From Kreig.Zimmerman Sent Wed, Aug 5th 1998, 21:03
I'd say I'd have to agree wholeheartedly with the below comments. I myself saw Autechre in Jan. 96 in NYC, and I too was put off by what I think of as just wanking to fuck with the crowd, i.e. "try and figure out what song _this_ is!!!" I'm sorry, but that's what going to a concert is _not_ about. When you go to a show, you're hoping to enjoy a band's music with people who also enjoy it, a party put on by the band itself. Now I'm no fan of bands that do verbatim renditions of recorded material, I find that fairly uninteresting in itself. But the Orb is a good example of an electronic group that manages to remix their songs for live performance, making them new and exciting, yet keeping them recognizable at the same time. Yet Autechre seems to have decided that in order to be taken seriously "live" they have to completely remake all their songs with virtually nothing remaining from the originals. This may make them feel like they're s00perk00l and may satisfy the trainspotters in the audience, but for the vast majority who's seeking a more visceral thrill, it simply seems pretentious, a bunch of techno-geeks pulling noise out of their arses. I doubt I'd ever go to another one of their so-called live shows. ______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________ Subject: (idm) RE: AE in Vancouver [snip] It was a real disappointment for me because I am a really big fan. But as is often the case with live electronic acts, Autechre saw fit to completely dissect all of their songs and reassemble the parts into much grungier, less danceable, and in my opinion, less enjoyable tracks. The formula went like this for several songs: Start with a stunning AE beat that causes the whole crowd to go nuts and scream and begin to dance. Layer sound->layer->layer->layer->watch crowd stop dancing and start scratching their heads. Either that or they were I can appreciate that the audience would want to hear artful rearrangement of their songs, but these tracks were beyond the pale in terms of experimentation. They were frequently undanceable (when I say that I don't mean 'they weren't 4/4 I couldn't handbag around the dancefloor whine whine' I mean they were grating and inaccessible when compared to the tens of songs that they have that make you want to wig out). Why don't they play the songs that are full of amazing melodies that everyone loves? Why does a live concert from them (and others, notably Aphex) consist of a sonic middle finger to people that pay good money to hear what they like? The argument goes, "If you just wanted to hear the same music played live, then why not just stay home and crank up your stereo to get the effect?" to which I reply that in this case, Autechre overshot the space where artist and audience meet to have a good time. [snip]