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http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Autechre
Here Autechre has already matured into something coesive and unique. Tri Repetae simply removed the emotions from that 'something'. (Translation by/ Tradotto da Paolo Latini) Il monumentale Tri Repetae (Wax Trax, 1996) incrementa la claustrofobia del progetto ricorrendo a suoni metallici, frequenze subsoniche e melodie scoraggianti. After two good albums Autechre strikes gold on Tri repetae. The album is an unnerving journey. While not as dissonant as Autechre's later releases, the subtle changes and metallic texture makes it a compelling listen every time. I consider Tri repetae to be the defining IDM album of the 90's.
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Autechre are an English electronic music duo consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth that formed in 1987. Both artist met through Manchester's graffiti scene, and after trading mixtapes and eventually creating their own compositions, releasing an EP under the name of Lego Feet. They released their first single under the name Autechre (Cavity Job) in 1991.
![Overand autechre Overand autechre](http://starling.rinet.ru/music/sleeves/zap_autechre.jpg)
Their 1993 debut album Incunabula, was a surprise success and their third album Tri Repetae, was considered a breakthrough and is still to this day considered a classic. Though their first few albums had an ambient techno sound, this changed completely with their 2001 album Confield, which was drastically different from their earlier works and was considered largely inaccessible. Their latest releases have been conspicuously lengthy and experimental: a 9-part live recordings release titled AE_LIVE in late 2015; a 4-hour, 21-track mammoth in five parts called elseq 1-5, on May 19, 2016; and four 2-hour long broadcasts via NTS Radio, released as NTS Sessions 1-4 in April 2018.
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Their style is a bit hard to pin down, but they draw a lot of inspiration of hip hop and electro music, and are typically associated with IDM.
Discography:
LPs:- Incunabula (1993)
- Amber (1994)
- Tri Repetae (1995)
- Chiastic Slide (1997)
- untitled (1998) note
- Confield (2001)
- Draft 7.30 (2003)
- Untilted (2005)
- Quaristice (2008)
- Oversteps (2010)
- Exai (2013)
- elseq 1-5 (2016) note
- NTS Sessions (2018) note
EPs:
- Anti EP (1994)
- Garbage (1995)
- Anvil Vapre (1995) - this and Garbage were also bundled with the US release of Tri Repetae
- Envane (1997)
- Cichlisuite (1997)
- Peel Session (1999) - material recorded for John Peel's radio show
- EP7 (1999)
- Peel Session 2 (2001)
- Gantz Graf (2002)
- Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae (2008)
- Move of Ten (2010)
- L-event (2013)
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Autechre provides examples of the following tropes:
- Canon Discontinuity: The first release was the generic oldskool rave single Cavity Job (1991); the fans and the duo themselves rarely acknowledge it. Averted when it was included in the 5-CD EPs 1991-2002 box set.
- Common Time: Believe it or not, 'Gantz Graf'.
- Darker and Edgier: Confield is far more dense and chaotic than their earlier works. And then there's Gantz Graf...
- Design Student's Orgasm: The cover art for Draft 7.30. Behold.◊
- Dream Team: With Venetian Snares (for a compilation appearance) and the Hafler Trio (for a series of albums).
- Early Installment Weirdness:
- Their first commercial release, the Cavity Job EP, is pretty much standard early 90s rave music.
- Incunabula and Amber, while more experimental than Cavity Job, lack the noise influences that would go on to define their sound, though Amber is a little closer than Incunabula.
- Epic Rocking:
- Nearly each album contains a few lengthy pieces, including: 'Windwind' from Incunabula; 'Stud' and 'Rsdio' from Tri Repetae; 'Nuane' from Chiastic Slide and 'Sublimit' from Untilted.
- Ambient piece 'Perlence subrange 6-36' is almost an hour long, which counts on length alone.
- Exai is 2 hours long and features 7 songs over the 7-minute mark.
- AE_LIVE is 9 hour-long live sets of otherwise unreleased music.
- it was updated on January 30th 2019. It now runs nearly 29 hours.
- elseq 1-5 is over 4 hours long and half of the songs are over the 10 minute mark; 3 are over 20 in length, with 'elyc6 0nset' being 27 minutes.
- NTS Sessions is an 8 (!) hour album, with the average song length being 15 minutes.
- the last track of which 'all end' is nearly an hour long by itself.
- Genre Roulette: Seriously, compare Amber to Confield.That Other Wiki has. It's difficult to pick out at times, but Autechre's love for classic hip hop from both the UK and the US is very apparent throughout their catalogue; it's whatever chaos they decide to lay over top of those rhythmic and sonic foundations that makes this trope.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: The majority of their albums' names are linked to what number it is chronologically, e.g. debut album is called Incunabula, derived from a latin word meaning 'the earliest traces of something'; third album Tri Repetae has the prefix 'tri-' indicating three; a chiastic phrase has four parts, thus the fourth album being called Chiastic Slide; LP5 and Draft 7.30; eighth album Untilted has eight letters in the title and eight tracks; Quaristice has the catalogue number 333 which adds up to nine; Exai is a phonetic reading of XI, the roman numeral for 'eleven'.
