Caught the Chicago show at the Metro. Sound was great. The stage was dark
and they were hidden behind monitor speakers, so not like a Lady Gaga
Spectacle. Not much in the way of quiet passages. Lots of savage beats
that almost turn into grooves. Lots of impossibly complicated filtering on
atonal lead synth sounds.
I thought Cygnus was ... overly busy. Autechre have actually perfected
live electronic music, in that they generally have at most 3 components to
what they're doing, but one component might be kick hits, weird FM noises,
and vowel filtered sustained tones; they build up rhythm patterns with
radically different sounds so that each sound plays alone. At most they'll
add a couple of other sounds -- time stretched screams, granular backwards
guitar, whatever. But the arrangement is actually sparse; the sounds
themselves bring the chaos.
What I posted to Facebook during the set:
"Either this is Autechre in Chicago or a black T Shirt convention at the
Metro. Music is overwhelming. Like crashing a helicopter in a hurricane"
"People dancing to Autechre do this thing that looks like Orthodox Jewish
men davening in schul."
"Autechre: Estonian Speak And Spells arguing with pissed-off Orcs."
"Autechre: Robot opposums fighting over chicken bones in a dumpster at the
bottom of a mineshaft."
On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 10:35 PM Rjyan Kidwell <cexwell@gmail.com> wrote:
quoted 84 lines did you smoke weed before they played
> did you smoke weed before they played
> On Sep 30, 2015 11:11 PM, "Alex Kolesnichenko" <support@bytegems.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Laurel Halo was fucking amazing. First half of her show just blew my
>> mind. Second half was more of a standard 4x4 fare – good, but not great as
>> the first half.
>>
>>
>>
>> FWIW, I feel a bit of let down for the whole “show in the dark” thing
>> that Ae did, but yeah, the music is what matters… I was with my eyes closed
>> on pretty much any show I went during the fest, so not a big deal. :)
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
>>
>> *From:* Chris Bellevie [mailto:c.bellevie@gmail.com]
>> *Sent:* Wednesday, September 30, 2015 4:21 PM
>> *Cc:* idm list <idm@hyperreal.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: autechre US tour
>>
>>
>>
>> This pretty much sums up their show at Decibel. Most I talked to after
>> were put off by them playing in the dark, but I loved it, just the sound.
>>
>>
>>
>> In addition to Cygnus and Rob Hall, we had Laurel Halo play before Ae
>> came on. That was awesome.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Sep 30, 2015 at 4:15 PM, Eric Sorenson <eric@explosive.net>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Wed, 30 Sep 2015, Chris Taylor wrote:
>>
>> Has anyone caught Autechre on their current US tour? Any reports?
>>
>>
>> Yeah, saw 'em here in Portland last week.
>>
>> The opener (the impossible-to-google Cygnus) was awesome. Live hardware
>> set that was electro-rooted with some great development and movement.
>> http://cygnusat.bandcamp.com/
>>
>> Autechre played in the dark. Each with their laptop, screens dimmed down
>> to almost nothing.
>>
>> Nothing I recognized, but I haven't really been able to ID individual
>> tracks since Quaristice. The sound at Holocene was pretty good but many in
>> the crowd would not shut up their dumb mouths long enough to hear the quiet
>> passages. Things would go sort of noodly noisey space and then drop into
>> incredibly fast and 'hard' beats, full spectrum clattering glitchy things
>> at 190bpm. Midrange "melodies" like they figured out how to suck sound
>> backwards through the speakers. Pause. Repeat with a variation on
>> timbre/tonality or maybe a hint of an acid squiggle done so fast it was
>> gone before you're sure that's what happened.
>>
>> 60 minutes of this and then they unplugged their laptops and slunk off.
>> Rob Hall did some nice Warp-ish DJ stuff but it was a worknight and I had
>> to go pretty quickly.
>>
>> Was it good? Yeah, it's a treat for the ears. Feels like there is a bit
>> of disdain, or at least indifference, for the audience and what they're
>> hoping to get out of a live show, which I don't think is new. I was hoping
>> for some kind of the 4/4 stuff that surfaced a couple of years back, and I
>> had to resist the urge to shout out "Basscadet!!" like an idm-dork "Free
>> bird!!" .. but as always, we get the thing Autechre want to do, not what we
>> want them to.
>>
>>
>> - Eric Sorenson - N45.569, W122.763 - http://twitter.com/ahpook -
>>
>>
>>
>