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

[salvakkpooo]

How was to use Mac/ PC Supercollider or Max/ MSP for sound processing back then? Were there any major annoyances like lots of and catastrophic crashes? How was the audio latency? Did you record stuff played in real-time or you had to render that in a sound file? What sound quality you could get the most in real-time?

[Plarkreluke Banloboh]

Have you guys noticed how the first tracks on several of your albums (probably all) sound like boats, ships, seas, water, pirates, wooden decks, sailing and basically evoking an overall nautical theme of adventure on the high seas? A classic example of this being Xylin Room?

[Kavinsky]

Will there be any project with Cunningham again ?
and do you guys like my interpretation of Eutow ?
wish you all the best

http://youtu.be/mMguyAZgQcE

Edited November 2, 2013 by Kavinsky

[mcbpete]

Is Gen~ as useful as cycling 74 make out ?

[chassis]

Whats your favourite album, of your own and of someone else's work.

[Sean Ae]

Sean pls, any light you can shed on this Boards of Canada interview quote:

 

"We were in Germany with Autechre and we were all pissed off 'cos we hadn't been provided with a trailer. Sean from Autechre broke into someone else's trailer and stole loads of champagne, distributed them to everyone then got so plastered that he rugby-tackled a certain electronic artist into the mud!"

 

yeah it was really muddy, like insanely muddy, and i was already somehow covered in mud, and i was really beyond drunk at that point cos we didn't have to play (our tent was flooded and cancelled) and i had already downed a couple of bottles of champagne - i thought it would be a really good idea to try and push mike paradinas into the mud (he seemed to be really concerned about getting any mud on him at all). anyway it failed and i ended up face down in a load of mud next to him, but he got pissed off about getting some mud on his wrist, so I WIN

[Guest jasondonervan]

Are there any tracks that were released under the Autechre banner - specifically your own work, not remixes for others - that you've since listened back to down the line and thought "I wish we'd have done that one differently"? Not necessarily from the point of view of finding your earlier work being 'of simpler times' or when you had less production knowledge compared to today... more perhaps that you felt you could have improved a track by re-working elements of it, spent more time to achieve what you originally meant to do but were constrained by time, technical limitations, etc?

Edited November 2, 2013 by jasondonervan

[Sean Ae]

Hi Autechre, your music has defined my past 10 years of electronic enjoyment and helped me escape trance music clubbing. Tru facts!

Thanks for agreeing to do AAA, so far it has been very exciting to read your thoughts and really cements you as proper top geezers.

 

Here's my question.

 

Do you actively enjoy the live tours and festival gigs, or would you prefer to stay locked up in the studio making sounds?

In terms of UK festivals I cannot really see a specific festival that autechre could play at now. With the demise of Bloc and Glade over the past few years, UK electronic festivals seem to be in a pretty shit state.

 

On a side note, there is a great little club in Oxford called The Bully, I really think you should do a gig there. Hoofing soundsystem, and its basically a dark back room of a pub.

 

Cheers thanks

 

PS

 

 

 

 

yeah we love touring but it's hard to stay out for long periods cos of the physical toll

we get uk festi offers but we usually turn them down, i don't really care where we play tho, the lineups are becoming the same across europe (a kind of annoying and weird level of sameness)

[Franciscus]

sean, do you have pets? like a cat that just lies there when you're making sounds? cats are awesome pets

Edited November 2, 2013 by Franciscus

[Sean Ae]

Who does the descending bass lines?

which ones?

both of us do that

[poblequadrat]

Thanks a lot for your answer! I'm also interested in how developments in electronic music are shared and become developments rather than personal preference... I was asking about facelessness because in architecture and industrial design there's a lot of talk about humbleness and ego and most of it is just a load of bollocks to be honest, and electronic music while also being a form of design seems to do things in a different way, the community and the way innovations are received seem to be different, and I thought it could be interesting to study different structures of how design is organised.

 

i'm a #1 shit talker anyway so sorry about that

 

By the way, what do you think about Amiga demos, that kind of aesthetic, that kind of product and that kind of community?

