ignatius

from USA to anywhere over seas, everything is going via boat i think. i tracked my package and it went through beirut for some reason.

garage door made a nice back wall for snow. nice line when i opened the garage door.

blood sugar does some crazy shit. get some snacks around to tide over your hunger. bananas, bread, peanut butter.

i did shovel some snow earlier today. then put down some de-icer. i'll probably do more tomorrow. i'm pretty restless today and weirdly anxious.. or not so weirdly really. just feeling all the feels, medication side effects, lack of sleep etc and it sucks. might have to stubbornly do some kind of body work/stretching etc before i grit my teeth to the point of soreness. [uncrosses legs, newman drools, michael douglas' left testicle quivers]

OJ Simpson.

2020 was positive for Autechre. A sentence that does not fit many artists in the crisis year. With SIGN and PLUS, Sean Booth and Rob Brown released two albums on their house and farm label Warp. The first in particular was featured in numerous annual best lists and, with its timelessly beautiful melodies, provided a musical highlight of the last year. After the sprawling elseq and NTS parts, the introverted veterans also returned to the conventional album format with which they irrevocably inscribed themselves in the history of electronic music, especially in the nineties. At the beginning of October, the two Brits met the Groove editors Maximilian Fritz and Alexis Waltz for an extensive video chat. So extensive that the exclusive Germany interview became a two-parter. The first part deals mainly with the present. How did SIGN come about? How do Autechre deal with live streams and the hysteria that has arisen over virtual gigs? And why does the crisis even meet them as a cultural moment on an artistic level? Sean Booth: Where are you two right now? GROOVE: We're both in Berlin, but I (Max, the editor) am in quarantine because I went to a festival in Austria. This is currently a risk area, so I'm waiting for my test now. SB: How did that go? We are very interested in the future of festivals because nobody seems to have any idea how they should work in the near future. You had assigned seats with enough space between them, the concept worked pretty well. I hope now at least. SB: Was that inside? Yes, but the ceiling was quite high and there were two entrances and exits. SB: Interesting. I'm curious if the numbers will go up because of that, I really want to stay on the ball. We are in constant discussion with our booker about whether we should do something like that. But as far as I know, the risk of infection is much higher indoors. So it can be that promoters act stupidly or deliberately negligently. You have to see what happens. Of course, I don't want everyone to remember ten years from now and say: "By the way, those were the musicians who were so greedy that they put the health of the concert-goers at risk." The risk is still high! Do you really miss playing live? SB: Sure. However, the pandemic hasn't hit us that hard because we hadn't planned the tour until the new album was released. Now we're sitting on a finished live set that we can't play. But our routine hasn't changed that much, we stay at home all the time anyway and make music. Rob Brown: Our process actually stayed the same. We had plans for gigs, but, well. For example, in March we received an offer to perform in Milan in November. Lombardy was then completely cordoned off and we didn't hear from people for a month. The next time they met, they were far less confident. Then the offer vanished and was postponed until next year. That was our only broken gig, if you will. Because we didn't want to start until winter or spring 2021 anyway. "Everyone in the world would hear exactly the same set, that contradicts the concept of a concert." Rob Brown on paid concerts live stream And how should that work in the future? RB: There is this weird queuing situation now. Many people have been promised the appearances from this year for next year, sometimes the first freely available slot. That's why there isn't that much space in this whole cycle next year. SB: The audience will be smaller. Then there are all the festivals that have simply moved their line-up completely to 2021. There isn't actually enough space for anyone to get bookings. It looks pretty uncomfortable. But, as I said, fortunately that doesn't affect us that much. We're in the comfortable position of being well known enough to sell a few records and get enough exposure online for other sources of income. There are artists who are hit far harder. The worst hit anyway were the promoters, the organizers and the stagehands. Have you ever thought about doing something digital? A stream? SB: That would be possible. I just don't think it works that well. The streaming world is already well established thanks to subscription models. Sure, we have a Twitch account with followers, we just have to intensify it. I think the idea of selling people tickets to an online gig is a bit strange. They are not used to it yet. Do you watch streams yourself? SB: Not really like that. I watch some streaming, but no concrete streams. But if you mean those who are raised like a club night, where a guy stands alone in the club and hangs up - there were five of them at the most. You need an audience that interacts with the DJ for DJing to make any sense. It's a collaborative activity. Streaming is better suited to playing stuff from your own album without deviating from this aim in any way. That works better. It's harder for artists like us, who rely more on interaction. RB: That would probably fail terribly with us. We serve a completely different style, are immersive, inclusive, involve people. Everyone is there at the same time, people are in the moment. That would be paradoxical: everyone in the world would hear exactly the same set, which contradicts the concept of a concert. Actually, sets develop over journeys. SB: It's also simply about the lack of logistics: You play an online gig once and then everyone has seen it. That's not 30 appearances. If people think that they can continue to perform as normal online, they are mistaken. It just doesn't work that way. "I don't know what you think about Boiler Room, but I find it totally pointless and weird. You're watching some hipsters who don't really enjoy the music. " Sean Booth How would you describe the interaction with the audience when you play