Gonzal Merchan (Fresh) had these questions for us:
gm> 1. Can whoever went to the Autechre in-store at Tower in SF give us a
gm> run down on it?
It was funny and kind of sad, actually. I showed up there with a few
people at a quarter to 5. There was a small group of people milling
around who had also showed up for the in-store appearance, which was
supposed to start at 5. 5 came and went with no Jonah or Rob or Sean to
be seen, but hey, it's a record store, so I didn't have any difficulty
keeping myself occupied. I picked up copies of the domestic version of
Tri Repetae (Woo hoo! Over 140 minutes of class music for $12.49! I'm
glad I made myself wait for the domestic) and the new Planetary Assault
Systems collection.
Time passed and time passed. Which was a good thing, because the people
at Virgin obviously did NOT have their shit together and were running
around trying to find the necessary gear. Meanwhile, the house DJ was
obviously having difficulty with Autechre's name, self-consciously
pausing each time before he said "ow-tek-er". It cracked me up.
Finally, at about 5:30 or so, Autechre showed up with Mark Broom and the
Flux TV crew in tow. At this point the boneheads at Virgin finally
realized that they were going to have to somehow patch Autechre's mixer
and turntables into the soundboard and started scrabbling for
gear. Meanwhile, Sean and Rob were standing around chatting with some of
the bystanders that had shown up to see what was happening. I talked to
them for about 15 minutes, was impressed by their lack of pretension and
laid-back attitudes, and extracted this information from them:
o They are wall-to-wall booked for this tour. They flew up to SF
_exclusively_ to appear at Virgin. They'd flown up from LA earlier in
the afternoon, been interviewed by Flux TV, and after they spun were
hopping back on the plane down to LA, and from there were going to fly
straight to Miami for a live appearance there.
o There had been some hope that they were going to be able to spin at a
party in SF that night, but they just couldn't fit it in. They also
went to great lengths to disclaim any special talents as DJs, although
(as I will get to in a moment) I think they were just being modest.
o Some people here had noticed that the second disc on the domestic
version of "Tri Repetae" have "Anvil Vampre" printed on them instead
of "Anvil Vapre". According to one of them (the one with the
ponytail), these are now "collector's items" ;), because they noticed
the error and convinced TVT to print up a second, corrected
batch. "Well, it's TVT, what d'you expect?"
After awhile, to kill time, somebody handed them some Sharpies and had
them start signing things. I was a little hesitant to get anything
signed, because there's something that's just a little too rock-star
about that whole thing, but finally just said, "fuck it" and had them get
red and black ink all over the pristine metallic green of my "Tri
Repetae" cover. For those who care, the signatures are completely
unintelligible. They look cool, though.
Finally, the Virgin staff got things sorted enough for Autechre to
spin. They may not be Derrick May or anything, but they make a very
capable DJing team. I didn't recognize most of what they played, except
that it was quality old-school electro for the most part, but they did
drop the TTQ remix of Mescalinium United's We Have Arrived. That got a
big fat thumbs-up from me, especially because it seemed so appropriate,
coming from them. At several points in their (very short) set, it sounded
like the hefty Virgin in-store speakers were going to blow up. It sounded
_very_ cool to my anarchic self.
Finally, they absolutely had to take off to catch their plane back down
to LA. They apologized for the rushed-ness of their set and waved at
everybody, and then took off. It was all sort of anti-climactic, albeit
in an entertaining way. I didn't stick around to see Jonah spin because
it was already 6:30 and I had work to do. The Virgin people should try to
be a bit more organized if they want to try to do things like this again
in the future.
gm> 6. I picked up this weird copy of ISDN, in a black folding package with
gm> what looks like additional artwork in the inside. Anyone know whats up
gm> with this?
This is the original "Limited Edition" version of ISDN. There were a lot
of jokes about its limitedness at the time of its release, because it was
EVERYWHERE (I found over 30 copies in Missoula, Montana alone). Of
course, after that, there were many (pretty stupid, in retrospect) bitter
recriminations when the new jewelbox version was released. It was one of
those moments that separated the music listeners from the kollektorskum,
in my opinion.
The black-covered version differs from the white jewelbox version in
these ways:
o The artwork is different between the two versions.
o Where the black-covered version contains the songs "Hot Knives", "Are
They Fightin Us", and "An End Of Sorts", the white CD contains "Kai",
"Snakehips" and "Amoeba" (info courtesy of Jon Drukman. Thanks,
Jon!). I'll let other people argue about which track listing is
superior.
Hope all this was useful!
ozymandias
ozymandias G desiderata ogd@organic.com Ravers Suck Our Sound
(415)284-6888
http://www.organic.com/Staff/ogd/ ::AOAIOXXYSZ::