- More recently, the EP Move Of Ten has also drawn speculation over its name: it's their first release after their tenth album, it was released in 2010 and its title is possibly a Punny Name (they were on tour during the release).
- Furthermore, three of Autechre's early EPs each had their own quirk when it came to naming the songs on them. On Garbage, each track's name is followed by the suffix '-mx' and a number which represented how much of the EP the song took up as a percentage. On Envane every track name ended with the word 'quarter', and on Anvil Vapre each track name begins with the word 'Second'.
- Indecipherable Lyrics: 'IO' has a heavily distorted voice saying...something.
- In Name Only: EP7 and Move of Ten, both ostensibly EPs, are similar in length to an average album. Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae is twice as long.
- Leave the Camera Running: Some of their more ambient leaning works can be this. as they repeat a short loop (or multiple ones) for all of its running time. Taken to extremes with tracks like 'Perlence Subrange 6-36': It loops 3 notes for nearly an hour, accompanied by a very barebone 3-bar rhythm track against which a sparse ambient background unfolds almost unnoticeably.
- Minimalistic Cover Art: Possibly the poster child of this trope. This is the cover of their most popular album, Tri Repetae, even the back cover is plain too.
- Mohs Scale of Rock and Metal Hardness: They cover the entire scale, from a 1 to an 11. Here are examples by Autechre in each level:
- Level 1: Altibzz — Quaristice
- Level 2: Treale — Oversteps
- Level 3: bladelores — Exai
- Level 4: Second Scepe — Anvil Vapre EP
- Level 5: nodezsh — Exai
- Level 6: Clipper — Tri Repetae
- Level 7: Ipacial Section — Untilted
- Level 8: Second Bad Vilbel — Anvil Vapre EP
- Level 9: Bine — Confield
- Level 10: Pen Expers — Confield
- Level 11: Gantz Graf — Gantz Graf EP
- New Sound Album:
- Tri Repetae took great influence from classic hip hop of the 1980s.
- Chiastic Slide is when the algorithmic tendencies began to show.
- Confield, an entirely algorithmic album, polarized everyone who heard it.
- Oversteps, which was influenced by grime and dubstep.
- No Name Given: Their fifth album does not have an actual name. It's usually called LP5, to match EP7, which was released around the same time.
- No Pronunciation Guide / Word Purée Title: Autechre are kings of this trope, down to their name ('aw-TEK-er' being the commonly accepted pronunciation.) Most song titles range anywhere from 'Perlence' and 'Cipater' to 'Cep puiqMX' and 'Cfern'. The most egregious use of this has to be 'O=0' on Oversteps.
- Punny Name: Confield and Untilted. Also Basscad,EP, a collection of remixes of 'Basscadet', from Incunabula.
- Rouge Angles of Satin: The title of their eighth album is Untilted, not Untitled.
- Sampling:
- 'The Plc' off of Quaristice samples Run DMC's 'Here We Go'.
- 'Lowride' from Incunabula, which itself is a chain of sampling: it samples Miles Davis' 'The Doo-Bop Song', which sampled Gang Starr's 'DJ Premier Is In Deep Concentration', which in turn samples the original song, Kool & the Gang's 'Summer Madness'.
- 'Goz Quarter' from the Envane EP features a vocal sample from 'No Awareness' by Dr. Octagon (AKA Kool Keith.)
- Self-Titled Album: Due to the fact that a title is not printed anywhere on the case, LP5 is sometimes referred to as Autechre or The Autechre Album by the more oblivious.
- Sensory Abuse: Most of their songs play it straight, but the worst offender right now is 'Gantz Graf'.
- Shout-Out:
- 'Second Bad Vilbel' refers to a town in Germany.
- 'Acroyear' shares the name with an alien gladiator from Micronauts.
- 'Theme of Sudden Roundabout' references a local landmark near where Rob and Sean used to live, while 'Montreal' refers to the Canadian city and the friends that they have there.
- Surprisingly Gentle Track:Their ambient leaning tracks can be seen as this.
- Surreal Music Video: 'Second Bad Vilbel' (which was directed by Chris Cunningham) and the iconic 'Gantz Graf' video.
- Take That!: In response to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 against raves with music defined as a 'succession of repetitive beats', Anti EP features not only a disclaimer warning about the repetitive nature of 'Lost' and 'Djarum', but 'Flutter' was specifically programmed to have no two bars sound the same.
- Title by Number: '444' and '777'.
- Uncommon Time: Even their early works show signs of this.
- Word Salad Title: Some of their more coherently named works.
Index
Wow, I don't understand the hate for this collection. I am a huge fan of Autechre and have been for years. I have a bunch of their full lengths on CD, but never got into their EPs besides Anvil/Garbage with Tri Repetae (I tend not to check out EPs in general). Anyway, this set is fucking amazing for someone like me, where I can quickly and easily get most of their EPs in one fell swoop (in typical AE minimal as hell packaging). This set goes for 25-30 USD on amazon which is a pretty damn good deal if you ask me. I understand that some people already have these EPs, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest the insane notion that not every single fan of Autechre has the groups entire discog.
![Rare Rare](/uploads/1/2/7/3/127393970/142723344.gif)
Though now they can be much closer with this.
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