live? SB: It's subtle because it's dark. But we hear what happens. And it gives us a sense of whether the audience likes what we're doing, when we're making transitions, what should be changed, and so on. It's a little like hanging up, only that we can do more. RB: And it's easy for us to read the room. There are hundreds of people there and we've been doing this forever. Even if something goes wrong, we can continue to work smoothly. Or even use the incident to create a unique moment. Everyone suddenly got into streams, we kept focusing on digging as deep as possible and doing our thing. SB: Besides, we did that before everyone else. RB: That's right. That's why it's so obvious to us. SB: The second the lockdown started, I started streaming. DJ sets for weeks. I don't want any money for it either, it's just fun. I don't really need the money either, so I'd find that strange. Photo: Bafic For the scene, however, there should be a perspective to make money - even with streams. SB: Sure, the models are also available. About Twitch, where you can host events. Of course people should make money. If a techno DJ has to play alone in a room, then that's how it should be. And when there are people who tune in from home and get high there, that's cool. The social aspect is obviously missing. Club nights are social events - even more than gigs. A band like us is somewhere in between. I don't mean to say that people shouldn't do this. When I switched on, it was always extremely boring for me. RB: It's a bit like the boiler room model. SB: I never really watched that either. RB: The only one I watched was the one with Orbital because I wanted to know what they were doing. The idea is similar. A few guys on the decks, a few people lounging in the background. Not so exciting. SB: I don't know what you think about Boiler Room, but I think it's totally pointless and weird. You watch some hipsters who don't really enjoy the music. Still, it's probably worse if no one is there at all. I was looking at something recently, what else was that? You see, that's the problem with all of this stuff: you don't even remember it because nothing significant happens. (Brown laughs) Some guy who plays techno records. Actually the same as listening to a resident advisor playlist. RB: We wouldn't do what we do on stage on a Twitch stream. SB: It's a separate, independent channel. We'd probably adjust that more than other artists. They often expect them to show up and play a normal gig. Streaming is something fundamentally different, where you interact accordingly differently. I don't see this as a substitute, but as an additional facet. We've been streaming since the early 2000s so it's not unusual for us. “There was so much greed in the scene in the 1990s that it stagnated a lot. We decided that we didn't want to be a part of it - and found like-minded people who were at our house parties. " Rob Brown How do you rate the last few months as a cultural moment? How did you influence the scene? SB: It's very obvious. Like when we started making electronic listening music on Warp. It wasn't a new context for us, it was something completely normal. You come home after the club, start rolling a few joints, and listen to music until the drugs wear off. Six or seven hours, do something on a Sunday afternoon. Still sitting there, on top of it, listening to weird stuff. We made music for this situation. That has now become the norm and has differentiated itself. So it's not a bad thing for us, it's a habit. But the party before that doesn't take place, it's just an endless after-hour. SB: After the UK rave scene sparked off in 1991, we decided to stay at home on Saturday night and take LSD instead of going to the club. So this is not funny to us. Photo: Bafic Corona has put the world in the Autechre status quo of 1991. SB: Yes! RB: There was so much greed in the scene in the nineties that in our eyes it stagnated very much. We decided we didn't want to be a part of it - and found like-minded people who were at our house parties. The big locations were taken over by big companies and the independent scene dried up. SB: In the mid-1990s, raves were de facto illegal in the UK. Things happened like the Leah Betts poster campaign where the death of a teenager was used to promote energy drinks. And then there was this movement away from party drugs like speed and ecstasy to excessive drinking and cocaine use. It felt like a return to the mid-eighties, which we wanted to get away from with the rave scene from the start. We felt that our scene was taken over by beverage companies and their parent companies in the nineties. The virus is a bad thing, of course, because a lot of people die from it. From our point of view it would be strange to complain about it because the landscape is changing in our favor. RB: In a direction that we are more in line, if you will. SB: The digital sector also benefits - software, media, everything. These are things that are good for us. I want the world to emancipate itself from retail and physical media. Towards the digital, towards streams. It's a direction we should be going anyway. Of course, I'm not saying you shouldn't go to clubs because I love it myself. That should always go on and will always be related to how I approach the music. We are spoiled there too. When we grew up we could start a rave somewhere in the fields - those days are largely over. Although there have been quite a few in the UK recently. SB: That's paradoxical. Suddenly raves were springing up everywhere. Do they have the same spirit for you as they did then? SB: No. Already optically, it's more about what you wear and how you look. RB: There is no focus, everything is mixed up. It's just a short-term escape. SB: The rave scene was originally a punk approach to club culture. People were more likely to deliberately dress badly to go out. They wore things that were allowed to get dirty. Now there is a gathering of people who grew up in this company-controlled clubland. It's more about falling over each other, dressing nicely and putting on make-up - in some fields! They acclimatise to raves in a completely different way than we used to. So I don't see that the original culture is still there. But I still like this element of personal freedom. Though, of course, I think breaking the lockdown is irresponsible. RB: They sit on hot coals, they need experiences. SB: I can partly sympathize with that, but I don't approve of it. What