TRMW Archives

* FYI, this stuff is old. The current TRMW is here.

May 18, 2005

Autechre (mp3)

In honor of Autechre’s show at Berbati’s tomorrow night, here’s a couple totally amazing mp3s. Autechre were/are torchbearers of the electronic / IDM genre, right up there with Aphex Twin, mu-Ziq, Black Dog, etc. They started out by simultaneously slowing down and slicing up techno, making room for desert-landscape melodies and sci-fi noir ambientude. That phase peaked with the amazing Tri Repetae++ album. Then they got really really into their DSP plugins, released the equally amazing LP5, and gradually disappeared up their own cyborg asses (taking pretty much the entire IDM scene with them). That’s not really fair though; I listened to their new one Untilted (NOT “Untitled” – tricky!) the other day and it’s actually pretty good. OK, here’s some music:

Gescom - Viral Rival (rmxd by ae)

Gescom is Autechre plus a rotating cast of friends, so this track is essentially Autechre remixing themselves (confusing, right?). It sure sounds like Autechre, and my favorite kind – perfectly anti-funk machine beats and lonely cellphone melodies peeling out over the void. It’s taken off the This 12″ they released on Skam in 1998. I just discovered it in the back of my hard drive, dusty and digital, waiting to blow my mind. So good.

Autechre - Second Scepe

I don’t know where to start with this song. Taken from the Anvil Vapre EP (also on the second disc of Tri Repetae++ in the USA), this is definitely my favorite Autechre track, and yeah probably one of my favorite pieces of recorded music ever. The five notes that come in towards the end are sublime. Locking into stumbling cricket-snap percussion and mournful synth pizzicatos, they pin the tail on the mechanical donkey and peer out over galaxies with a tear in their eye. OK, so notes don’t have eyes but I can only blabber and efuse and say beautiful over and over again, so you’re probably better off just listening to the song. (The Wire described it perfectly in their “In Praise of the Riff” issue, which I unfortunately can’t find online.)

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January 10, 2005

Trawling compulsively through the blogosphere last night, found some cool stuff:

This is an interesting post about some current grime-influenced dance music coming out of England, and it’s potential merging with circa-93 IDM melodicism, and how cool that could be. Yeah, this is obscure to the max, but isn’t that what blogs are for? I enjoyed the mp3 samples and descriptions of interesting music I would not have heard otherwise. I like blogs when they do stuff like this.

There is an interesting little meme going around regarding the roots of IDM, it’s “social content” and “sonic form”, and whether or not these are racist. Nice to see people talking about the social undercurrents underpinning various genres. This stuff is the meat that makes music fascinating for so many people, at least me, whether or not we’re conscious of it. Here you will find Jane Dark aka Felizitas’ original post, here is Philip Sherburne’s response, and here is Simon Reynolds’. This, also, is what blogs are for.

My friend and housemate and sometimes editor Mark Baumgarten has started a blog and another one dedicated to live reviews. I will soon be joining Mark in posting reviews of shows and stuff. Collective brains and reportage on things you won’t find in print = blogs.

So what is this one for? Hopefully the same things, and that bit about “music in context” or whatever I was babbling about a couple posts ago, but today we’re just pointing the way. I think I’m gonna post something like a year-end list soon, and maybe a round up of good lists I found elsewhere. Perhaps my top ten top tens? That’s also what blogs are for, and that’s kind of why they suck sometimes.

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Blast from the present!