. It is pretty full on. Very industrial techno recorded at a breakneck bpm.

It's rather like being locked in a cold dark shipping container whilst being repeatedly hit over the head with a metal baseball bat. 

So like Yes the music is seemingly random on first hearing but all the more interesting for that. And like all interesting music it does something odd to your mind. I would start with small doses though - the whole album in one sitting is quite a challenge.

Autechre's Anti Criminal Justice and Public Order Act EP

Remarkably the apparent randomness has a deliberate provenance. In 1994 Autechre released the track Flutter as part of their Anti EP in protest against the new Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of that year. The Act prohibited "raves" which were defined as gatherings of 9 or more people where music characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats was played. Autechre responded with the notice that Flutter had been programmed in such a way that no bars contain identical beats and can therefore be played under the new law. However they also advised DJs to have a lawyer and musicologist present at all times to confirm the non repetitive nature of the music in the event of police harassment!

Rochdale duo Booth and Brown of Autechre

There are quite a lot of duo electronic artists out there - Boards of Canada, Kruder and Dorfmeister, Chemical Brothers etc. I don't suppose they necessarily need two to record the music, but maybe an extra pair of hands is necessary to "play" it "live"?

Acoustic Lovelies

Scott and Maria

Now for something completely different. Thank the lord for that. I've been released from the shipping container and am now lying on a hillside on the Downs soaking up the sunshine of Scott and Maria who offer a gentle and soothing antidote to my Autechre headache.  Their website says their music is a medicine for our times and I would add it is certainly medicine for Autechre (isn't random play a marvellous invention!).

For a real flavour of their lush celtic tinged harmonies check out their anti fracking and deforestation anthem This Land beautifully filmed in the Sussex countryside.

New album Bright Star sees Maria's soaring voice fronting Scott's acoustic guitar strummings with occasional extra flavours of violin and percussion thrown in to provide a heady mix of catchy Kings of Convenience / Simon and Garfunkel gorgeousness.

Timeless Goldie

Finally a quick word on a bonus gig I attended last week. Drum 'n' bass artist Goldie is touring with the Heritage Orchestra. Not knowing much about Goldie and taking the name of his backing band literally, I could barely imagine what to expect. In the event I was impressed - not so much by some of the jazzy soulful song numbers which don't always seem to suit the rhythms of drum 'n' bass, but certainly by the banging instrumentals played live with two frenetic drummers! I had assumed all drum 'n' bass was electronically recorded so was taken aback by the use of real drummers. I found this short film about the reworking of Goldie's classic Timeless album for live band.

Goldie directs live band

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