Autechre Short article from old Dazed & Confused

[Guest Moebius]

Found this while archive-diving. Short article on Autechre from ~July 1997 with a few low-res live photos.

 

Autechre bio

 

From tagging up the town to cutting up the decks, Autechre's varied activities are a testimony to their very urban belief in the future. For them it is a future of sound. With every moment that passes, a new, intriguing noise enters their system and quite often follows into their DAT machine. On a recent trip to Switzerland, the duo were witnessed spending ten minutes inside an hotel elevator, fascinated, meticulously picking up every possible sound.

 

Sean Booth and Rob Brown made a musical connection in their mid-teens. Their dreams of escape and revolt were crystallised by early electro and hip-hop. 'It was like futurism in sound to me,' says Sean. 'The idea that the future would be better than the past.'

 

However, their early adventures in sound struggled to find an outlet in late '80s Manchester. 'It was frustrating. A lot of people got on our nerves, because they were into Acid House, but they were also into the Roses and the Mondays,' explains Sean. They responded by taking their tapes to local pirate radio and moving onto the airwaves. 'We were doing loads of mix competitions and would just put together loads of demos for our mates,' recalls Sean. 'Then we'd bang them out on a Sunday night.'

 

This form of alternative access suited Autechre's continual development. 'We always thought we were doing all kinds of music,' says Rob. 'But then we'd hear something new like Renegade Soundwave or Meat Beat Manifesto and get into a new direction.'

 

'It's like with graffiti. We were into it because it was stylistic,' says Sean. 'It was the idea that you could make something aesthetically pleasing - and it was quick and easy. Also you were getting 'up'.' Rob agrees: 'It's like your idea, or tag, can be solid and hard for two or three weeks, and then you can just wash it and move on.'

 

Although displaying an obsessive attention to every detail, Sean denies they are merely creating a private language of their own. 'If it is a language, then it exists in its own right. I don't know what it is!'

 

As Autechre kept creating sound, they found a label, Warp, and located to Sheffield. They still travel back across the Pennines to DJ in Manchester and to nurture Autechre's alter-ego, Gescom.

 

'Yeah DJing has improved our live stuff no end,' says Rob. 'We've got such a rough and ready approach to live stuff now. The gear could fall apart on stage and we'd still get something out of it.'

 

What type of crowd do you get on tour? 'It's funny, 'cos in America we get a mixture of bedroom ravers; people who spend too much time on the internet and 'raver' ravers, all dressed up in way too much cyber gear and loads of day-glo,' laughs Sean. 'Then there are the cool hip hop kids. They just stand at the back, moody as fuck and at the end, they just say, 'respect'. They're a bit like our mates.'

 

[Guest moo duck]

yeah, cool. no fuckin no shit