Autechre Ae - Clash Music interview

[kirm]

http://www.clashmusic.com/feature/autechre-interview

[Root5]

Awesome interview. Thanks for posting.

[Guest the anonymous forumite]

Good thing they mention Carl Michael von Hasswolff and Bernard Günther. Not that surprised after all.

[BobDobalina]

[MAXIMUS MISCHIEF]

nice

[awepittance]

Awesome interview.

 

was it really that awesome? i thought it was one of the less informative more standoffish interviews they have done in a long while

 

seems like a lot of semantic debating and not very much substance

 

edit: ill admit i stopped reading halfway through

[awepittance]

the rest of the interview is actually very funny, i just found it very hard to get through the first part.

[lumpenprol]

that is a good interview. Seems like over the years Sean has become much more talkative, lol

[Lianne]

I much prefer how Rob Brown answers things. Seems more open, more imaginative in his responses, and in all the older interviews I've read Sean swears so much. I'm not against swearing, but it gets boring reading someone discuss such beautiful music with "fucking" thrown in for every comma.

 

I'd love to hear some of their insight into Oversteps. More than any other Autechre album, I feel a bit of background would shed light on what's going on on that record. A thing like Confield just is. It's this awesome, alien, monster of an album (still my favorite of any electronic act.) I can see why it needs no explaining, although their thoughts on it wouldn't hurt.... But Oversteps feels like it has room for a narrative outside the sounds, if you like. I don't mean why questions or how questions - I mean questions about what they feel the record does and what went into it. Surely they've thought about that a little bit, even if during its construction it's not considered much? I mean you can't make a piece of music like that (or any creative thing) and have absolutely no insight into it or feelings about it afterwards, even if the whole thing came together subconsciously.

[Lianne]

that's the thing that i don't think interviewers do properly... with electronic stuff they only seem to focus on the "why" and the "how" - both of which are pretty irrelevant really. that interview - "why are you playing on the jungle gym" etc. is a good way of putting it.

 

i'd be much more interested in questions of what they think about the music post- making it. when they mentioned about auditioning the material on train journeys... that's where the interviewer should have picked them up. it's hard to put into words why you did a certain thing in a bit of music, but everyone obviously has an opinion of what that bit of music is like as a piece of music and what they like about it.

 

and just more general tangential things i think are a lot more interesting... i remember reading some interview around confield (i think) where one of them mentioned they had been getting into trees and the biology of how they grow etc. that really cemented in my mind how i'd associated that era of stuff with quite organic natural processes rather than gantz graf imagery. natural processes but at a vantage point (speed-up, zoomed-in) that makes it obvious how alien the most basic things are really.

 

This is spot on.

[awepittance]

I think Lianne is onto something. I know a guy who hung out with sean and rob at ATP a while back. His name happened to be Sean also and when he introduced himself to sean booth the interchange went something like this

 

sean: Hey, very nice to meet you, my name is sean

sean booth: Oh your name is sean huh? hey everybody this guys name is sean (soaked in antagonistic sarcasm)

sean: yeah

 

*awkward silence*

 

sean: hello Rob, my name is sean nice to meet you

Rob: very nice to meet you man

(later on)

Rob: Chris told me you make pretty good music, can you give me a cd when we go back to the hotel?

Sean: yeah absolutely!

 

so from the little interaction he had with Autechre he basically came away with Sean Booth was super standoffish and Rob Brown more than made up for it by being really open, friendly, and talktative

 

edit: re: lianne/swearing : funny history, Sean Booth was chastised by several members of the max/msp mailing list about 5 years ago for calling someone a twat. He defended himself after apologizing that 'in the UK twat isnt that bad' which is true, still funny though

[Lianne]

I can believe the contrast between their responses in that exchange, when I think of all the interviews I've read/heard of theirs. It confirms what I've noticed, consistently, as a difference between them in interviews.

 

Why be standoffish anyway? Seems pointless.

[digit]

yeah, if you want to know what's up, you need to talk to Rob. he's only had a few solo interviews but they were all really informative. if i remember correctly i think Pitchfork has a pretty good one with him.

 

and i want to hear more about this technical stuff they deem so boring. custom midi timing algorithm? what?

 

i wish they would do another 'technical' interview like the one they did around the time of Confield. that one that had the screenshots of their max patches. they can keep all their 'secrets' but i would like to know more about the making of Oversteps in a more general way. the synths they used, their melodic programming in Max, etc. whenever they start getting into that stuff hardcore in interviews it always gets interesting to me, because it's never just about the tech - they start talking about concepts and theories, etc. they push the gear and their processes so far they have a lot of knowledge that should be shared 'for the good of all mankind' so to speak.

 

...and to any future interviewers: please no more writing about 'how they first met'. i think EVERY interview with them has gone over that same bit about how they knew each other as kids, etc etc...

[lumpenprol]

I got the standoffish treatment from Sean during the Confield tour, I went up and introduced myself pre-show and I had just finished saying how much I liked their music when this other fan came up and offered Sean a toke and he completely ignored me to focus on the joint, lol. It annoyed me at the time, but in hindsight I was pretty much just a generic drooling fanboy so no hard feelings.

[auxien]

and i want to hear more about this technical stuff they deem so boring. custom midi timing algorithm? what?

 

i wish they would do another 'technical' interview like the one they did around the time of Confield. that one that had the screenshots of their max patches. they can keep all their 'secrets' but i would like to know more about the making of Oversteps in a more general way. the synths they used, their melodic programming in Max, etc. whenever they start getting into that stuff hardcore in interviews it always gets interesting to me, because it's never just about the tech - they start talking about concepts and theories, etc. they push the gear and their processes so far they have a lot of knowledge that should be shared 'for the good of all mankind' so to speak.

 

if, after one of them dies, there's not a thousand page book describing everything that went into each song with detailed descriptions of all equipment and techniques, and then release every unknown song they've ever written, i'll be very sad.

[Guest tht tne]

i could've done without all the jissom references

[kaini]

that's the thing that i don't think interviewers do properly... with electronic stuff they only seem to focus on the "why" and the "how" - both of which are pretty irrelevant really. that interview - "why are you playing on the jungle gym" etc. is a good way of putting it.

 

i'd be much more interested in questions of what they think about the music post- making it. when they mentioned about auditioning the material on train journeys... that's where the interviewer should have picked them up. it's hard to put into words why you did a certain thing in a bit of music, but everyone obviously has an opinion of what that bit of music is like as a piece of music and what they like about it.

 

and just more general tangential things i think are a lot more interesting... i remember reading some interview around confield (i think) where one of them mentioned they had been getting into trees and the biology of how they grow etc. that really cemented in my mind how i'd associated that era of stuff with quite organic natural processes rather than gantz graf imagery. natural processes but at a vantage point (speed-up, zoomed-in) that makes it obvious how alien the most basic things are really.

 

excellent post ieafs