quoted 5 lines Just saw Autechre live last night. Pretty damn amazing. Every track was> Just saw Autechre live last night. Pretty damn amazing. Every track was
> very different from the album. Everything was loud. The bass pads in Eutow
> made my rib cage rattle. I wish they played longer, but I'm not
> complaining. I could have listened to them all night. In summary, they are
> awesome.
Perhaps it's my relative unfamiliarity with "Tri Repetae" (only have it on
a tape, no track listing, only heard it a few times, etc.), but I only
recognized one track (in the middle) as being on record. What about the other
ones? Is that one with the 120 db sound of a needle being pulled across the
run-off grooves and across the label (now I know what a Revolutionary War
naval battle must have sounded like ... ) on any record? (I don't have
"Garbage" or "Anvil Vapre")
Erm, anyway. My $0.02 on Broom/STC/Autechre in LA (since Andy demanded it):
As Fresh said, t'was pissing down ("Welcome to SUNNY SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA!")
all day and into the night. When last I'd heard from local DJ Edward Duran,
Lynn Hasty of Public Space (the one-woman dynamo who got this shindig put on)
was worried because there had hardly been any pre-sale tickets sold. Boy,
did *that* change! I drove like a madman to get there by 9:15 only to
discover that it was "Sold Out"! (The Troubadour holds about 250, methinks.)
This left me and Danny (formerly Sublime Records' US liason) coolin' our
heels outside wondering what to do. Luckily, Tamara Palmer came to our
rescue and got Lynn to come outside and work some magic, and luckily we got
in having missed only a few minutes of Jonah's set. Whew!
Jonah's set was wicked and somewhat surprising. At Circa '96 on New Years' he
DJ'ed a set that essayed a fair bit of "IntelliJungle", and I thought that
might be prevalent in his own work. Turned out not to be the case. Instead
(as Fresh mentioned) he played a set of mostly taut, angular IDM with some
very nice beats at times (got the crowd worked up into a whooping mini-frenzy
on occasion). Some of it sounded like Autechre in terms of sonic construction;
definitely "Intelligent" as clearly there was a lot of thought put into the
track assemblage. I got introduced to Jonah later that night (see below) and
he said that "Emit Ecaps" was recorded in July of last year; the wheels of
industry grind slowly. Thus, only "a few bits" of it showed up in his live
set, and all the rest of it was newer stuff recorded since the EP and 12".
The Autechre boys trundled on and I tried to see what gear they had. All I
could spot was an R8, a mixing board, an ASR-10 and an Alesis MMT-8 (I
think? Older memory-starved sequencer, according to my musician friends who
were there). They played, what, about 5 or 6 tracks I think. I'm not sure
what my ultimate reaction is. The one track they played which I recognized
from "Tri Repetae" had the elements I like from them - intricate, well-thought-
out angular beats with interesting layering. I really love it when they
play stuff that has that "sawtooth waveform" kinda sound. (Sorry, I'm not a
musician, you'd know what I mean if you heard it.) Some of the other stuff,
however, while still sounding good felt like Something Wasn't Quite Right.
I can't really put a finger on it. Maybe those were the tracks where they
were doing more live construction on; given the (relatively) limited amount
of gear they had, perhaps it's understandable.
All in all it was really good, if not stupifyingly great. Much thanks to
Lynn for all the work she did to get these boys into Los Angeles.
After it was over we sauntered over to Magic Wednesdays to catch Derrick May.
He ended up being an hour late (supposedly was to go on at Midnight) and even
though the club is ostensibly open until 3:00 AM, they pulled the plug on him
at 2:25 supposedly due to fear of "sound code violations" (apparently all the
neighbors have been complaining every time they have these weekly Wednesday
clubs - a scenario probably familiar to IDM'ers 'round the world). He ended
up playing mostly records I'd heard him play at Planet 10 back 2 Saturdays ago,
so at least I didn't really miss too much. Anyway, I chilled with Joe Babylon
(Plug Research) who was on his way to the big London shindig on Friday.
BTW, Joe wants all you Plug fans (non-Vibert variety) to know that the 2 latest
releases are out - PR4 is a 4-track 12" compilation featuring Ken Ishii in
his Flare guise, Beautyon (from Irdial), Crank and Phthalocyanine (who won't
be accompaning Joe to England after all, as Dimiti goes to Caltech now!).
PR5 is the Kim Rapatti (a.k.a. Mono Junk) "Mood" EP. No track listing.
(Ask them at researc1@ix.Netcom.COM) Haven't heard either of them yet ...
- Greg