CLoM » 14 Tracks from a CD

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14 Tracks from a CD

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01. “r ess”

This track has about five-hundred square feet of reverb. Quite a lot like “Altibzz” from Quaristice. A beat that sounds like a clock dancing on crutches. The beat sounds really weird and unnatural if you try to focus on it, but perfect if you ignore it. This song is really designed to be played at very high volume, because it is very glorious. It is sort of like an opera. However, it is better than an opera, because it is not operatic in any way.

02. “ilanders”

Every time I play this song, someone gives me a chocolate muffin. Begins with a wave of dissonant pads. Based around a really slippery bass, which is paired with some wet sounding Autechre beats. It sounds so much like Confield, except without that type of song structure. In fact, it could be the older brother of “Cfern”. Nice subtle blips, but you won't notice them when they start, or when they change. Autechre are good at blips.

03. “known(1)”

There are things that sound like guitars. There are things that sound like sound effects from Windows 95. It’s very odd, and it put me off a bit. This song makes it impossible to play the album to people you know. It would be like introducing them to Ron Paul. I have deleted this song, so I don’t know what else to say about it.

04. “pt2ph8”

This song has a thing that sounds like ringing glass. It is quite nice, very subtle but also consistent. It is very loose, like the previous track, but without the bizarre FM synths and general tackiness. If I was going to compare this song to a foodstuff, it would probably be rice.

05. “qplay”

Really understated light synths, against a tough kind of hip hop beat. This sounds like a videogame from the early nineties on MSDOS. Unless it’s Ken’s Labyrinth. Nothing sounds like that.

06. “see on see”

Very echoing, sort of like a flashback. Not much bass or beats at all. The last ten seconds is just reverb. I don’t find this song very interesting. However, the title is fun to say and/or look at.

07. “Treale”

This song is nice and alien. It is structured in a way I like. You have to put the volume up a lot, because it builds very smoothly. Nice, understated drums. Random, kind of jazzy melodies.

08. “os veix3”

This song is mixed so that the musical parts are lower than volume of the drums, so you can hear the beat clearly, but the synths & bass always sounds understated. In my opinion, the rest of the album should have been mixed this way. The only problem with this album is that there isn't enough of a beat going through it — LP5 feels very cohesive and structured because every song is based on a beat despite being mainly melodic. It feels like every track can relate to the others despite being unique, which is something that beatless songs can’t do. Oversteps feels a bit woolly and meandering because a lot of the tracks have very subdued beats. Anyway, on this song All the drum sounds work perfectly at exactly the right time. It’s an odd thing, and I can’t explain it. It’s like one of those machines that make breakfast. With this song, you should picture toast flying through the air and landing exactly on a plate. More people should have songs that do this.

09. “O=0”

My favorite song! It sounds like a streetlamp with frost. Unlike the rest of the album, it goes through stages very clearly, and there are four or five points where you hear one stage stop and another one begin. That’s pretty refreshing for Autechre. This song sounds like touching a brick wall in 1997. I haven't done that for a while but I remember what it's like. There are nice bell synths, excellent foggy pads in the background, humming, whirring, hissing retro-ish beats, weird pitch-shifted (?) bass instruments and things that sound like trumpets. It sounds like Corc, but far more random and fun. If I ever make a movie in which intelligent robots discover the meaning of Christmas, this will be the soundtrack.

10. “d-sho qub”

Probably the track that stands out the most. It has the most distinctive intro, for one thing — it starts with weird tape hisses, whereas most other tracks here just launch straight into the main loop at the start. From there, you get the weird semi-random melodies that the other tracks have, only a bit more dissonant, somehow. And then... a massive beat. Seriously. The random melodies suddenly make perfect sense against this beat. You can actually dance to this song. I don’t, though, because I have a sick note. Random melodies invite their best friends “gurgling sound effects” and “granular synthesis”, and make a huge mess in the kitchen trying to make crepes. The song — and it is a song — trails off completely and ends with, of all things, male choir synths. Which actually works.

11. “st epreo”

Fades straight in from the last note of “d-sho qub”. Features a gristly bassline, nails-in-a-washing-machine beats, and really nice acid lines. Best of all, you can pronounce the song title. This song definitely has that LP5 feel.

12. “redfall”

Probably the least distinctive song. It’s quite nice, and I’m not going to delete it, but it’s not so interesting and it doesn’t really go anywhere. It feels basically the same as earlier songs — especially “see on see” and “pt2ph8”.

13. “KrYlon”

Another one of the ones I like. Pretty much the same drill as O=o. No drums. Nice sweeping melodies, somewhere in the randomness. Has a slightly classical feel, despite the acidy synths. I think this is the longest song (about six minutes) but I might be wrong. It kinda feels like its doing something similar to Corc — a long calm before the last track. Actually, was Corc really the one before the last track? I think it was, but I might be wrong. This is the kind of thing you should look up before writing something like this.

14. “Yuop”

Immediately sounds similar to “r ess” because it has nice textures and odd timing. Sounds a lot like LP5's last song “Drane2” but much shorter. It presses about ten minutes worth of rising into four minutes. It gets buried in delay, until it begins to sound like its breaking up. Not distorted — just sort of crackling with lots of delay and compression. It sounds like a really old cassette tape. Then it all stops.

--19:04, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

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And now I'm going to sleep, or something. -- Mei (talk) 19:04, 23 March 2010 (UTC)