is it like to release your albums in this context? You probably had the music ready before the pandemic. RB: Yeah. It was all mastered and sent to Warp before the lockdown started. SB: I was in a phase in which I got an overview of what we were producing. However, I hadn't given it away because there were still a few problems. Then the lockdown came and I thought to myself, “Fucking Hell, are we going to release this album during this time? That's a bit strange. " It sounds a little different from the last ones. It docks a bit with the NTS stuff, even if that was a bit more club-oriented. Now that's the sound we wanted to make after the last tour in 2018. We have been working on this for around 18 months since summer 2018. The first six to eight months actually only consisted of programming work. What did you program? SB: Actually, we mainly transferred our existing patches to Ableton. The reason for this was that we were asked to do a remix for SOPHIE. At that time, we couldn't process our stems in the live setup. RB: It was designed too much for real time. SB: For the remix, I transferred a few of the patches to Ableton and started to dig into them. Finding myself in context. I hadn't worked with a DAW in years before. I actually didn't want to. RB: We actually use DAWs more to master our tracks. So that was a more compositional approach to our real-time setup. SB: We practically did live jams for NTS, the elseq parts and Exai. For an hour or so, then boiled it down into tracks, then put some layers on top, for example from other live jams, and then coded the track. That worked well. And how did it go this time? SB: We built it up layer by layer, very gradually, in Ableton. I don't like Ableton that much, but it supports Max / MSP patches. And then we haven't done the SOPHIE remix in ages. That only happened a few months ago, and completely different than originally planned. We didn't use a lot of the material that we had produced to get used to this new setup. And this is mainly where SIGN emerged. We met after six months of training and heard a common thread in Rob's stuff, to which a couple of my pieces fit. The album came out unintentionally. “My attention span is a little shorter than Robs. I get bored faster than him. " Sean Booth Actually you had planned to release albums as soon as possible after they were made. SB: Right! But that also has to do with warp. Usually, we had SIGN finished in February or March, the record is out a few months later. Depending on how long it takes to do the artwork, upload the files, prepare the formats. At the end of 2019 I informed Warp that we would probably do an album. They thought it was great that we wanted to deliver a normal LP again. But then we still had to plan time for the live set, and in March the virus came along. But because we originally wanted to go on tour, Warp had in mind that everything would run synchronously. That set us back. Actually, the goal is to get everything out of the way as quickly as possible, yes. RB: Maybe we could have published it as early as May. But whatever. How does the music feel for you now compared to May? SB: (laughs) Good question! It's weird because I had already done the live set, which consists of more material. It feels a little old to me now. But you get used to it over the years. RB: That dynamic is definitely established. As Max said earlier, we've been working on this system that will allow us to make and release albums instantly. But of course we also wanted to support Warp as a company. Also adapt to a certain extent, because this is this big machine that is not as agile as we are. Warp immediately felt like it and finished everything faster than I expected. It was a matter of six to nine weeks - pretty quick for a label! SB: Total. RB: The pandemic has changed time. Everyone has developed a different perception of them. She raced for me. Months feel like weeks, so my perception is a bit distorted. To me the album doesn't feel that old. In any case, we wanted to give Warp maximum flexibility. SB: My attention span is a little shorter than Robs. I get bored faster than him. You said earlier that everyone had worked for themselves for six months and then you met. If you work alone, do you have contact from time to time? SB: Only minimally. We push patches back and forth. I am sending Rob less my music and more the technology I used to do it. He in turn sends me modifications of it. We communicate a lot at this level. Not verbally, however, but we never really worked like that anyway. We have always exchanged ideas, not words. We don't like talking about music, that's your job! RB: We trust our instincts very much. Of course, you sometimes ask whether you're still on the same wavelength. Sharing patches is more dynamic and personal than getting a six-minute stereo file. It's harder to change, it feels stale. What did you want to achieve with the patches for SIGN? (Laughter) RB: Nothing. SB: Something different always comes out with Max / MSP. We enjoy it because we get bored of repetition. RB: I actually find it damn hard to stick to a plan. I'm too easily distracted. But I see it this way: what distracts me is probably more interesting than what I actually wanted to do. I then investigate. If something unforeseen happened back when we were still working with hardware, we investigated it and used it for our own benefit. That usually sounded better than if everything worked. That also motivated us to program. The second part of the interview will appear on Tuesday, February 2nd. The first part of our big interview with Autechre focused heavily on the present and the pandemic-related zeitgeist. In the second half of our Facetime call, however, we talk to the British duo about the past and its effects on current electronic music. About how Sean Booth and Rob Brown started producing in their parents' homes. About the lack of understanding of both of them for handling expensive, in the worst case cloned hardware in the 21st century. And about the rise of ecstasy in Britain in the 1990s. Autechre also explain which styles of music were defined by extroverts and which by introverts and why the sales figures for Michael Jackson's thriller make the two of them still believe in the good in people - Shakin ’Stevens by no means. SB: We have a kind of hip-hop background and used to do mix tapes instead of producing ourselves. Sometimes remixes too. You always ask yourself what can be improved, what is