Incunabula

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Incunabula

Incunabula.jpg

Artist Autechre
Released 29 November 1993
Label Warp Records (WARP17)
Cavity Job
(1991) 		Incunabula Basscad,EP
(1994)

Incunabula is the first studio album by Autechre released on Warp Records. It was originally released on November 29th, 1993[1], as part of the Artificial Intelligence series. It was later repressed on vinyl in 2016, alongside Amber, and Tri Repetae.

History

The material on Incunabula took about 2 years to compile.[2] Sean Booth has later recounted in interviews that Incunabula was “more of a compilation of old material” than an album.[3] The compilation was largely done by Warp, selecting from hundreds of tracks Autechre made, which included cutting the more club-orientated tracks. [4][5]

Gear known to have been used in Incunabula creation includes the Casio SK-1[6], the Roland R8 and the Roland TR-606.

The title is a real word, which comes from Latin's "incunabel" to mean a book's first pressing.[7]

Cover

The design of Incunabula consists of manipulated photos of Sean and Rob taken by Daniel 72 and edited by The Designers Republic. The original photos are from taking photographs of a video being played through an out of tune TV (the photos are on the cover [top left] and design for Incunabula).[8] The Designers Republic noted that the designs took days to make due to the slow speeds and clunky nature of pre-layer Photoshop, and that Autechre refered to the finalised designs as "moonscapes". [9]

Tracks

Kalpol Introl

  • "Kalpol Introl" is featured in the 1998 film Pi by Darren Aronofsky, but is incorrectly titled "Kalpol Intro" on the film's soundtrack.
  • The original version of version of "Kalpol Introl" was much longer before being edited down into the 3 minute version on Incunabula. However, the 15-minute original version appeared in their 1993/1994 live shows (example).[7]

Bike

  • An alternate version of "Bike" was played during one of Autechre's webcasts in March 2013, following the release of Exai. Compared to the released version, the alternate version is slightly shorter and features different modulations of the lead synth.[10]
  • "Bike" appeared in Grand Theft Auto IV as one of the tracks that could be played on the "Self-Actualization FM" radio station.

Autriche

  • Sean mentioned that a Ensoniq sampling a 606 appeared on "Autriche".[11]

Bronchus 2

Basscadet

  • The vocal sample is from a live version of Jean-Michel Jarre's "Les Chants Magnetiques 1".[12]
  • A bunch of remixes of "Basscadet" were released for Basscad,EP.

Eggshell

  • "Eggshell" is an remixed version of their previously released song “The Egg”, which was included on the first Artificial Intelligence compilation in 1992.[7]
  • Sean noted that this track was the only track to use the Ensoniq ASR-10 as they were only able to get it near the end of production.[11]

Doctrine

Maetl

  • In an early interview on MTV, Autechre mentioned the track title was chosen to poke fun at Australians who call each other "mate". The original working title was "Dudl", after Americans who call each other "dude".[13] In another FAQ, they mentioned that a random day in the studio they just came up with it by pronouncing mate "with an odd sottish accent".[7]

Windwind

  • "Windwind" was possibly named because the word "wind" has two pronunciations. Autechre would follow this convention again on Amber with the track "Teartear".

Lowride

  • The two major samples on "Lowride" are of Gang Starr's "DJ Premier in Deep Concentration" [14] and Holy Noise's 'The Noise (Extreme Sounds!)"[15]

444

Tracklist

# Title Length
1 Kalpol Introl 3:19
2 Bike 8:00
3 Autriche 6:56
4 Bronchus 2 3:33
5 Basscadet 5:34
6 Eggshell 9:02
7 Doctrine 7:49
8 Maetl 6:33
9 Windwind 11:17
10 Lowride 7:16
11 444 8:55
Total 1:18:03

Links

Credits

References

  1. ↑ "Autechre - Incunabula. Bleep.". Bleep, https://bleep.com/release/20360-autechre-incunabula. Accessed 20 May 2024.
  2. ↑ Sean Twitch AMA, June 2022. "I don't know if I think of it as being that cheesy now. I do think that Incunabula sounds like a very curated album. It isn't the album that we would have put together. It’s the album Warp put together from hundreds of tracks that we had. Amber was trying to give him another one of those albums because we knew that they wanted an album like that, you know, and it took us two years to actually figure out what that album should look like with Incunabula, and I think that the whole thing of dealing with a label of them taking an active curatorial role in your release makes you question whether it's good or not."
  3. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20060220061144/http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A3895806
  4. ↑ Autechre's Interview with Мatt O'Leary, March 2005. "Originally Incunabula would have probably been half dance music, if we'd have been doing the compiling, but it was Warp, which is why it sounded the way it did."
  5. ↑ Sean Twitch AMA, June 2022. "I don't know if I think of it as being that cheesy now. I do think that Incunabula sounds like a very curated album. It isn't the album that we would have put together. It’s the album Warp put together from hundreds of tracks that we had."
  6. ↑ Wilson, Scott. "Designing chaos: 7 pieces of gear that helped define Autechre’s game-changing sound". Factmag, 25 February 2017, https://www.factmag.com/2017/02/25/autechre-gear-synths-samplers-drum-machines-effects/. Accessed 20 May 2024.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Ruud, Knut Andreas. "The _alt.music.autechre_ FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) version 1.15". LonelyMachines, December 2000, https://lonelymachines.org/the-autechre-faq-v-199/. Accessed 20 May 2024.
  8. ↑ Q1377, WATMM Ask Autechre Anything, November 2013
  9. ↑ "Incunabula". The Designers Republic, https://www.thedesignersrepublic.com/project/incunabula. Accessed 20 May 2024.
  10. ↑ https://youtube.com/watch?v=GiKDDsFEYpI
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Sean Twitch AMA, June 2022. "So we were like, we got the Ensoniq in ’93, so just right towards the tail end of doing Incunabula. so the only track with an Ensoniq on Incunabula, I think Autriche’s got it because we sampled the 606 on it, and then Eggshell was done with that. But everything prior, everything else on there is, it was pre us owning a sampler and we were using it only to sample our own gear, right?"
  12. ↑ https://www.whosampled.com/sample/991775/Autechre-Basscadet-Jean-Michel-Jarre-Chants-Magnetiques-1/
  13. ↑ https://youtu.be/yuPNwLYrMm0?si=5O35huU4rGXN6eox&t=222
  14. ↑ https://www.whosampled.com/sample/14893/Autechre-Lowride-Gang-Starr-DJ-Premier-in-Deep-Concentration/
  15. ↑ https://www.whosampled.com/sample/1009119/Autechre-Lowride-Holy-Noise-The-Noise-(X-Treme-Sounds!)/
  16. ↑ https://www.discogs.com/master/316433-Autechre-Incunabula
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