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

[gnarlybog]

Do you gentlemen have any philosophy recommendations? I believe Derrida's name was thrown around in an interview, which excited me greatly.

[Schlitze]

That quaristice 2008 live stuff was some of the best dance music ever pumped out of some speakers.

[Guest]

Can you name my Boss SP-303 sampler?

lol

[Sean Ae]

- Do you often revisit your old tracks? if so, do you tend to revisit unreleased material or certain released work more?

 

- Are there any tracks of yours or periods of work that immediately remind you of some important moment in your life? If so, do you care to share it with us?

 

both, it depends

 

yeah loads

[Guest]

I had no idea this was happening today. Thanks a lot to everyone involved to make this happen.

 

I didn't read the whole thread yet, so maybe this question's already been answered:

Do you guys mix in quad or 5.1? I have to assume that playing around with the textures and sounds you guys produce must lend itself to 5.1 mixing. It seems to be made for it at times. And of course it would be great to have Autechre 5.1 mixes as well as LtRt's in the future sometime.

Thanks again.

[Guest rd1994]

did you ever regret making a track? if so which one? would you change them if you could?

[Ivan Ooze]

my god exai never sounded better on beast system like now, this is better then a tour

[salvakkpooo]

Here, have a 13x13 pixels Exai cover art.

[Sean Ae]

How many unreleased tracks do you have?

depends on what you mean by tracks

actual finished tracks - just a few hundred, but got tons of jams that need an edit

done about 350 hours of jams since april this year

[Ivan Ooze]

Here, have a 13x13 pixels Exai cover art.

holy shit its the end level boss of minesweeper

Edited November 3, 2013 by Ivan Ooze

[cear]

so you like the venue to be dark, but what about over-the-top visuals like Amon Tobin's ISAM? (did you see it?) do you think something similar would work for an autechre set? i mean obviously the identity of the space is still there, but the crowd gets really focused on an object etc that's in front of them - so in that sense it gets removed..right?

[Guest rd1994]

do you like germany? would you do some kind of tour here?

[Sean Ae]

Sean, was that your previously-mentioned cat at the end of Tewe?

 

And this is probably way off the mark (sorry, I know nothing about production): was there any conscious decision to sort of explore and widen the stereo/imaging aspect of the music on Exai/L-Event? Seems like a lot of older Ae output had a very effective use of, like, a predominant mono backbone with interesting stereo events fleshing things out a bit spatially on occasion, whereas Exai has this massive sense of exploration all around the stereofield. Some really cool psychoacoustic stuff going on. Sorry if this is full of shit, and seriously, thank you both.

 

yeah that's winterbottom, first cat i lived with, he was ace

 

yeah i'm getting more into having two speakers again. we used to do it more early on as well but more crudely

[Schlitze]

Ae, i must ask....Orange Five or Santa Cruz Blur?

[Sean Ae]

 

Sean, was that your previously-mentioned cat at the end of Tewe?

 

And this is probably way off the mark (sorry, I know nothing about production): was there any conscious decision to sort of explore and widen the stereo/imaging aspect of the music on Exai/L-Event? Seems like a lot of older Ae output had a very effective use of, like, a predominant mono backbone with interesting stereo events fleshing things out a bit spatially on occasion, whereas Exai has this massive sense of exploration all around the stereofield. Some really cool psychoacoustic stuff going on. Sorry if this is full of shit, and seriously, thank you both.

Yes, there are multiple tracks in LP5 that are almost entirely in mono - was this a conscious decision to concentrate on harmonic and rhythmical content rather than spatial imaging ?

 

 

yeah exactly, across a different dimension

[Ninjatron]

Hey guys, you've been a huge inspiration for me to make music, so thank you!! The possibilities of aural combinations and sound-scapes are virtually endless now with computers, which can be quite scary when you step up to a blank slate. You can go in ANY direction with any sound on a given track, and that just makes my head spin sometimes. I guess as a fellow explorer of the limitless electronic nebula my questions are:

 

• Do you go through a whole bunch of ideas/sounds/doodles before finding one worth polishing?
• How to you keep that "momentum" for a track going when you 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?