wrong with it, how something can be repaired. That's probably the question I ask myself the most when making music: what's wrong with it? What's wrong with what I'm hearing? Whatever that is then - I'll do it right away. And how did you work together as a remixer back then? RB: We met through a mutual friend. Sean was very interested in graffiti and tagging, I was interested in graffiti and hip-hop culture. We were actually the same person in our respective cities. I recorded tapes for my friends, Sean recorded some for his. However, I was a bit more turntable-oriented and worked early on getting decks. Sean, on the other hand, was very good at editing tapes. How old were you when you met? RB: 17, Sean a little younger. The encounter felt strange. There's this guy who talks about music the same way you do, who even uses the same words. I then invited Sean to my house. That was really funny because I actually thought he was just trying to pull my weed off. But we did a mix on cassette for me, which he took and edited. How did that sound RB: Very high quality, it wasn't half-baked DJing, but an extremely good six minutes in which he cut everything out. That was what interested us most. A drum machine, tape decks, turntables, a couple of records and a small keyboard for sampling. We used it to overproduce our DJ mixes until we realized that we were actually making tracks with other people's samples. SB: I only had a Casio SK-1, tape decks and a turntable - I did everything with that. The fact that Rob had two was a big step forward for me from now on. My biggest influences were artists like the Latin Rascals, who took a track from Mantronix and made their own version out of it, for example with weirdem dub. I tried to make beats out of someone else's beats just by editing. Even today I do not differentiate between different sound sources. Whether something comes from the microphone, the keyboard or a record. You can tap into them all - I grew up with this attitude. I don't think there is a creative difference between going into a store to buy a keyboard and making sound with it. Or whether you go in to buy a record and use it to create sounds. I still think like a remixer, actually I just remix my own crap all the time. "Since we first met, we've been pursuing different approaches that lead to the same result." Rob Brown So producing and remixing are the same for you guys? SB: All the same. I find it arbitrary to differentiate between them. RB: To justify that ends in the semantic. I'm a little more focused on details than Sean, which is why we work so well together. If I can't recreate something myself, it drives me crazy. Sean, on the other hand, would turn it all upside down. SB: I like to get Rob's tracks into my setup and destroy them. In the process, completely new directions develop in which I can go. I enjoy working on something that already exists more than starting from scratch. How do you like it when Sean shreds your tracks, Rob? RB: Culturally that's totally fine, geographically we grew up in the same region. That suits Manchester. And our approach has always been this constant editing. SB: I am also jealous of him sometimes because he makes such weird stuff out of my patches that I would never have thought of. So he uses my ideas in a critical way, just more subtle. RB: Since we met for the first time, we've been pursuing different approaches that lead to the same result. SB: With Rob it happens gradually, I'm more volatile. Breakdowns at home What did your parents think about the music you produced? RB: That it's too loud and too complicated. Sean's parents were very relaxed, but I already had complaints. SB: My parents didn't mind. She was even interested. My dad actually jumped into the percussive stuff and encouraged us. My mother was more like: “Oh, that's nice!”. Because she was my mother. My father was even critical and said what he liked about it. That was mainly the breakdowns. (Both laugh) Overall, they have always been very supportive. They only worried about excessive drug use. Photo: Bafic Did they notice everything? RB: Sure. We were very transparent about that. That's how it was when we grew up. Everyone has been quite frank about their lifestyle. SB: My dad used to smoke weed when he was a teenager and in his early twenties. So it wasn't uncomfortable, he just kept saying, “You know it's illegal? Just don't get caught. " It was the same with graffiti. The maxim has always been: “I know I can't stop you. So don't get caught. " I also stopped when I turned 16 because the penalties were severe from that age. RB: Sometimes our parents might have been a little alarmed because that was really all we did. We stayed at one of our homes and played music all night and all day when we got the chance. Every now and then, they certainly had concerns about our perspective. “What the hell do you want with a 606, cloned at that? Are you going to get it because then you can pretend you're a penniless artist from 30 years ago? " Sean Booth What did she look like apart from the music? SB: I actually dropped out of school without a degree, but then snuck into college. Then after six months I realized that I didn't have enough time in the studio. So I wanted to get some crappy job to buy equipment. It was 1988, you could buy a 606 for £ 50. It's different today. SB: That's the funny thing about the present! Look at these kids who spend £ 350 or £ 400 on a cloned 606. I only ask myself one thing: why? You can also just get a laptop for the money. What the hell are you doing with a 606, cloned at that? Are you going to get it because then you can pretend you're a penniless artist from 30 years ago? We had this guy on the charts in the eighties, Shakin ’Stevens. He pretended to be a rock'n'roller. So a penniless guy from the fifties. At that time I thought to myself what kind of total rubbish it was, what it was all about. So now if I see someone spending £ 400 on a cloned 606, it's similar. Is that really what you wanna do Then how did you go on with the real 606? SB: I figured that if I get any job, I don't need a college degree to use them. I can just read the instructions for use. That sounded very plausible and straightforward: you have 50 pounds, then the 606, then you read the manual, understand it fully, and start making tracks. Who should you need for this? (Rob laughs) RB: I have this uncle whose records I used to understand what older generations are listening to. At that