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| quote: | Originally posted by PETRAN
I don't think that many people think of Autechre today as something great. I mean i have the impression that Autechre are all about the classic Warp records. I think that everyone things that the first three albums are the absolute Autechre masterpieces, in the same way that the first albym by Bola "Soup" is the masterpiece and so on. Also you are wrong in saying that these albums are "easy" and "similar" to other ones. When these albums were released, they were a few of a kind and not that "easy"! I personally find albums like "Amber" magical because they are in balance between the cold and the warm, the machine and the soul, the artificial and the natural. Listen to the harsh-at-times exploding beats accompanying the enigmatic ambient melodies, it is really a second-to-none musical experience that arises from such contrasts. I can understand that later albums are interesting and complex experiments, but IMO there is nothing musical about them. |
Ok, here's the fact: neither you or I know exactly what phase Ae fans like more. They have a huge fanbase, and like with any huge fanbase, there'll be a lot of different opinions and attitudes towards their favourite work. Having that in mind, I used much handier term "great(er) part" while you used the term "everyone". It's a common mistake people make in discussions, thinking their opinion reflects opinions of the whole fanbase. But you're just a few mouse clicks away from the truth, and the truth is that people like their earlier and their later phase equally. Check out idmforums, WATMM, discogs or any other serious forum out there that's been discussing Ae and you'll what I'm talking about. I'd even say there's more people who like their later stuff, but you decide. Also, I get an impression that there are two kinds of Ae fans:
1. People who listen to standard 4/4 EDM and use Ae as a gateway to a "cool" world of more abstract (well, more abstract then their trance, house or techno) music, or people who listen to Ae when they are tired of their 4/4 EDM - these people usually like their earlier stuff more.
2. People who listen to serious electronic music, who want to find in music something other than cheap thrills trance and house offer, or people who rarely listen to EM but like everything that's experimental or just weird - these people usually like their later stuff more.
Ok, that's enough about their fans...
About Amber being easy: Well, it is. Pretty much everyone can appreciate it after just a couple of listens. It's beautiful, melodic, catchy, fluid, atmospheric, warm bla bla... Nothing against that, but it soon looses its magic. That's not the case with Chiastic Slide or LP5, because with every new listen you discover new details and tiny sounds that you haven't heard before. And programming is on a completely different level. BTW, here are some albums from that era that can offer you everything you described there (of course not in the same way as Incunabula and Amber, but the difference is inconsiderable compared to difference between their later works and anything competition had to offer): µ-Ziq - Tango N' Vectif, µ-Ziq - Bluff Limbo, BoC - Twoism, Beaumont Hannant - Texturology and Basic Data Manipulation. Plus many other albums released later.
And I won't even comment that comparison with jazz musicians. That's the typical writing when you want to devalue electronic music, and it's used so frequently that it makes me puke.
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