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

[awepittance]

there are rumors ( i think someone in here actually saw the show) that you guys played a few relatively small gigs as a mini tour for the release of Draft 7.30. Was this new/exclusive material like most of your touring music since Confield? If so can we please hear it?

and I know this has beaten into the ground, but would you be willing to post just 1 track, the one you think turned out the best from the Oversteps or Quaristice tour soundboards to make us all have a collective fangasm ?

what's one of your favorite Rephlex releases (not including anything by aphex twin)?

Edited November 5, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

[Sean Ae]

it's my birthday so could you name my old shitty laptop. the screen aint working and it has no keyboard if it helps to think of anything.

 

your laptop is now called stephen

[Guest pixelives]

It's assumptive to think that Warp has some agenda with the video content. Mostly we're talking about artist/director concepts that they simply approve. Also you're sounding vaguely puritanical.

 

Btw the !!! guys are some of the nicest people I have ever met. It may not be your cup of tea. But people do like it. Also: Nik is a awesome dancer and doesn't take himself too seriously. Always a good thing.

[mcbpete]

can't remember the other one, could it be paul lansky?

oh my gosh thank you - It's from Paul Lansky's Alphabet Book (The track being - 'As Things Were')

[Rob Ae]

After the mention of the PMA-5 (trying to find the reference again in this massive thread—it drove an EP7 track, I think?), one popped up here on my local craigslist for cheap money. Do you recommend that I buy it? Seems like a pretty fun piece of gear, and somewhat elegant looking in a throwback way.

 

I commute a lot so it may be valuable for the "wowwing passers-by on the bus by caning it in my seat" factor alone.

 

I have previously owned a QY-10 (similar digi-junk `pocket` sequencer from Yamaha) and enjoyed it, if that helps to know.

no don't get one, unless u srsly want to fly through batteries, its a monster for consumption,

and general midi sounds only - but has fx - and moderate recording of cc's. it is weirdly 80s looking for a 90s bit of kit, so it may do it for yr commute image! cos chrome stylus.

 

yeah the qy10 is a little tough nut. claude young used to do techno gigs with one of these iirc

Hi Sean, Rob.

 

I've only started reading this thread, and am really amused

 

I was wondering what book you are currently reading?

well, I'm gonna read the valis trilogy again next.

Edited November 5, 2013 by Rob Ae

[Guest]

We gave the cat, which came last year to us and now permanently lives in our garden/gardens house, Knut, it's a german males name. Now I found out a week ago, Knut is a girl. Dog does insist on not letting her into the flat btw...

Do you have a girls name please?

 

Edited November 5, 2013 by Guest

[rddm]

Ghostface Killah has an annual 10 softest rappers in the game list. Do you think we could get an "Autechre's 'N' softest electronic music makers" list?

Or feel free to substitute "softest" with some other adjective to your liking. All in jest of course.

 

On a more serious note: you've both talked about starting out Autechre with very basic to no real understanding of music. Has that had any effect on communicating and working with other musicians/composers? Do you two have your own kind of "language" when discussing work, that doesn't transfer so well when conveying things to others Autechre might be working with?

Bonus question.

Have you sought out training for specific things since then? Possibly not music related, but still relevant to Autechre's output; I think Sean mentioned he went and learned some physics in this thread.

 

Cheers! You guys have been a huge inspiration.

[Sean Ae]

 

 

 

do you guys still feel highly respected by warp? it isn't like they've forgotten about you guys, afx, boc and other big players who have made them into what they are today?

do you get concerned about change of management at warp in the future and how this could impact your relations with them? i heard that plaid are unhappy with warp (read that in an interview) because as a label, they take such a big cut of the sales of records, that it is kind of grating on them now. i guess it might be different for your guys as you probably have a larger fan base than ed and andy?

on this tip I'll just quietly put this here

 

 

 

ah i see where you're going but tbh they always had weird things like coco steel and lovebomb or whatever

there's always been some things on warp we weren't hugely into, that's what labels are like

 

we approached them cos they seemed to be up for taking chances with artists, and we really liked lfo's and nightmares on wax's first albums

 

true, i was too vague, specifically what do you think about the shorts? Is this evidence that Warp is trying to go into some strange unsettling psycho sexual territory ? I only say this because of the recent Jackson and 0pn videos (have you seen?) so it made me think of the shorts.

