[idm] My review of O.S.T. at the Seattle Autechre show

From Thad Biggerstaff
Sent Fri, May 18th 2001, 06:11

I went to the Autechre show at Seattle's Showbox last night.

First ill get my thoughts on Autechre's performance out of the way.
I have yet to hear Confield, but after what i heard last night im certainly
hoping for better.
Sure, they had the randomized beat thing going on, tweaking the
controls/dials constantly and all. But there was absolutely NO melody
whatsoever. None. I have liked how Autechre in the past have played with
subverting melody with beat and vice versa, but they seem to have (at least
in their live performance) gone ENTIRELY to beats. (Though i like much of
their released material, their Garbage Ep. is their most shining moment
imho.) Sure, their rhythms/patterns in the performance were dense as all
hell. And the two of them sure seemed quite into the whole "groove thing",
heads constantly bopping in time. But after the first three minutes of their
set i felt like i already had heard it all. And by the end of their set, I
still felt that way! The "music" simply was way too dense for its own good,
much less anyone elses, with no sense of real timing or space or deepness-
it seemed they relied more on the gimmickry of their gear and what variation
"!" they could apply next that they lost sight of what was ultimately
lacking in their set- sincere emotive power. Flat flat flat. Blah blah blah.
Thats all I could think as the redundent beats droled on. hmph. A big
disappointment from an otherwise big fan.

What WAS a big surprise, and made me super super super glad i saw the show,
was the performance of O.S.T. In short- Just AMAZING. Mindblowing. Jaw
dropped and drooling, shoegazing all over myself :) I had heard O.S.T. was
one of the opening acts and had made sure to aquaint myself with several of
his releases before the date of the show, but such home listening proved to
be disappointing and I was not expecting much from his performance. His CDs
while having occasional portions of interest in general seemed like noodling
and for the most part rather uninteresting/undynamic/lacking in development.
But he has been eating his spinach lately, because his set was a VAST
improvement. He seemed to only be using a laptop and mixer, and for 45
minutes or so (like i could count! :) he unfolded just beautiful intricate
dense and yet DEEP layers of sounds, tones, melodies, beats, dubs, textures,
and soundscapery that just drenched over the crowd in beautiful washes and
waves. He merged and morphed beats and sounds from both acoustic and
computer sources, ranging from drones to industrial clanging to junglized
beats to glitched out computer circuitry, to dubbed out looped piano to who
all knows what else- it became impossible and even undesirable to determine
his source material after a while, it was just so intricately beautiful.
Layer upon layer, then stripping it down, then going in new fruitful
directions/layers again. I just know it was the best performance ive seen
since Slowdive years ago, and thats saying something im my book. I
personally went up to him after his set and gave hugh kudos.

O.S.T. simply blew everyone else away last night, including Autechre.
Anyone who thought otherwise had merely turned Autechre into Moby for the
night.

Now if only OST would release an album of likeminded material, that would be
the icing :)
Anyone record his set? Id lavish gifts for a copy!

Oh, and I wish to the blue mountains of Olympia that people would stop
smoking cloves in public.
HACK! :(

-Thad

=====================================================*
Thad Biggerstaff
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"Not to forget, I 'museumize' myself; so that then
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relies, to hand down memories from one to the other,
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- Massimo Toniutti

"One man's poison is another's nectar..." - a man
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