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

[MisterE]

related to your reply to i believe it was awe's question about the NSA to which you said it (spying) was a necessary phase-

 

so in the nearish future when brain implants, chips that allow you to connect your brain directly to your computer are available, will either/both of you say 'damn the torpedoes' (in this case the torpedoes being the american gov and possibly other govs recording every thought you have in a secret facility somewhere, and organizing all the data into various cross-referenced, instantly searchable databases, to be used in who knows what ways), and go ahead and get one so you can control your max patches directly with your brain waves? assuming you don't already. is that what you meant by saying the NSA stuff is part of a necessary phase? that all of this is inevitable, that all of our brains are going to be under direct monitoring by gov/commercial entities but that we have to accept that if we want the cool shit like robot servants that bring us our tea when we think about tea, or being able to compose tracks with our thoughts like raymond scott wanted to do?

[Sean Ae]

What are the best/your favourite records to listen while on train?

 

super linear stuff works well

i like basic channel, chain reaction, acid tracks (actual acid tracks not people making techno songs on a 303)

[Adamovich]

What about Gerald Donald and his projects like Dopplereffekt or Arpanet, do you dig his stuff and his "scientific" approach?

[Guest WNS000]

 

Oh, here's a question someone should have asked:

 

Are you aware of the gap in the middle of Teartear on the American release of Amber? Do you know how that happened, and is it fixed now?

 

(I actually bought the album twice but both had the gap, so I assumed it was intentional, only to find out years later it wasn't...seemingly all the US versions, at least from that time period, had this problem).

 

nah u know what, i only read about that on here like a week or two ago

i haven't even heard it

obv. it's a huge fuckup as i'm guessing they shifted a few of them by now

whose idea was the looped vocal sample near the end of zeiss contarex? its one of my fav parts on ep7

 

and why did blyz castl get such a limited release?? do u not like it or something? its bangin m8

 

i dunno i guess we were reacting a bit to everyone asking why the japan only tracks were always a bit rubbish

 

 

Guys, are you able after all those years imagine a sound you would like to create and then really create it? Or are you at least able to predict what your patches will do? Or is it re-discovering over and over again and just trying new things all the time?

 

more into finding things than making ersatz versions of imagined things

 

 

So if you have a work in progress track where you can totally hear in your head a sound design idea for that track that would make it a killer track you would not try to make it real?

 

 

i might but if i got sidetracked and ended up making something different then i would see that as a good thing

 

 

Well, I am glad I am not the only one with distraction problems :))

[Sean Ae]

 

 

 

 

i got no idea, i never owned one

but i take it as a compliment cos it means you're hearing some of our dsp progging as analogue (which was the intention)

 

interesting, because Exai has a distinctly more 'analog' sound, if it's mostly digital you guys did a great job of making it sound the opposite, at least all the synth work. Are there soft-synths you guys have an affinity for? I've noticed you mention FM7 a few times, how about some of the newer ones like Madrona Labs Aalto?

 

Also thanks for the confirmation on the Autechre patch, there are an army of cycling74 employees trying to claim it's not a real patch or as some would say a 'hoax'. The patch made me realize just the lengths you guys go to get that perfect timbre. No matter how many times or different ways I've tried drum stuttering/rapid fire sounds, they never have that pleasurable timbre quality you guys mastered so well during the Draft/Confield era.

 

Do you guys enjoy any of the other artists on Isolate Records besides Vsnares and OST/Dalglish, specifically Nommo Ogo or Tomoroh Hidari?

 

And what's your favorite album or work by Mick Harris aka Scorn?

 

 

 

a lot of the stuff around draft time was done in dp, just triggering a sampler from the sequencer (akai z8 over midi) - the motu midi interface we were using was really fast so you could mad rolls with it. we'd do tuned rolls and then copy them and multiply the length of the roll by 1.05946 incrementally to make it play melodies.

 

interesting, so that max/msp patch which appears to be 'stuttering' a real-time synthesized bass drum sound and turning it into a melody was not a technique used in Confield or draft? Was it used in anything specific you can remember? I feel like i hear some aspect of it in the Confield tour recordings.

 

Your response about recordlabelrecords appears to have been edited out and/or blank, any followup on that?

i'd be happy to endure the mysterious mind fuck though too if you don't want to answer

 

was Recks On in Exai an intentional Mick Harris/Scorn homage? Or if it wasn't planned I guess my other question would be, just how much Scorn are the two of you listening to these days? I'd like to think a lot.

 

 

nah that patch was just an exercise in using phasor in a kind of slightly fractal way

 

i haven't heard much stuff on rlr soz, feel free to link me to some tho

 

nah recks on is an 80s hip hop homage, that emu snare is on loads of hip hop records, and the booming 808 etc. more of a shout to meat beat manifesto, renegade soundwave, keith leblanc, duke bootee etc

but i can see why someone who doesn't really listen to 80s hip hop but listens to scorn might think that

[mrmegaman]

hello to you both

 

are we likely to see a live set this year?

i wonder how the process works after you finish an album to prepare for a live set?

do you take time off after after the album goes to press?

