Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Autechre's 12-hour set

I have to say that I was prepared to be disappointed by this. Their marathon set from a few years ago was ... well, there was a lot of good music there, but it was way too long, let's say that. But disregarding that bit of semi-ancient history, their 80-minute FACT mix from just a few weeks ago was a mess, filled with fairly pedestrian drill'n'bass, hip-hop and glitch without much in the way of flow whatsoever.

It took me the better part of a week, but I've slowly made my way through their March 2-3 set, and it's a keeper. Start to finish, it's packed with amazing tunes, skillful and creative mixing, and fascinating transitions. Mixing Autechre (and Autechre soundalikes) into hip-hop has been done before, but this many times in one set? I was losing myself while tripping down memory lane in the first few hours, with its melting pot of old school hip-hop and classic Autechre remixes. That opening section by itself might have made for a fairly legendary "long" DJ set, but there are another eight hours to follow! There's still the early 90's rave section, the extended hip-hop section, the (brief) minimal techno section, the cool parts where they use Renegade Soundwave or Sensational to help segue between genres, the kitchen sink closing section of dub, noise, hip-hop and IDM ...

Their set all over the internet, but here is a good place to hear it.

2 comments:

Leee said...

Their marathon set from a few years ago was ... well, there was a lot of good music there, but it was way too long, let's say that.

Are you talking about the webcast they did for the Draft (?) release?

Why do you think that this webcast is so much better than their previous mixes? Or more specifically, why could the older ones have been this good?

Barry said...

I'm pretty sure it was in '05, so before "Untilted". I tried searching for at least the setlist but I couldn't find it. I remember listening to it at the time and liking a lot of the music, but it was a major slog and halfway through I was more than ready for it to be over.

On this webcast (2010), they hit a great balance between the familiar and the unfamiliar, between the IDM-ish stuff and other types of techno. Plus you can't go wrong with all that early 90's UK bleep and rave.