Autechre

It's not a collection of EPs though, the artists themselves have not classified it as such. They've not really classified it as an album either - it's all super ambiguous, but they could very well expect you to listen to it in one go.

On the mediocre point - that's all very subjective, innit? For me it's a sublime collection of sounds with only a few weak spots (mostly on the second elseq, which does reflect the RYM score). I listen to it quite a bit but that's besides the point as the functionality of a release shouldn't necessarily dictate it's worth.

What about it is a mess?

Autechre fanboy detected.

this

While the mediocre point is subjective, public opinion is swaying towards the fact that each individual part on its own is not worth listening to. This is quite odd considering the same consensus opinion believes that the combination of them is a must listen.

>I listen to it quite a bit but that's besides the point as the functionality of a release shouldn't necessarily dictate it's worth.
This kind of defines my point. While yes there are values more important than functionality, it seems that people see the length and automatically view as progressive and interesting, just because it's long.

While longer albums can be great because they give the artist a bigger slate to draw out their ideas and experiment with the very concept of time in music, but most of the listening community see length as an automatic sign that the release has merit. Especially with electronic music. I think Elseq is clear evidence of this phenomenon.

5 favorite artists

Otomo Yoshide
Toshimaru Nakamura
Keith Rowe
Filament
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> it seems that people see the length and automatically view as progressive and interesting, just because it's long.

this is definitely not true. maybe in some cases, but i think with especially long releases they have the likelihood of either succeeding (as in this case) or crashing and burning. plenty of long albums from big artists have been critically rejected because of being a poorly edited, indulgent mess.

exai was described this way when it first came out.

autechre are stockhausen for people too dumb to appreciate stockhausen

Radiohead
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MBV
Kanye West
Grimes

>public opinion is swaying towards the fact that each individual part on its own is not worth listening to
I don't really get that at all looking at the scores from the OP if you're familiar with the grading curve that's in place on RYM, though. Anything around 3.30 tends to be viewed as "good" and scores around the 3.50 mark are "very good" - at least this is my reading. Only 2 has a mediocre score.

>While longer albums can be great because they give the artist a bigger slate to draw out their ideas and experiment with the very concept of time in music, but most of the listening community see length as an automatic sign that the release has merit.
Well, I can't speak for other peoples intentions on whether or not that made them hold this particular album in a higher regard, but I'd say that street goes both ways. Whenever you have a long-form release such as this you get a lot of comments about "self-indulgence" or an inability to edit or lack of quality control - the double album, for example, is often met with reactions of a groaning "oh, here we go..." I don't think it's so clear cut.

Whether the reception is positive or negative usually is dependent on 2 things
1). the length serves a conceptual purpose
2). the album justifies it's length by most the material meeting a certain quality

I'd say elseq meets these criteria (of course the second point is much more subjective) particularly because it does this:

>longer albums can be great because they give the artist a bigger slate to draw out their ideas and experiment with the very concept of time in music