time, fashion was also determined by films like Grease, which was based on the fifties. And I just thought: "Me and my people, we have absolutely no relation to it." We thought we were fighting on the front lines when it comes to doing new things. And yet some had bell-bottoms and somewhat outdated shell-top shoes on. My uncle must have thought: "Why is this young generation keen to relive the past?" This is happening again now. As you get older, you find that there are circles that repeat themselves over and over again. SB: In Manchester in the eighties there were also bands like the Stone Roses who made sixties rock. That wasn't mine. I wanted to go to the future. A 606 was a step forward. Even if it was anything but new back then. We bought them because we could afford them. Not for stylistic reasons. If there had been laptops for the money back then, I wouldn't have even looked at the damn 606. That would have been a waste of time. Our futuristic sound at the time was more a coincidence. The price tag was particularly appealing. How would your life have turned out if you hadn't made it with music, Rob? RB: I have fond memories of my primary school days. In 1983 at the playground I already thought to myself that I would be 30 in the year 2000 and what it would be like then. That I listened to something like Schooly D when I was 13 or 14 is really strange from today's perspective. By the way, we weren't that interested in Kraftwerk. That was for somewhat older people. We heard real electro. Kraftwerk had arrived in the mainstream. SB: That “Numbers” song was always on. RB: There is a lot of music around me today that comes from the sound I loved when I was 14. I already saw this future as a given, almost as a free ticket. It wasn't hard work. I thought to myself: we'll do the tracks that we want. Others make the tracks they want. It's all going to be huge, Hip Hop will become mainstream. Any track on the radio will sound like it was influenced by the music I listened to as a kid. SB: That’s also about our definition of hip hop, because we’re so old. For us, the beats always came first, the MCs were added afterwards. Now it's about rapping. Not so much about rapping as about singing. Hip Hop is now another form of pop music. SB: It's something completely different now. Even in the golden era, the nineties, it was about the MCs. But when we grew up with it, from '83 to '89, it was at least as much about the productions as it was about the rappers. And I bought the records because of the former, not because of personalities. A lot of rap crews back then consisted of not just a producer and an MC, but a whole group of people who all rapped. What held it all together was the beat. The pop industry has turned the genre upside down and individualized it. “Munich looked very professional. Frankfurt had more of that metropolitan New York charm. Hamburg were the extreme stoners who went in the direction of hippie and indie. " Rob Brown When did Hip Hop become Electro for you guys? RB: Our whole approach was in a way weird. Lately we've been talking to New Yorkers for whom the term “electro” doesn't even exist. For them this is a European term. We thought the whole world understood this phenomenon the same way we do. But actually we supported parts of the hip-hop industry that New York had neglected. SB: Look at Todd Terry. In the beginning he made freestyle tracks that were damn awesome. Because of the house boom, he is now known as a house producer. But for us he remains a bboy - his house stuff also has this element in it. Jeff Mills too. The Wizard Mixes from the eighties are made up of the same tracks that we loved to play. I listened to it again the other day and realized that the guy is so much a bboy that you can hardly believe it. Even if you talk to Drexciya or UR - they grew up with the same stuff as us. Then what are the differences? SB: Based on that, we moved in different directions. Although Mills became a big number in Berlin, he was always a bboy producer for us who did techno for this audience. I wanted to ask you something about Germany anyway. When we were there the first time you had scenes all over the country. You had one in Hamburg full of crazy hippies, one in Cologne, one in Frankfurt, all that stuff. Now everything seems to come from Berlin. It almost seems to me that Berlin has swallowed them all. Hermetic Berlin, free Vienna In a sense, that's true. There was still Munich. RB: I wanted to mention that too. Munich looked very professional. Frankfurt had more of that metropolitan New York charm. Hamburg were the extreme stoners who went in the direction of hippie and indie. SB: There was Force Inc. and things like that, that was damn good. Cologne, for example with Mike Ink, was something very special. Germany had great independent scenes. Berlin definitely got it. That's a shame. SB: I don't want to talk badly about Berlin, but of all the cities in Germany it had the most uninteresting music in the early 1990s. It was never really a music city either. There was a punk and post-point scene, the Einstürzende Neubauten. RB: The vault took advantage of that. Compilations like The Sound of the Family have also spilled over to England. SB: This scene was so much German than that in other German cities back then. Judging by what we think is German. “We in England thought Basic Channels were building a kingdom over there. The great thing about the music was how obviously it appealed to a club audience that probably didn't exist back then. " Sean Booth One problem is that artists get the impression that they have to move to Berlin to make really good music. This is also why you hardly meet Berliners here anymore. SB: That makes sense. RB: There is a real migration movement, isn't it? That's kind of how it was in L.A. Places become deserts because they serve as the sole marketplace for a certain sound. How did you perceive Germany in the nineties? In the interview with RA you said that you mainly visited Austria, especially Vienna. SB: I think that we just weren't in Berlin. We played gigs in Munich, Frankfurt, Hamburg and Cologne. RB: And more remote places. In Rostock, for example. SB: Or Potsdam. The audience there was great. Most of all we felt connected to the hamburgers. They were the most relaxed and loved the ambient. When did Berlin come on the map for you? SB: We in England thought Basic Channels were building a kingdom over there. The great thing about the music