 

also what are your feelings of repressing vinyl? i would love to get amber on 12"

 

thanks again to you both hope to see you soon

[Rob Ae]

So, you write your music; and a lot of the rhythms and melodies vary widely from bar to bar.

 

When I listen to it, I have memorized some of them, but there are always parts that sound new to me because I don't remember that particular variation, and there are so many different ones (fills, riffs and such) -- does that happen to you too? Are you still surprised by what happens in the songs, or do you know them backwards and forwards since you made them and listened to them so many times during the final mix process? (I know generative vs. non-generative writing makes a difference here, feel free to comment on either case.)

 

Btw, that's one of my favorite parts about your music, that (cliché as it sounds) I am always hearing new things and being surprised and entertained. :)

 

yeah we tend to know them inside out, if we've both had a hand in the tracks - it sinks right in, but we get to hear each others tracks as more end user sometimes….but with a highly unusual degree of exposure

[Sean Ae]

What is the first track you play for people that have never heard you before?

 

i had a guy round fixing my boiler a couple of years ago when i was doing tac lacora so i played him that cos he was asking

he just said 'who listens to this then? loads of guys sitting in their houses smoking weed?'

and i went 'yeah, pretty much'

[Sean Ae]

Is there some other artists' song that you wished you had written? Do you guys even listen to mainstream music?

 

i reckon the stuff martin gore and alan wilder did together is basically some of the best songwriting ever

not that i do stuff like that, or want to really, but i love it

[Rob Ae]

hello to you both

 

are we likely to see a live set this year?

i wonder how the process works after you finish an album to prepare for a live set?

do you take time off after after the album goes to press?

 

also what are your feelings of repressing vinyl? i would love to get amber on 12"

 

thanks again to you both hope to see you soon

don't really do time off after a records' finished, cos of mastering and product design and so on, but certainly a switch from doing the compiling type procedures to something more omni directional mbe

 

i suppose if it was manageable for warp to repress old LPs without going under, they'd be the guys to do it at some point.

[Amen Lare]

 

What is the first track you play for people that have never heard you before?

 

i had a guy round fixing my boiler a couple of years ago when i was doing tac lacora so i played him that cos he was asking

he just said 'who listens to this then? loads of guys sitting in their houses smoking weed?'

and i went 'yeah, pretty much'

 

 

It's called Zen music in popular culture

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUq4P-v4BMs

[Schlitze]

Word up, Ae. I recently found a few of your old radio mixes on my old Compaq desktop PC (XFM, Breezeblock and Solid Steel), it was great to hear them again (big chunks of Wendy Carlos and Hafler Trio on that Breezeblock Mix :-D). I know you guys do the massive webcast marathons but does it work differently for the radio output? does the station come to you and you post them a CD of a half hour mix? And are you inundated with requests for this type of stuff in the lead up to an album release?

[olo]

Hey Sean & Rob,

 

When you guys played the Detroit Electronic Music Festival several years back, how did you feel about playing the underground stage with completely horrible acoustics? Or, did the shite acoustics add to the fun?

 

Any fond memories from the bankruptcy that is Detroit?

 

Are the Secret Chiefs 3 ever going to release Book of Souls?

 

Holla.

[Sean Ae]

question for sean or rob:

 

you guys have been recognized as being primary figures in bringing back or re-popularizing FM synthesis as well as pushing it in entirely new directions, do either of you have interest in physical modeling synthesis? I know you say you're mostly outside the DAW right now, and given that there arent very many pieces of physical gear that do physical modeling (besides the korg wavedrum, yamaha vls and a few others) have you explored much in the past or present new advancements in this technology such as Pianoteq or Applied Acoustics Chromaphone (probably the first really solid phys mod percussion engine since the Machinedrum) ? Just curious if you could speak on how you feel about this type of synthesis or if any specific tracks utilized it.

 

edit: Sonderemawe sounds like it had some virtual metal plate/membrane action happening in it. A

 

lot of loaded questions here tbh but i'll say this

we've been blagging sounds for years, way way before we heard anyone using the term physical modelling

even just using a 202 you can make really mad 'bonk' sounds by tuning the resonance and using the res env a certain way (think of voodoo ray by gerald)

 

not implying we were the first at all obviously, wendy carlos and tomita were running rings round anything we did before we even knew what music was

but like, there are literally tons of ways you can make fake things out of other things. this idea that physmod is only a few techniques is a bit of a new thing really. but i guess describing those things an non-linear processes is a bit much for some people

 

you can make a wide array of vowel sounds using a combination of pwm and fm, but it's only considered formant synthesis is you're using a collection of bpf's

 

the actual list of techniques that you're supposed to learn is weirdly limited and doesn't really cover what's possible. in a lot of ways things were more interesting before it all got formalised

that's why wendy carlos and tomita are so good, cos they didn't have that list of techniques getting in the way, they found most of it thru trial and error

Edited November 4, 2013 by Sean Ae

[khov]

Any plans of working again with The Hafler Trio ? Besides the recent Autechre collabs, he does not release much music those days. I know the last Dvds were weirdly regarded here but i do like them quite a lot actually.