I can't help get discouraged sometimes when making tracks, like I'll have a ton of lush individual sounds but no way to link them, or just a 10-20 second "clip" that I'll be unable to flesh out into a whole song. I get the sporadic drive to bang out a song maybe once every 50-100 ideas or sketches I make. This isn't something I plan on giving up on, this is a life path, something that I'll do until I'm dead because nothing beats that moment when things just "click" and you're bobbing your head to your own stuff. I'm just wondering if you had some tips for those times when nothing seems to be working out.

[Sean Ae]

Hello to the Great Britain and please excuse my English,

 

I have a specific question as I am interested in music production for several years and making an album for few years now. I am thinking of this very often while listening to your music:

 

Do you spend a lot of time choosing and crafting reverbs for your tracks? Or is it something that you make intuitively - not thinking too much?

 

I am asking because many of your tracks like Xylin Room or Tilapia sounds fairly dry on the first listening but yet they have very distinct vibe and depth as if some super-gentle reverbs and delays were used to craft the space as there are no obvious echoes and reverb tails. Xylin Room sounds claustrophobic yet very 3D but the mix is almost mono. Tilapia sounds very spacious, some sounds are distant but again it has this vacuum feel into it. I simply absolutely love it (not even mentioning the incredible compostion). This question unanswered seriously affects my sleeping everytime I mix some "to be dry" track but if some "secret" techniques are involved I will respectfully and diligently continue trying to achieve it by myself :-)

 

Please, take this question also as my big "thank you" for your incredible work and tons of inspiration and emotions you gave me. I am a proud owner of most of your discography and you have seriously changed my view on music in all ways. You have also made me to register here on WATMM and pay their basic subscription for this single post.

 

All the best from the Czech Republic.

 

PS: I am very sorry I could not be in Brno while you played in Fleda during Oversteps tour, I was more into Orbital that time and had known only Amber... :-))

 

Jev

 

tbh a lot of that on draft was done with amp envelopes, but there are some really light touches of quadraverb and lexicon on select parts as well, usually with some feedback matrixing thru quite brutal eq and really quiet in the mix

we were also doing stuff like making 2 melodies with slightly different notes or in a different order and then sending the muted one to the reverb and mixing the reverb quite low so you almost can't tell

[Guest]

personal question and it feels weird typing this but here we go...

 

so the reason I asked multiple questions re elektron gear earlier is, I've been working on reverse-engineering their kit (MD & A4) and writing an app which uses the MIDI sysex interface to generate & remix patterns & kits/sounds on the fly, basically multiplying your hands & doing arithmetic-based things one likely wouldn't put into the sequencer by hand.

 

now, frankly... a big inspiration for doing this, and actually for coding in general, was and is your music. It likely wouldn't have occured to me that code can be a design tool at all if it weren't for Draft 7.30...

 

you said you're not using elektron kit anymore... would you be interested in having a look at that software i'm doing nonetheless?

[Soloman Tump]

actual finished tracks - just a few hundred, but got tons of jams that need an edit

done about 350 hours of jams since april this year

 

 

:cerious: :cerious:

[Sean Ae]

after 20 years of insane music crafting, is this the best videoclip for newbound?

 

 

i love that one flash where she's looking to the left

[Sean Ae]

Is this really one of your patches or is it someone just aping your methods ?

 

 

it's been modified a fair bit

tbh the original was pretty messy though, nothing was encapsulated cos i kept rewiring bits

[Ivan Ooze]

 

 

 

 

after 20 years of insane music crafting, is this the best videoclip for newbound?

 

 

i love that one flash where she's looking to the left

 

would you still hit it?

Edited November 3, 2013 by Ivan Ooze

[Guest jasondonervan]

 

after 20 years of insane music crafting, is this the best videoclip for newbound?

 

 

i love that one flash where she's looking to the left

 

 

[Ivan Ooze]

i'm noticing the gif also works with flep

[Guest rd1994]

anyone you still want to collaborate with or remix?