[Sean Ae]

How do you store and organize your own music? If you have a half finished track you might want to pick up later, where does it go, and what is it called?

it usually gets a descriptive filename and goes in the 'current' folder

[DorkingtonPugsly]

Do you guys plan to or want to work with Alex Rutterford again?

[Soloman Tump]

Have you considered releasing a remix compilation and what do you think of the bootleg Laxir compilation thats all over the net? I for one would prefer good quality versions of all of these tracks. A 7-CD box in a similar vein to the EPs box a couple of years ago would make me gush.

[Sean Ae]

Was there anything more distressing for a child in the UK growing up in the 80s than Threads? -

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MCbTvoNrAg

 

prob not tbh

i mean that and being repeatedly told while in primary school that we would prob never be able to get jobs

[Ivan Ooze]

i'm trying to think of a question but all i want to say it thanks for the awesome art

[LimpyLoo]

When you guys are organizing files and revisions do you do the recursive ocd thing where you make a 'finished' folder and then a 'finished finished' subfolder and then a 'finished finished finished' subsubfolder? ...or any such tendencies?

[Sean Ae]

How was to use Mac/ PC Supercollider or Max/ MSP for sound processing back then? Were there any major annoyances like lots of and catastrophic crashes? How was the audio latency? Did you record stuff played in real-time or you had to render that in a sound file? What sound quality you could get the most in real-time?

we would never use sc live back then cos it could only really handle doing one thing at once on a laptop, apart from boring things like sound file playback etc.

it was good for realtime fft tho, and a few other things so u could load up a patch and do like 2 min of stuff with it, but you couldn't realistically do a full set unless your work was really boring

we got into max originally to make midi sequencers and so the first few years using it were crash free, but then we started making really simple synths in there so we could run the same midi patches without hardware and that was when it started crashing (just cos of poor/naive design really)

[Guest cult fiction]

 

How do you store and organize your own music? If you have a half finished track you might want to pick up later, where does it go, and what is it called?

it usually gets a descriptive filename and goes in the 'current' folder

 

Is the 'current' folder huge? Presumably you have reams and reams of outtakes, alternate versions(like the Quaristice eps), and tracks that didn't really go anywhere. Do you bother to organize them at all, listen to them, or do they just get sorted by year and forgotten about?

[Sean Ae]

Have you guys noticed how the first tracks on several of your albums (probably all) sound like boats, ships, seas, water, pirates, wooden decks, sailing and basically evoking an overall nautical theme of adventure on the high seas? A classic example of this being Xylin Room?

 

oh that's interesting

 

we also have a background in pirate radio

Will there be any project with Cunningham again ?

and do you guys like my interpretation of Eutow ?

wish you all the best

 

http://youtu.be/mMguyAZgQcE

 

yeah we'd love to work with chris again at some point, and alex

 

both of them are visionary geniuses imo

Is Gen~ as useful as cycling 74 make out ?

 

i dunno what they make out

 

it's prob more useful than reaktor core

 

(i will prob get flamed to fuck now for saying that)

[Guest Rulohead32]

Serious question: the L-event EP were outtakes from Exai, or same-level songs that you wanted to release separately? Because, totally in my opinion, I find them a bit not so good to be on Exai. I mean, Exai songs have something L-event songs don't have, I repeat, In my opinion.

[hello spiral]

What was it like to be making the beatless and more drone-oriented stuff for the Hafler Trio collab?

 

You were saying earlier that you'd have a hard time making more 'academic, rigid' music without beats or flexibility but some would view those recordings as that.

 

Also, are you pleased with the end result? Seeing as, on here at least, quite a few people were a bit wtf over them.

 

I love them btw.

[LimpyLoo]

I mean, Exai songs have something L-event songs don't have, I repeat, In my opinion.

 

Here's a question for you: why would you say something so dumb?

[Sean Ae]

Whats your favourite album, of your own and of someone else's work.

i find these kind of Qs impossible

 

depends on context and timing

[Guest Rulohead32]

 

I mean, Exai songs have something L-event songs don't have, I repeat, In my opinion.

 

Here's a question for you: why would you say something so dumb?

 

Hey mate, I said it was my opinion. More accurate: my feelings.