[Rob Ae]

 

What are the best/your favourite records to listen while on train?

 

super linear stuff works well

i like basic channel, chain reaction, acid tracks (actual acid tracks not people making techno songs on a 303)

 

yeah roland kayn - tarego II - is a good one for rotating perspectives

Edited November 4, 2013 by Rob Ae

[Sean Ae]

This is not a question but I thought I'd share this recently un-earthed album by Wai Cheng who ran Isolate Records.

It's very reminiscent of some of your older material but perhaps a little darker and more depressing

 

https://optic-isolate.bandcamp.com/album/hardcore-indie-punk-muzak-for-angst-filled-rebellion

 

Wai recounted to me a fun story of meeting you guys once and getting to hang out on the tour bus for a little bit, I think Chris had introduced you guys. He said you had many bikini clad lady posters hanging up.  I also remember something (maybe untrue) about Sean being really mean to Moby at some point during one of the ATP festivals. Did you guys fuck with Moby?

 

i would never fuck with moby

we did meet him in nyc once at one of our gigs but it was a bit weird, i think the other guys we were hanging with didn't like him

i reckon he gets more shit than he deserves tbh

 

not that i listen to his music

 

go was good tho

[Dale]

what do you think of nine inch nails and trent reznor's recent output? i recall trent mentioning that you have been an influence on his music making from the late 90s onwards....

[Rob Ae]

Word up, Ae. I recently found a few of your old radio mixes on my old Compaq desktop PC (XFM, Breezeblock and Solid Steel), it was great to hear them again (big chunks of Wendy Carlos and Hafler Trio on that Breezeblock Mix :-D). I know you guys do the massive webcast marathons but does it work differently for the radio output? does the station come to you and you post them a CD of a half hour mix? And are you inundated with requests for this type of stuff in the lead up to an album release?

yeah sometimes its like that for outside radio programmers, we get quite busy with requests when we announce a new record.

[kirm]

I would like to have VLetrmx21 played at my Funeral. Which music (if any) would you want played at yours?

 

And while on the subject of death, If 1 of you died would the other carry on releasing music? and would you still call it Autechre?

 

Sorry for the morbid questions and respect for keeping this thing going!!

[Guest WNS000]

 

i really like sleep terror, it's so flattened and designed, like hyper futurist

i like the precision of the good technical stuff and really into the angles of it all, the geometry of it appeals to me

 

 

So do you know/enjoy The Dillinger Escape Plan then? Some of their noisy tracks are so incredibly sophisticated and so well played it's insane. But it is definitely a different vibe than Sleep Terror. Not that arty and more punk.

[Sean Ae]

are you happy with record labels like Modern Love that try to obscure the fact that they also own Boomkat ? Does this come off as slightly deceptive to you or do you have no opinion?

 

Also what are your feelings on bands that channel old school industrial vibes but don't seem to actually be making interesting music like Vatican Shadow who seems like he's molded his image entirely on Muslingauze

 

were you just as embarrassed as I was when Zomby donned the cover of The Wire magazine?

lel

i dunno if they obscure it at all tbh, everyone knows

 

jeez yeah i mean i get what you're saying but the new guys have their own slant on stuff, and i bet if u asked them they'd jump at the chance to show respect to muslimgauze or zf or nurse with wound etc

 

the wire, i mean

i dunno man they need to shift magazines i'm not gonna slag them off for that

i quite like some of zomby's stuff

[soma333]

I'm curious if y'all feel like masters

 

Or more jack of all trades, master of none.

 

Friends here in M10 are freaking out y'all are here so lots of loving and weird vibes coming your way B)

also Exai is 'talking' a lot more now~

[Sean Ae]

Hey guys.

 

a) what did you guys do in Australia in between gigs? Did you get to do anything or just hang out in the hotel?

 

b) you did a remix for Earth a while back. Do you listen to much of their music? Do you listen to much music with distorted guitars? I seem to remember a mix with necrophagist on it.

 

we just went record shopping and hung out with mark a lot (we'd not seen him in years so was really nice to catch up)

[Guest burnibus]

I never realised you lovex dm so much. Id heard you mention them in interviews before but didnt realise the high regard you held them.

 

Considering the collaborated with mark bell its not a million miles away, the thought of you two working with them is it? I know martin gore was well into bitstream.

 

What do you think of exciter? And whats your favourite dm album? Sorry for another favourites q.