was how obviously it appealed to a club audience that probably didn't exist back then. It all happened on their own terms. They made no concessions, almost had their own universe. And produced and mastered everything themselves. It looked like a real unit. This allowed us to identify ourselves as guys from Manchester who had to do pirate channels because we weren't represented. RB: In Berlin we once played in a building called the Kunsthalle. We were booked by old promoters who somehow saw us as artists from a youthful, hip bubble who also make music. And maybe there could be admired by a type of power plant. SB: We already knew what the safe was. And we had things that we thought were Berlin club music. But we were never asked if we wanted to play anywhere because we were for the underdogs. They had a much narrower definition of club music. We were not granted access. We should have got it, but we didn't do any rumbling techno. RB: It all had to be very uniform to work. That is the paradox of Berlin in the 90s. Everyone had the feeling that something improbable, avant-garde was happening there, even though the music was clearly defined and repetitive. SB: Even now everyone still knows what is meant when I say Berlin Techno. It's something very fixed that grew out of Mills and Basic Channel. Would you say that the definition of techno in Austria was thought loosely? SB: It was completely different there. Especially in Vienna, where Mego [today Editions Mego, d.Red.] Was based. They had this 80s post-industrial noise approach. Some of the records were like hip-hop loops. That suited us. When we started playing there, we had four or five acts on the program and they all sounded completely different. There was more artistic freedom there. Peter [Rehberg, ed.] Said to me that Vienna was so extremely boring during the 1990s that no real scene could develop there. That's why everyone had different ideas about music. That was a stark contrast to Berlin - and therefore more inviting for us. “I didn't like ecstasy, which everyone in the club used to take. We took acid and speed because that was the best combination for us to go out. People said to us that it was pretty weird and weird. I always had a strong feeling that they were completely wrong about that. " Sean Booth Music in Berlin still had this military subtext. RB: To me it sounded pretty rough, kind of like how you imagine the East to be. SB: I hate to quote Stockhausen. But he once said that he grew up in Germany. And the reason why his music sounded so arrhythmic and unusual was that he played military music in a marching band when he was a child. He said that all music from Germany is based on it. RB: mobilization. SB: I don't know how big the influence that actually was on Berlin techno, but it's hard to deny. In Manchester you have this depressed, post-industrial trait in music. We're just as part of it as this kind of techno is part of Berlin. RB: I don't want to over-romanticize Manchester, but our first trip to Australia was an extreme contrast. That was in winter, but the sun was shining all the time and everyone was hanging out on the beach all the time. In Manchester you would crouch and shiver in your bedroom. Illuminated by emerald green, grayish-desolate steam lamps on the street. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t any good music in Melbourne when we got there. SB: I don't know if that also applies to Berlin, but there are a lot of bored people in Manchester who don't know what to do. Who don't know which scene to represent. This boredom also had a major impact on our productivity as musicians. What else would you do? That's probably why we get so much out there. Ecstasy versus LSD Did the boredom that you just mentioned encourage you to take drugs? Or did you take it just because you wanted to make music? SB: I was making music before I did drugs. Quite a while before, in fact. I only really started doing that when I was 17 or 18. I had been making music for three or four years. I didn't like ecstasy though, which everyone in the club used to take. We took acid and speed because that was the best combination for us to go out. People said to us that it was pretty weird and weird. I always had a strong feeling that they were completely wrong about this. RB: We were nice and very sensitive guys, we couldn't accept that. SB: We had been doing our pirate station for a while and then we went to this club, the Hippodrome. That's when I met people from school who I knew were not interested in dance music at all. House reached my school around 1986. Then it was this cool genre that trendy girls and gays listened to. Not just at my school, actually all over Manchester. But even in 1983 or 1984, when Electro got big, you could already record it on the radio. We did that even though we were too young to go to clubs. That's why club music was something for me that I listened to at home. Without the social context. Then what did you dislike about ecstasy? SB: It opened this music up to a lot of people who weren't really interested in it. Neither for electro nor for house. Suddenly they all came to the clubs. And I saw them there and realized that they were only there for the drugs. That sucked. So for a lot of people, drugs were definitely an introduction to this music. For us it was rather the other way around. I also got the impression that ecstasy makes you just like everything. RB: I was just about to say that! SB: If only Grace Jones had run in the clubs back then, suddenly everyone would have heard Grace Jones. It wasn't about what was actually going on. The mechanism was more like: Here you have ecstasy, here you have some kind of music, what do you think of that? And of course people said “totally awesome!” Because they were on it. RB: With the wrong drugs, we would not have achieved a real voice or a real signature. Because we would have liked everything. That was very important to us, even though we weren't militant hardliners, as is sometimes portrayed. Anything that would have resulted in us no longer being us, but someone else, was completely forbidden. Autechre in an MTV interview in 1994 And did it work with acid? SB: Acid is a ruthless drug when it comes to music. There's not much that sounds good when you're in it. A lot then just sounds wrong and a bit strange. You're much more critical of your music choices, it's pretty much the opposite of ecstasy. Acid is much more subjective, you are more