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

[Sean Ae]

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)?

 

 

 

 

 

depends, theres usually a screen somewhere but anything could be on it, sometimes i just put films on silently

i actually made a few jitter patches around exai time that i would leave running on another computer with some midi and audio hookup from the patches making the tracks, that was pretty nice

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.

not yet, i will next, thanks

[Panoptic Sweep]

Long winded rambly drunk post. It's saturday!

 

Do you think of yourselves as apart from the electronic music 'scene', or part of it?

There was a time, as referenced upthread, when you sound like you thought that you were very much part of something big, something new that was evolving and going exciting places which then swiftly turned out to not be the case.

I think of Autechre as an entity being somewhat outside the sphere of music in general. Your sound is singular; you're pretty much a subgenre of your own. But what about in relation to contemporary music and recent styles? We all know about the influence of hip hop on you, but do you hear your influence trickling through to anyone else? Are you/Would you be happy about such an impact? Pale imitations are ten a penny of course, but do you feel as if other artists have taken on board your output as you see it and run with it?

[logakght]

what do you think of OPN new album (R+7)?

[Drix]

One more question. Have you ever had sounds in your head you haven't been able to "get out" musically, that you haven't been able to recreate?

[poblequadrat]

For both of you I suppose - What's it like to meet another person who really understands and complements your aesthetic sense? Did the creative potential between you two click immediately? And what is it like to work with said person for over 25 years in a serious productive capacity? Do you both find this easier and more encouraging than simply working alone - quality control but also a dialog back and forth? I'm jealous...

 

Sean, you spoke about architects and their awful egos briefly and I recall you had some architectural training. In what way do you see your music composition as a construction of space? Do you think of yourself as an architect of sorts? The cover of Draft brings to my mind Lebbeus Woods, and even early Cavity Job graffiti style lettering reminds me of 80s-90s Morphosis diagramming. Other electronic musicians have also studied architecture. Kouhei Matsunaga and Jeff Mills spring into my head. Mills especially has an ability in tracks like "Paradise" to create an almost static room of sound. Art historians have tried to connect architecture and music since the ancient greeks; do you think electronic music has brought itself closer in conceptual thought to architecture and space construction than previous musical styles? Is that interesting or important? lol I dunno - it's either you guys or maurizio when I'm at the drafting table - I think of these two art styles as one and the same.

 

Hey, dr lopez, how did you survive through arch school? Yesterday I decided I'm dropping out, I'll be working on a degree in philosophy, but I'm very frustrated because I'm not too bad at designing actually, and I wasted a few years, also I come from a working class family and university has basically ruined us, it's just nerve wracking and it's got me nowhere.

 

Ae, what do you think about architecture and music, not in the sense that music could be a construction of space, but in the sense that designers in general, not just architects, can have different ways of installing an order in a given place, or even inventing orders from preexisting conditions, and music can be structured in similar ways? I mean, the different approaches to form, and the many possible kinds of orders behind form, imply lots of things and you can sort of make a big deal out of them, so how do you approach structure? I mean, scrap the part about architecture, I just wanted to ask about form and structure.

 

I agree that architects are full of shit, by the way...

 

Also, could you tell me something about 4-op FM synths? I know it's a silly question (at least it's not as pretentious as the others) but I'm really attached to my DX21...

[Soloman Tump]

During the Oversteps warehouse gig in London I swear I heard the drums from "Lcc" at one point. My mate passed out in the skanky portaloo's at the back after Haswell's insane set and missed the entire show. Lol at him.

 

I was also at Bloc festival so heard a massive difference in sets across the Oversteps tour; Bloc was very bass heavy with very little melodic content (or was that just the soundsystem?), Bocking St. was lush and full spectrum (ala the awesome Domino recording). Do your live shows evolve organically as you tour between places, do you respond to how audiences react, and do you perform differently to different nations?

 

Basically, i'm really interested in your live shows and hope for more. 2010 was a long time ago.

[Sean Ae]

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?

i got diff opinions on all them genres tbh, some aspects of vaporwave make sense to me, others don't

witch house makes me laugh. it's like, there was a time when that would have just been one record, but anything can become a bandwagon now, so many people producing

 

i like 0pn a lot

[zkom]

Are you actually Richard trolling WATMM again?

