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 ~ReSource~ xxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.xxx For an updated list of eclectic music for trade/sale, just ask... :) "Not to forget, I 'museumize' myself; so that then I pay myself a visit and find me again in all the relies, to hand down memories from one to the other, like a genealogical tree, as if it were morning!" - Massimo Toniutti "One man's poison is another's nectar..." - a man =====================================================* --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: xxx-xxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx For additional commands, e-mail: xxx-xxxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx