AAA - Ask Autechre Anything - Sean and Rob on WATMM!

[Sean Ae]

What is your favourite track from Exai?

 

currently cloudline

[Rob Ae]

- am pretty curious about how you choose track titles, sometimes they seem a bit casual, like just your personal shorthand for how you name different versions of a track, or to downplay the importance of the whole idea of track titles (similar to playing live in a dark room). Other times they seem more carefully chosen or tongue-in-cheek (eg., reniform puls). Are they always carefully chosen? Are any of them more personal?

 

 

- to what extent do you think your local environment plays a role in your sound? I seem to recall around the time of Confield there was talk about how you had moved to (London?) or were no longer working together in the same studio (sorry, fuzzy on the details, it's been a while!), and that that might have informed the tone of the record in some way. Something that also comes to mind is in a more recent interview I think Rob mentioned listening to Oversteps repeatedly during train commutes (sorry if I'm mangling this, again memory is a bit fuzzy). Do you just find yourselves making music wherever whenever, or are there any places you like to go to for inspiration...?

 

- I think one or both of you may now have families, do you find it hard to manage family time vs. creative time, and any tips?

 

originally autechre was a track name, and i guess we have always disturbed a real word or shimmed it into what fits with a track if it will work well, some are literally file names for tracks - iterative or whatever, or just like when we used to do graf, the letters looks better a certain way its an aesthetic choice, so yeah we care but we do it a few different ways, so it may seem more disparate

Edited November 2, 2013 by Rob Ae

[kieselguhr kid]

is it washable?

[Sean Ae]

The recent proxy link mahem http://p.autechre.ws/proxy?lnk=http://factmag.com via autechre.ws was a really fresh and weird spin on album marketing IMO. It genuinely freaked me out at first as if my machine had been infected with AE! :)

 

Care to divulge any thoughts on this? Was this a tDR or Warp marketing idea or something you guys initiated?

 

both

they had the idea for hacking other sites (inspired by our myspace antics), and originally wanted to use it on things like .gov sites - we had the idea of using the referer and gave them a list of URLs, as well as making a lot of aesthetic contributions

[Guest MastaN8]

 

 

Did you guys ever record anything with the late Peter christopherson and jhon balance of coil? Am I mistaken?

no

we did send them some beats once for a potential collab but they said they listened, enjoyed, and thought they couldn't add anything without spoiling it

which i mean, it was cute but i really hoped they would hack into it somehow

so nothing came of it

Did you end up using those beats on any projects you can remember?

[Sean Ae]

Weird question, and probably impossible to answer, but: Would you ever do an entire album without any drums/percussion sounds? Quaristice especially had some sweet stuff, like notwo and altibzz.

 

Quite good

 

maybe, depends what we have at the end really

it's unlikely i would spend a cpl of years doing non beats tracks but if we ended up with a few, and some way to separate them off onto their own thing, then yeah. just hasn't quite happened that way yet

[lumpenprol]

- what's the weirdest/most unexpected door that being electronic musicians has opened for you?

 

- the Anti ep may be the only time in your discography that mentions something political (Criminal Justice Bill). Do either of you consider yourselves political or socially active?

[SR4]

What are your opinions on Million Dollar Extreme? Do you think the explosive interview at Russia Today is the beginning of the end for real journalism?

[Ivan Ooze]

holy shit hi rob and sean!!

 

Autechre is the most amazing music ever on a psychedelic drug like mushrooms, did you guys ever experiment with it and if yes have drugs influenced the music of autechre??

 

i love autechre!!!

[Atop]

I was at ATP '03 and want to thank you both for putting on such an amazing festival that I will never forget. I remember watching part of Phoenix 2772 on the TV in the chalet and have been searching for a decent copy of that ever since. If there is film footage of that year's fest, we all need to see that. There seems to be no film footage that I can find from that legendary line-up. Love and admiration forever!!!!!

 

My question is in dealing with reactions to your music since the release of LP5, what do you guys think of reactions to your music like "I don't get it" or "this is isn't music", mostly due to the slightly atonal/arrhythmic/abstract style Autechre is now famous for?

 

And bonus question(s): Do you guys ever realize what you are doing to your audience at a live show? The extreme psychedelic experience you put us through could have positive reactions like hyper-intelligence, a better outlook on life, and love for all humankind? Is this what we should all strive for as musicians?

 

love always,

 

 

Atop

[Rob Ae]

holy shit hi rob and sean!!

 

Autechre is the most amazing music ever on a psychedelic drug like mushrooms, did you guys ever experiment with it and if yes have drugs influenced the music of autechre??

 

i love autechre!!!

yes, but sometimes when on certain substances it will really distract u and make u do shit music, so sometimes the only memory of use is all it takes to get things turning out just right.

[Dale]

does politics/social issues seep their way into your creative output? perhaps in a really subtle way without sounding preachy to the listener? the last politically/socially influenced release you put out was 'Anti' if I'm not mistaken?