you. It intensifies your personal taste. It's the only drug I've ever taken that didn't make me listen to shitty music and regret it the next day. (Laughter) RB: And we had all the negative examples in front of our noses, we were able to see everything up close, from which we could deduce: "If I take a lot of ecstasy, I'll do very shitty progressive house." SB: We were lucky that we avoided it. The bus hit some people. That whole ecstasy thing. It was okay to see this whole movement and the raves. But I didn't like the fact that the drug became the sole engine. RB: We're not exactly extroverts. And certain scenes rewarded extroverted behavior. I always found that these scenes tended to eat themselves up. They imploded or exploded and didn't produce a rich sound. “People are now hearing about the scene in some city, everyone jumps on it and consumes it. Then the next one is searched. " Sean Booth How was it for you as introverts to move in an extroverted scene? SB: Because of the internet, the dialogue between the two camps is now dead. You had extroverted scenes in cities that gradually spread to the suburbs. At some point the introverts achieved that and made their own version of it. For example, punk became post-punk and indie. Punk is something metropolitan that at some point became something like the Cocteau Twins. The same goes for rave, which became ambient techno. Or grime turned into dubstep. Or Drum’n’Bass, a suburban version of Jungle. With all the lyrics. How has the Internet changed these development patterns? SB: They just don't exist anymore. People are hearing about the scene in some city now, everyone jumps on it and consumes it. Then the next one is searched. Introverts don't add much to the conversation now. People jump back and forth between different extroverted scenes. That's ok, musically I'm just less interested. I've always liked this dialogue. There are still things like Algorave, definitely an introverted scene. But that is now more in the shadows. Like the modular scene, for example, which is dependent on economic conditions anyway. But even for Algorave you have to have time and money to be able to educate yourself. People who are penniless nowadays, socially or financially, generally no longer have the chance to contribute a lot musically. They'll go straight to Bandcamp. The platform has practically replaced the entire indie cycle. Because labels also have less money, you sell your stuff directly to your 60 or 70 fans. You were introverts. But considering your career, your concerts, your status, you've inevitably become extroverted. SB: On stage we can hide very well behind all that stuff, in the dark. RB: I already understand what you mean. It's an interesting paradox. SB: We're still the same weird guys. Nothing changed about that. You are the extrovert among the introvert. SB: You can probably say that. However, we put our work in public, not ourselves. What I really think about things, my views usually stay between Rob and me - and you. From an artistic point of view, we don't do anything else in the external presentation than the guys at Bandcamp we were talking about. “I comfort myself with the fact that the best-selling record of all time is Michael Jackson's Thriller, which has been pressed 50 million times. That's only a small percentage of the world's population. " Sean Booth That is not right. You are world famous and have more than 60 or 70 fans, are represented on a label like Warp. RB: But that doesn't make a significant difference to us. SB: Maybe then I'm not an introvert. Look at it from this side: I'm not very social, I don't have a very large network of friends. These are the same people I knew when I was 15 or 16. My circle of acquaintances has not noticeably expanded through the music. I don't want to be a scene person, don't really hang out with other musicians. They email me far more than I do them. Very often I don't answer either. (Brown laughs) Ask anyone who knows me. In general, I'm a very reserved, shy person. Actually, that's Asperger's - or at least traits of it. It's difficult to get to know me, I'm a little shy. But once I start talking, I can't stop. But actually only my music is extroverted about me. I have no twitter, no social media. And I don't tell anyone what I had for breakfast. Or how I think about Donald Trump. It all stays where it should be - in my head. I'm not doing anyone a favor. (Brown laughs) How is it with you, Rob? RB: The difference to the people on Bandcamp is that we've been doing this for a lot longer. We were just like them. At our first real gig there were maybe 15 people who also got free tickets. We played in the band on the Wall in the early nineties and invited Warp Records. We did a show where we were the DJs, played the live set and turned on the lights. There was a micro-scene made up of friends, maybe 50 or 60 people. What I want to say: It's still the same, we've only been doing it for 30 years. How do you manage the contact with your fans? SB: They are usually as shy as we are. If someone really comes up to us and dares to start a conversation, we feel like it. Most of the conversation, however, is how great it is to actually talk to us. Do you feel a connection there? SB: I can't do tracks for people I don't know. Actually only for Rob or me. That's why it's always weird when we meet a fan and they tell us they grew up in Connecticut and bought all of our stuff. And what connection he has to it. Then I think to myself: "Wow, he's a little like me and Rob." Because for a lot of people what we do is just this meaningless, arbitrary noise. That's okay too, you can't please everyone. I always console myself that the best-selling record of all time is Michael Jackson's Thriller, which has been pressed 50 million times. That's only a small percentage of the world's population. Most people don't seem to like it enough to buy it. RB: It's better to really like what you are doing. And put everything in there. SB: So that just enough people like it. It bothers me that there aren't enough people overall who can get excited about something. Except of course food - more people like strawberries than Autechre - or Michael Jackson's thriller. ----------------------------------- lot's of copy pasting .. i think i fucked up some of the formatting but so it goes. restless as hell so it is what it is. too restless to fine tooth comb it. translated via google translate in fewer than 3900 character chunks.

