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

[Rob Ae]

Is improvised jazz a point of reference for the way you approach your live sets?

 

Edit: Doh a similar question was just asked..

no not for me anyway, i would like to think there's a bit more organisation involved, we do bounce off each other yeah - loads more every time we go out live, compared to old gigs, but i wouldn't like to totally jazz out on stage, it seems like the wrong kind of indulgence.

[Sean Ae]

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?

 

not usually anything to do with tech limitations, but sometimes i think about decisions i would make differently now. time is a weird thing, esp when it comes to music. it's usually to do with something i didn't notice originally. i try to learn from it when it happens

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

 

we want to, i think he wants to, but we've not been in touch for a bit

 

but yeah i reckon yes to both

[noise]

do you know who killed Phobs?

[Sean Ae]

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

i used to have a cat

not presently but i reckon i will again in the future

yeah cats are mental, really

[Sean Ae]

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

 

oh sorry u asked about the eutow vid , i wasn't blanking you I'm just being hasty

 

yeah i mean, its kind of fun, the footwork is kind of electro-ish

[Boxus]

Whoa thanks so much guys, this is a real treat!

 

Your use of reverb on the last few albums has been mind-blowing. Listening to d-sho qub for example, on good headphones, I feel like I'm in a chamber constantly expanding and contracting - totally mental. It's really inspired me to start messing around with weird arrays of comb filters and all-passes in max/msp, modulating delay times to try and toe the lines in between delay and reverb and harmonizer.

 

So my question - do you do most of your reverb experiments in Max? Are there other hardware/software techniques you like to use these days for lush atmospherics? And how important is the sense of space in your music?

[Guest NathanCaldecott]

As a fellow Manc, I find a really distinct synaesthetic connection between the structures and architectures in your work and the atmosphere of Manchester and the Pennines. Would you say your work is connected to the local landscape in that way?

[chartnok]

are you playing any video games or old video games?

[korona15]

have you guys ever considered producing a whole album devoted to hip-hop, with various guest MCs? would love to hear krs-one, kool keith and others like that rap over autechre beats!

[LimpyLoo]

Do you think knowledge of 'process' or 'history' enhances art or is superfluous and beside the point?

 

 

Also, how much musique concrete (vs. pure gen) is in your process these days?

[lumpenprol]

- I'm guessing most of us fans, rightly or wrongly, organize your discography into certain periods with "transition" albums and "new direction" albums. Some people even suggest they can be grouped in 3's, so that for example Incunabula, Amber, and Tri Rep could be grouped together, then Chiastic/LP5/EP7, then Confield, Draft, Untilted (I don't think this really works, just saying). I'm wondering if you ever see certain albums in a similar light, meaning that when you finish it you think "well, we've taken that approach to its logical conclusion, not much more we can do with that sound, time to move on", or "I think there's more to dig in this vein, let's keep pushing it"?

 

If this at all applies, which albums do you yourselves see as the most groundbreaking? (and I don't necessarily mean in the sense of the global music scene, but more in terms of personal "eureka!" moments)

Edited November 2, 2013 by lumpenprol

[Sean Ae]

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?

 

architects are worse than rockstars

 

i think the main difference is the social element is more readily acknowledged in music circles, but architects (and to an extent designers) position themselves above it or outside it a lot. i think that's why there's been this drive toward functionalism again lately (altho even by framing it as an -ism they still manage to achieve some kind of intellectual superiority)

 

ok so i know nothing about architecture, pls disregard prev paragraph

 

as far as retro computing - well i like it if i see people doing new things with old machines, same as i like new things on new machines

it's more about the actual output for me, if it's too much about the computer itself or about the past i get bored (that's more like a fashion thing really tho)

[LimpyLoo]

Do you guys ever name your gear?

 

 

p.s. can you please please name my MPC4000 for me?

[Sean Ae]

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.

 

licensing nightmare

we suggested it to warp back when there were only about 40 of them and they passed on it

 

if any labels wanna do it, contact us (if you want it to be above board that is, cos trademark issues)

[kirm]

What are your thoughts on Grime? Think you have mentioned liking Terror Danjah before, what other producers and MC's are you into?

[Sean Ae]

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?

 

nah tbh i just have a load of archive, and then i have one current folder for tracks, and another for jams (which is a lot more full and hectic)

[Ivan Ooze]

where some of the tracks on exai influenced by heavy sub/bass music?

[logakght]

Favorite release from 2013 atm?

[Kavinsky]

When you make music do you also have some kind of visual or physical object around you (like a lavalamp,trees outside or pictures etc)?

[Atop]

Valis is indeed an amazing novel!

 

Have you read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch?

 

mind blowing stuff....

 

and I with Lumpster on having my mind blown that Gantz Graf was written during the EP7 sessions, wow!

 

You guys waited for the perfect opportunity to release one of the greatest tracks ever.

[Ivan Ooze]

when will you release the "thank god we have autechre" shirts

[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

 

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?

 

 

well it can get pretty huge when we're close to release but then after release it all gets mothballed and yeah, sorted by album usually, sprawling huge folders

[gmanyo]

Have the recent net genres (witch house, future bass, vaporwave, etc) caught your interest at all, and will they possibly (or have they already) affect your music? How do you feel about them? Have you ever thought about trying to do things with the artists from it, like Fatima al Qadiri or Vektroid? Or even Oneohtrix Point Never?

[lumpenprol]

- have you ever tried your hand at rapping over your tracks?

[Soloman Tump]

Have you ever released music under a pseudonym that we do not know about?