[SR4]

do you guys ever have fantasies about being famous rappers?

[Sean Ae]

 

 

- to what extent do you think your local environment plays a role in your sound? I seem to recall around the time of Confield there was talk about how you had moved to (London?) or were no longer working together in the same studio (sorry, fuzzy on the details, it's been a while!), and that that might have informed the tone of the record in some way. Something that also comes to mind is in a more recent interview I think Rob mentioned listening to Oversteps repeatedly during train commutes (sorry if I'm mangling this, again memory is a bit fuzzy). Do you just find yourselves making music wherever whenever, or are there any places you like to go to for inspiration...?

 

 

 

over the years we both moved a number of times, we've been living is different cities since late 99

local environment def plays a role, in terms of aesthetics, attitude, vibe

we can work anywhere but tech and room sound has a role as well so some kinds of work happen more while travelling than others

making sequencers is easier to do without good speakers than making synths, but a lot of our stuff isn't strictly one or the other so it tends to happen incrementally in weird stages based on circumstances

[mcbpete]

Is R M I Corporate ID 2 the raw file of Mira Calix's Humba loaded into a wave editor ?

[Guest skibby]

Can you think of any other legendary musicians in the 'genre' that are long overdue for a new release that you'd quite like to hear new music from?

Sorry if this has already been asked, but who influences you this week?

[Plarkreluke Banloboh]

What do you think of the whole all-of-our-communications-are-being-surveiled-by-the-US-government-under-the-guise-of-anti-terrorism thing?

[Dale]

@Sean - I remember reading in an interview somewhere that you lived in Suffolk for a while. I'm from Ipswich - I'm curious to know what brought you to Suffolk since there's not a lot going on over here!?

[Dale]

would you divulge how you guys produced that epic synth line starting at 1:57 in prac-f (with the heavy reverb on it)?

[Guest]

how do your studio(s) look like? a picture might be a good vessel for this informations...

 

what does it smell like?

[Sean Ae]

- Do you take an interest in neuroscience and how music stimulates the nervous system and our physiology (not just in terms of emotions)?

 

- Is your main goal to produce music that is emotionally appealing to yourselves, or do you lean more towards the sound designs/textures that music can be manipulated into without having the emotive element in the forefront of the music making process (or maybe a mixture of both)?

 

tbh i think everything has some emotional element, but we're not really thinking about that when we do stuff

it's not that we don't feel like emotions are important, more that it's hard for me to imagine a sound that doesn't convey some sense of something, and quite often when people discuss emotions in music they only think of happy or sad as being emotions, when imo emotions are a lot more than that

e.g. if we put out a really angry track, then people rarely describe it that way. they would more likely say it was unlistenable or difficult, the emphasis moves from expression to design, maybe they just fail to recognise it as expressive if they think it's very technical

 

 

Did you guys ever record anything with the late Peter christopherson and jhon balance of coil? Am I mistaken?

no

we did send them some beats once for a potential collab but they said they listened, enjoyed, and thought they couldn't add anything without spoiling it

which i mean, it was cute but i really hoped they would hack into it somehow

so nothing came of it

Did you end up using those beats on any projects you can remember?

 

no, they got archived in the vain hope they may one day become something

[Plarkreluke Banloboh]

What do you think about cheeky fans creating fake Autechre tracks in the lead up to an album release in order to fool leakers?

[Sean Ae]

Is R M I Corporate ID 2 the raw file of Mira Calix's Humba loaded into a wave editor ?

 

no it was the residual ram contents of an ensoniq eps, revealed by making the loop length too small on an unrelated sample (an ensoniq glitch we exploited a few times)

those samples hadn't been loaded into that sampler for months but they were still there living in the ram

[SR4]

What do you think about cheeky fans creating fake Autechre tracks in the lead up to an album release in order to fool leakers?

yeah what do you think of awepittance?

[Sean Ae]

- what's the weirdest/most unexpected door that being electronic musicians has opened for you?

 

- the Anti ep may be the only time in your discography that mentions something political (Criminal Justice Bill). Do either of you consider yourselves political or socially active?

 

tbh not too many doors, none weird enough to mention anyway

 

re politics, not active in any visible sense, nothing connected to autechre

 

 

Weird question, and probably impossible to answer, but: Would you ever do an entire album without any drums/percussion sounds? Quaristice especially had some sweet stuff, like notwo and altibzz.

 

Quite good

maybe, depends what we have at the end really

it's unlikely i would spend a cpl of years doing non beats tracks but if we ended up with a few, and some way to separate them off onto their own thing, then yeah. just hasn't quite happened that way yet

Sweet. as long as you keep releasing stuff, I'm a very happy person.

 

Also, for the next tour, come back to Denmark-land. That'd be very nice!

 

ah i love denmark