 

 

weird i can't connect them but ok, i guess he is wearing shorts

 

i dunno i'm not disturbed at all by this. just seems a bit like, 'ooh look he's wearing shorts on stage he's being edgy, in a kind of prescribed 'new york musician' way'.

and the 0pn vid is deliberately unsettling and highlights all these issues and stuff. at least it feels deliberate

 

 

are you expecting them to try to sneak some porn into one of our videos? i'll keep a lookout

[Ivan Ooze]

i never got into zappa

when i got into beef heart it was that mirror man period stuff i first heard and the funk on it blew me away tbh

i never heard any zappa that's really got that. john french is just a stupidly good drummer when he's doing that rolling blues style, totally sick

 

yeah i dunno why that never came out, maybe just didn't feel very finished, but now it's one of my fave mixes of it

 

but Sean she was a fine girl!

 

 

Iris was a pupil is a brutal (awesome) track, my gf tells me everytime to put it off cause the weird atmosphere freaks her out

Has it ever happened to you that someone begged you to turn it off cause it drove them insane? what song and pliss tell a bit more

 

 

this is unrael!!!

[Sam]

Anything behind the title "Ilanders"?

 

Besides being one of my top 10 Ae tunes, "Landers" has been my nickname for a good few years now so have always wondered what it refers to :)

[nizzleone]

Have you ever gotten deep on some wavetable synthesis?

 

Were you boosted when Arsenal signed Ozil?

[Rob Ae]

 

can't remember the other one, could it be paul lansky?

oh my gosh thank you - It's from Paul Lansky's Alphabet Book (The track being - 'As Things Were')

 

did u find the rodelius one yet? not at my lib so can't scan for it soz

Edited November 5, 2013 by Rob Ae

[Sean Ae]

Something I always found intriguing was the way you talk about the use of space.

 

For ages I associated that with the use of like timbre and dynamics to create like imagery of external spaces, but I always got a weird vibe from Quaristice, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

 

I think what it represents to me is more of an internal or perceptive space, almost with like dissociative or solipistic feeling, like the way when you're having an internal dialogue with yourself and it almost exists in its own sort of space. 90101-5l-l is probably the track I get that feeling from the most, IO is another.

 

"bladelores" from Exai gives me almost the opposite feeling, where it feels very much like an external space (I always imagine like Antarctica for some reason).

 

Not saying that it's like an intentional part of your design or anything, but do you ever pay any thought to that kind of thing when you're listening to music yourselves? Sorry if that came across as vague or abstract, it's kind of hard to translate into words.

 

yeah i would agree with both of those, i know what you mean i had a similar thought

quaristice is meant to flow like a long dream, you know how doors lead to different chapters and worlds before you realise

oops im revealing things now

[Ninjatron]

How to you keep that "momentum" for a track going when you've made something cool and then have to save it and come back to it the following days?

Do you run into dry spells... times when you have all kinds of creative energy and drive but are unable to make anything decent?

These are some problems I run into... I was wondering if you ever ran into these problems and if they came in bursts

[Rob Ae]

 

it's my birthday so could you name my old shitty laptop. the screen aint working and it has no keyboard if it helps to think of anything.

 

your laptop is now called stephen

 

whats it used as a USB warmer?

[gl0tch]

 

and I know this has beaten into the ground, but would you be willing to post just 1 track, the one you think turned out the best from the Oversteps or Quaristice tour soundboards to make us all have a collective fangasm ?

 

Seriously, this would break us. Please consider this request.

[Guest 30equals]

- I was wondering how the Tortoise collab came about ? Tbh that's not an obvious combination.

- Did you turn down collabs in the past ? I can image certain artists like Björk or Radiohead who have done collabs in the past/are fans would be lining up for such a thing.

- On what base do you choose artists to come along on tour with you ? I mean,i can image that Russell Hasswell's set was too much for a lot of people :) Totally different than SND or something

- Do you get endorsed by soft/hard ware companies ? Did you get offers from companies to work together on hard/soft ware before ?

[ascdi]

 

PMA-5

batteries […] cos chrome stylus

 

…

 

qy10

 

 

Ha, brilliant. Thanks for the battery info. Fuckin hilarious that I can instantly consult with Autechre prior to prospective gear purchases. Such an epic thread.

 

The QY-10 had an amazing pseudo "808" kick on it that I really loved. I regret selling it a lot, maybe I'll just get another one of those.

[Sean Ae]

OK, cant edit my post anymore.

 

Amon Tobin remixed Doctrine live:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP6CiL66v3Y

 

What do you think about it guys?

 

yeah i dunno

sort of sounds like he's treating like he imagines we would if we were remixing it now or something

[Boxus]

 

 

do you like ween? it's 2 crazy musicians making a bunch of awesome tracks

I remember hearing an alternate version of Buckingham Green in one of the webcasts, so I'm guessing that one's a yes!

