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Date -
17/04/05 |
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| Readers' score - None |
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| Autechre don't do gigs very often, so getting to see them live is An Occasion. An Experience. |
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It's 11pm and Autechre still aren't on. The night started at 7:30pm, with Rob Hall (from great label Skam) and Some Other People who I can't remember spinning some beats through the robust sound system in the cavernous Stealth. When Booth and Brown finally arrive, we get their brain output for about three quarters of an hour in what is probably best described as an 'interesting' performance for several reasons.
Autechre step into the cave-like arrangement of technology and speakers, and the lights dramatically drop to zero-levels, with only the dim glow of mixers and synths highlighting Autechre's collective face. Throughout the room, flashes of light momentarily illuminate people as they use phones and lighters. There are no visuals on the wall, and only limited glimpes of Ae themselves as they hunch over the equipment. It seems to be a real aesthetic for them, the deprivation of all senses but sound. Are they forcing us to concentrate on the nourishing slabs of sonic crunch?
The side-effect lighting plays on the bodies of the audience. Some are trying to dance to the irregular rhythms, at first getting into a groove and then spasmodically jerking to fit the constant reshuffling of the beats. It’s quite entertaining to watch, and the beginning of Autechre's set satisfies this urge with its fairly regular electronica textures. It's almost as if they have come on as Gescom by mistake.
Every now an then, elements from Untilted, the latest album, are stacked onto the table, taking the music to increasingly erratic and irregular Autechre territory. People go mental when the more sophisticated of Ae's noodlings emerge, and in all honesty it's a pretty good kick to hear colliding, phasing beats build up to a climax of noise on a pretty hefty sound system at high volume. The bass rips through the floor, shakes the flesh. It's a bad time for the obese with resonant fat in there, but a pretty powerful time for everyone else.
At the end, I'm thrown all these questions by the gig. Almost silly, irrelevant questions, but questions nevertheless. Is it really possible to appreciate what Ae do behind the equipment stacks? In a way it is hard to understand the relationship the actions of Booth and Brown have with the sounds that assault your eardrums. Perhaps the dramatic touch of dropping the lights was trying to say something about this, I don't know. Does their music translate live at all? Is this the reason why they do so few gigs?
In the end there are more questions than answers, but there is also the residue of the experience: Autechre live, and when hitting their mark, magically creating the playful rhythms and sublime soundlands that are impossible to describe. |
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| Stuart Reeves |
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Name:
Edwood
| Date:
15/04/07 | Reply
Hi there. I went to this gig too and i agree mostly. where i differ in opinion is that i danced my ass the whole gig! I went by myself, and an interesting concequence of that is i found it easier to fall into the music. Yes it wa broken beats, but dancing to broken beats is a reflective art of the music itself. Have you ever tried dancing to Dillinger Escape PLan? Now that is ART!
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