[Sean Ae]

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

 

you really don't want a detailed answer to that q

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

 

 

probably

[SR4]

do you look forward to the day when Benn Jordan makes Diet Coke versions of your music?

[lumpenprol]

 

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

 

you really don't want a detailed answer to that q

 

 

 

 

that's true, feel free to supply the audio instead :-)

[Atop]

Do you guys think SR4 is funny?

[gmanyo]

Are there any super unknown artists that you love that you could share? Some artists who you think have value but that have like <200 soundcloud followers or whatever.

[vamos scorcho]

This may be an annoying question, but I'm curious. Do you feel that you had to work and put effort into finishing your music at any time, particularly with incunabula and tri repetae when things were less well accepted?

 

I'm wondering if there is ever tedious work in the creative process.

[Hoodie]

 

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?

i got diff opinions on all them genres tbh, some aspects of vaporwave make sense to me, others don't

witch house makes me laugh. it's like, there was a time when that would have just been one record, but anything can become a bandwagon now, so many people producing

 

i like 0pn a lot

 

 

i noticed you all put a sam tiba song in your radio mix earlier this year. what do you guys think of the music coming out on marble records (if you're familiar with them enough to say)?

[impakt]

Do you have any hip-hop aliases I can listen to?

[Ivan Ooze]

how much did it cost 2 get the vocalist of uterus on Osla for n

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNjTOPfo-oE&feature=player_detailpage

[Soloman Tump]

What did you think of Grischa Lichtenberger's album "And IV (Inertia)"?

 

It fucking rules, if you have not heard it. Get him to support you on the next tour, pls

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgmidfpw-Ac

[Sean Ae]

For both of you I suppose - What's it like to meet another person who really understands and complements your aesthetic sense? Did the creative potential between you two click immediately? And what is it like to work with said person for over 25 years in a serious productive capacity? Do you both find this easier and more encouraging than simply working alone - quality control but also a dialog back and forth? I'm jealous...

 

Sean, you spoke about architects and their awful egos briefly and I recall you had some architectural training. In what way do you see your music composition as a construction of space? Do you think of yourself as an architect of sorts? The cover of Draft brings to my mind Lebbeus Woods, and even early Cavity Job graffiti style lettering reminds me of 80s-90s Morphosis diagramming. Other electronic musicians have also studied architecture. Kouhei Matsunaga and Jeff Mills spring into my head. Mills especially has an ability in tracks like "Paradise" to create an almost static room of sound. Art historians have tried to connect architecture and music since the ancient greeks; do you think electronic music has brought itself closer in conceptual thought to architecture and space construction than previous musical styles? Is that interesting or important? lol I dunno - it's either you guys or maurizio when I'm at the drafting table - I think of these two art styles as one and the same.

 

ok so

yeah i mean we learned about making tracks at the same time so we didn't really come to the table with pre-formed ideas as it were, just a mutual understanding of what tracks that were out at the time had things we liked going on (and tbh there were other people around us who liked the same thing)

i think it was the weird way that we learned about what we were doing that we shared, and that's the main thing that marks us out (if anything)

 

dave hanal was doing amazing graff back in 87, he was a huge influence tbh (and all the things we all liked like 2000AD, ridley scott etc)

but you're right you see the same line and angles popping up all over, some kind of basic shared understanding of dynamism i think

you know how some angles just look cooler than others, i never studied any visual art but the same kind of principles apply to music i think

and you can tell when other musicians have a sense of that, moritz is def one of them, and mills. i would put afx in there too, and gerald simpson, stakker, they all have a kind of angular thing going on

kind of hard to explain cos i never bothered coming up with a decent textual way to describe it

[Guest skibby]

What is the story with the QR code album covers?

[cygnus]

who do u think is the funniest rapper? have u heard quelle chris yet hes good

 

do u think that a scene/concert/event being mostly full of dudes has an effect on the longevity of the 'scene' or whatevr?

[SR4]

is it true you challenged Arovane to a boxing match?

[Guest unteleportedman]

 

is this how you envision yourselves creating music?

Edited November 2, 2013 by unteleportedman

[Atop]

What is the story with the QR code album covers?

YES, this is the question?

[Sean Ae]

do you know who killed Phobs?

i haven't been there for so long now

how is it still online?