 

Have you guys done any coding in ChucK?

 

 

nah but i saw it years ago and it looked interesting iirc it was made for live coding, is that right? would prob appeal to me if so

 

Yeah you can queue up different bits of code on the fly. I just started checking it out last week, it seems pretty slick. I like how you approach time in it, you set up all the parameters then tell the compiler to pass chunks of time to let sound happen with that config. Kinda trippy, makes you think differently.

 

I was listening to Oversteps today and I was wondering - did you have specific patches for those tracks that would generate them in an ongoing way, so you could leave them open as long as you wanted and have the melodies keep varying? Or were the songs set up to go through a certain number of variations / loops and then end? I just imagine it would be so sweet to pop open a patch and have it play a couple hours of pt2ph8 while you're doing things around the house.

[awepittance]

 

 

are you expecting them to try to sneak some porn into one of our videos? i'll keep a lookout

 

definitely not what I was suggesting, It's just curious to me that Warp is creating controversial videos again. Or i shouldn't really say 'again' since the only ones that might be considered controversial are rubber johnny and maybe windowlicker. the !!! shorts thing was kind of a joke but the other half of my question was serious about the 0pn and new Jackson video (with all the penis hands being chopped off and lush forests made of pubic hair)

My earlier question probably was skipped over because it was silly but does autechre's music convey any sexuality whatsoever ..ever either unintentionally or not? Even in an obscured way like sampling from pornography (matmos has stated they are fond of sex slapping sounds from gay porn).

 

edit: I've noticed at least here in America people seem afraid to dance to your sets, at least the last time you've played here. Since that time, there has been a much higher ratio of female attendees at weird electronic music shows. How often do you see females gyrating in a passionate fashion to your music ? Are Americans just chin strokers or is it typical audiences of yours won't feel comfortable going wild on the dancefloor? That old video (from like 92?) posted recently of you guys playing was the most people I've ever seen dancing to Autechre music.

Edited November 5, 2013 by John Ehrlichman

[oscillik]

 

 

 

are you expecting them to try to sneak some porn into one of our videos? i'll keep a lookout

 

definitely not what I was suggesting, It's just curious to me that Warp is creating controversial videos again. Or i shouldn't really say 'again' since the only ones that might be considered controversial are rubber johnny and maybe windowlicker. the !!! shorts thing was kind of a joke but the other half of my question was serious about the 0pn and new Jackson video (with all the penis hands being chopped off and lush forests made of pubic hair)

you forgot Dance Floor Dale. how could you forget Dance Floor Dale?

Edited November 5, 2013 by oscillik

[Guest ZombieLincoln666]

I've always really enjoyed your hip-hoppy stuff (recently, recks on, and the beat in deco Loc @ 2:00 is sick). Have you ever considered working with an emcee or doing a more focused hip-hop instrumental album?

 

Are there any hardware mods that you're particularly proud and/or fond of?

 

Have you ever messed around with renoise's API scripting feature?

 

In the past you expressed discomfort with not being in total control with regards to generative music. Have you changed your mind or have your methods/algorithms for making generative music changed?

[Sean Ae]

- I was wondering how the Tortoise collab came about ? Tbh that's not an obvious combination.

- Did you turn down collabs in the past ? I can image certain artists like Björk or Radiohead who have done collabs in the past/are fans would be lining up for such a thing.

- On what base do you choose artists to come along on tour with you ? I mean,i can image that Russell Hasswell's set was too much for a lot of people :) Totally different than SND or something

- Do you get endorsed by soft/hard ware companies ? Did you get offers from companies to work together on hard/soft ware before ?

 

we knew tortoise already, mutual fans

nah never had a collab offer from either of them

er partly based on us wanting their music on the bill and partly on whether we can live in a tiny bus with them for a month without doing each other's heads in

we had a few offers to make presets in return for free shit, not really interested

can't talk about anything else sorry

[Soloman Tump]

Wow its taken me a long while tonight to catch up on this thread, big respect for your efforts.

 

What did you guys make of the whole dubstep thing?

Did you like the "originators" or any particular producers or was it just all horrible?

 

Personally, I love (and still do) Shackleton, Appleblim, Gatekeeper (all the skull disco / applepips stuff), but thats about it. ital tek made amazingly deep tunes but I never realy considered his music dubstep and he has moved on greatly the past couple of years.

Edited November 5, 2013 by feltcher