thoughts and questions arising from listening to autechre..

Playing with a reference point: what is a common point of reference in this music for both the musician accustomed to discontinuous musical forms, and to the general listener unaccustomed to this type of music?

Harmonically static musical direction and rhythmic repetition (strictly metric or organically periodic) attracts the listener towards minute changes in texture and timbre. The traditional musical discourse of dialectic and tension and resolution, as with all repetitive music, becomes meaningless.

The sound material also, being entirely electronic, erodes any sense of cultural orientation, any sense of referential listening. E.g. the saxophonist listening to a work involving saxophone who makes subjective technical judgements as opposed to aesthetic musical judgements.

The anihilation of form: structure and external order are organically shaped by the internal micro-momentum of the material. The initial sound object or point of departure shapes the overall outcome. Just as in much improvisation, and in everyday life.

To me this is a much more organic musical 'discourse', echoeing the chaotic and discontinuous formation of naturally found phenomena: the slow development of a large city; the chaotic yet stragely beautiful discontinuity of land formations seen from above; the different personal trajectories of the lives of individual human beings.

It is only by keeping focused on the minute, the now, the street, the task, the one sound, the breath, that one can begin to understand the true beauty and complexity of life. Upon reflection it's the decisions and the minute changes that help to develop overall form. So why should musical form be any different? Made of sound and time, the listener is in a position to follow the musical and sound discourse in the moment, and is not auto-programmed to conceive of the entire whole at all times.

Reference points for navigating unfamiliar musical territory: much like learning a language, it's always much easier to follow something unknown and foreign by holding onto certain reference points (first sounds and individual words then phrases and sentences)...

just a few thoughts.