the records/cds i sent to a friend in berlin on october 15th arrived yesterday in fine shape. only took 5 months! how is this an achievement? well, my packaging skills of course. on my tombstone will be "he taped up boxes well. things arrived in fine shape (also, big pp)" and i guess i'm ok with that.

i guess the fantasy is thinking about it before doing it? idk. there's role play that's common and consensual but springing it on an unsuspecting person... making demands.. taking over... constraining and dominating them against their wishes etc... that's something else.

this is really great. just so fluid and graceful.

exes... and apparently lot's of others. was into rape fantasy type shit but often didn't clue the woman in on it. not surprising really i mean.. it's always who you most suspect in this case. but yeah.. what an asshole.

would watch this show every week. give her an hour TV spot.

wild. scientology is some weird shit and it's kind of fascinating to find out who's a scientologist and for how long. still, RIP. he was part of some legendary bands.

oh, "Only Lovers Left Alive" is greeeeeeaatttt. excellent tunes. it flows well. is super charming. has some lolz. it's kind of serene and soothing with a slightly edgy commentary at times that i really like. the music is epic at times and it's so well styled. was one of the last things that Anton Yelchin was part of and i didn't recognize him for like 20 minutes. also recommend "the Dead Don't Die" is light and fun and a good beer/burger/joint kind of movie. some really funny moments.. it does sort of come across as a long set up for a punchline. "Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai" is pretty epic. kind of a favorite. jarmusch achieves some level of mastery all the time imo and he does little things in this movie w/cartoons, people speaking different languages unfamiliar to each other but still communicating and.. well.. mobsters dancing to PE/flavor flav. of his movies i think these 3 are perfect stoner fulfilling charm and storytelling and would make a really nice triple feature actually.. now that i think of it. i'll add that cinematography is pretty great in all of them especially only lovers left alive.. really amazing framing of the scenes...

such a career. he crossed so many paths and played w/so many people. RIP. musical legend. i wonder if he's with L. Ron Hubbard now? he was a long time member of scientology.

gotta throw Scott Pilgrim vs The World in here. fucking hilarious to me for a hundred reasons. there's eye candy i guess in all the little OCD things in there like video game sounds and visual distortions to cover swear words.. super mario coins etc. big tunes, lols, fights.

the other one.. "Hansel and Gretel; Witch Hunters" with jeremy renner and gemma arterton is a good time if you can track down the director's cut which has some great scenes and better language etc. it's a proper freaky action movie.

i reckon V5.x is going to be a great era.

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Serenity (FireFly movie) is fun and well done. it's charming. plot moves well and it's got some genuine LOL lines in it and good action of all sorts. good cast. space stuff. i'd def add that all the more recent Terminator movies are great for getting blazed and watching some action with big stuff and some pretty amazing sound design. when this big thing pops up from underground and fires its weapon that BONK sound is one my fav things.

Enter the Void - has amazing eye candy especially in the 2nd half The Fountain - big sads but big eye candy too. edit: oh.. i missed the point of this somewhat. neither of these fit the OP description. hmm.

waiting on home security service tech who will be here between 12-5 today.

furry fans get laid a lot more i think. no one ever got laid because of an IDM gig