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

[hoggy]

Have you ever played a Casio PT10?

 

Do you enjoy much circuit bending? Toys, toy instruments in particular

 

Have you ever heard voices in your heads?

 

A lot of music (rock and dance in particular) emphasises certain kinds of energetic sounds - acid bass, distorted guitar, amen breaks, hard kicks, snares and so on - I notice that your music has a wide variety of sounds in this respect (as well as some of the ones already listed), including thin, small, clipped, reedy, distant sounding sounds (sounding sounds?) - do you intentionally avoid fetishising particular sound qualities at the expense of others, or is it that you get as much excitement from all kinds of sounds? Do you seek out variety in sound qualities?

[jules]

What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?

[Rob Ae]

When doing a remix, do you prefer to work purely with the source material, or do you prefer to take a snippet and build up around it?

 

What is your favorite remix you have done? (mine is HIA - Conoid Tone)

that was our first ever proper remix job.

[Guest Refund]

another question

does being signed to a major label like warp ever affect your ability to do things? like could you release stuff on other labels as AE, and could you decide to jet off somewhere and just do a lowbrow gig under a fake pseudonym?

[Rob Ae]

Crystal Method are now doing an AMA on Reddit. Coincidence?

are they as realtime as us?

[Guest]

when listening to music, would you say that you have a preference towards listening to entire albums / longer compositions / mixes, or that skipping thru soundbites of individual tracks on shuffle is more your thing... predictable answer would be "both, depends on context" but i guess everyone does both to a degree... which do you enjoy more, in general, nowadays, or uhh right now?

 

does that differ between your own music & others'?

 

talking strictly about listening enjoyment here, not making playlists/mixes for others (but, does that make a difference for you?)

[MadameChaos]

what are the last 3 books you read?

 

what is your all time favorite book?

 

any plans for an Autechre biography?

 

have you both ever had a fight? who won?

[Guest WNS000]

 

Crystal Method are now doing an AMA on Reddit. Coincidence?

are they as realtime as us?

 

 

Yes, it looks like they are. But less frequent answers.

Edited November 6, 2013 by Jev

[Blir]

What's your favourite Gescom track and why is it Slow Acid?

[kausto]

 

 

 

 

...And a good example track is Second Peng - i hear something like evil insectoid alien swarms there!

 

Man, Second Peng is one of the most positive and most motivating tracks I have ever heard - a space highway really. That said, your good/evil thing is absolutely super-subjective.

 

first of all, i probably misspeeched and didn't mean that Second Peng is "evil", it has humor, enegry and "fun" to it, i mentioned is as an example of "speaking music" - it has it's "evil" vibe, but in a fun way

 

secondly i am not implying that my seeing is objective - my subjectiveness is the reason i asked this question to the authors of the subject.

 

yeah we get ya,

 

this kind of evil fun - he can see the insects clearly.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VJK5YpMLZY

 

great example

 

he feels great and having lots of fun, that's for sure

 

http://coub.com/view/3j7oz8db

[MadameChaos]

 

What where you doing there, Rob?

it kinda looks like Sean's let one rip so loud that he's blown both Rob's eardrums.

[Rob Ae]

*just sneaking in discreetely to bump my post back to the surface"

 

 

Greetings! Long time fan from Norway here. Big thanks to you guys for doing this, and of course thanks to watmm and Joyrex for making this happen! So some questions from the top of my mind (haven’t read through the whole thread so sorry if some have been asked earlier) So let’s jump straight in, shall we:

- Which book(s) are you currently reading (if any)? Are you mostly into fiction or do you read non-fiction as well, such as philosophy/science/documentary stuff etc?

- Any philosophers from any time period you are specifically into?

- Salvador Dali or M.C. Escher?

- Do any of you speak a foreign language? Do you know any phrases or longer sentences in Japanese?

- Are the chopped up robot sounding voices in Lentic Catachresis (sounds like a bunch of droids/machines/robots having some kind party, then it goes mental) sampled from any album or is it like field recorded samples? Have you ever used your own voices in any tracks (if yes, do you mind revealing which ones)? And who are the female voice used in Second Scepe?

- Did you sample any actual bell-like instrument for Parhelic Triangle? This track have so much substance, but yet a sense of creepy paranoia that I always get lost into it.. like I’m wandering around in a long dark corridor on some alien world with abandoned laboratories around me, where horrible experiments took place along time ago… and there’s some kind of lethal sentient entity (possible a result from one of those experiments) somewhere watching my steps…

I see films have been discussed in the thread so here are some film-related questions:

- Are you into Christopher Nolan’s films, like what do you think of Inception? And his revival of the Batman franchise? Opinions on Bane’s voice/accent?

- What do you think of Blomkamp’s last film, Elysium?

- What do you feel about R. Scott’s return to the Alien universe with Prometheus?

- Do you like Monty Python, and if yes, would you like to mention any favourite sketches?

- Who would win a match of pool (eight-ball, etc) between Sean and Rob? What about chess? Or othello (reversi)?

- Will you ever come back to Norway for a gig? I really enjoyed your set in Oslo during the Oversteps tour. If I’m not mistaken that was the first time you ever performed in Norway? How did you like the visit?

- Speaking of which… did you know that Pule actually means ”to f*ck” in Norwegian? (I really like the track btw, it has a feeling of rusty dryness to it, in a meditative calming way kind of)

Ok that was that! I really hope you’ll take your time to reply, but I see you have a hell of a job digging through all these posts!

(Oh and btw, I really appreciate your good sense of wit and irony you are expressing throughout this discussion! there seems to be a great vibe of light-heartedness going on between you guys and your fans!)

Cheers! :)

regards, Jan from Norway

 

 

oh and one more thing I wanted to ask: I was happy to discover that you included a few tracks by Yello in your Exai webcasts. Yello was the band who first triggered my music interest as a kid (when I for the first time saw the music video for rubberbandman on MTV, still remember it as it was yesterday.. ahh... memories... My friends thought my music taste was a bit strange. ah well anyway..)

Any favouroite albums/tracks by Meier and Blank? And any favourite music videoes? :) What do you think of their last album, Touch?

 

*sneaking out just as discreetely as I entered...*

yeah get u - bumps being essential in a 4day thread this size and counting….

btw every question is read, but not answered not cos its shit or anything, just timing mbe.

 

yello, shit yeah been into them since stella, more recently doing a backtrack for some others more rare.

their idea of how to throw together the superfine grain and smooth sound of their use of the digital gear, the slick production with perverse 80s off hand arrangements back then was intense for me mostly sculptural use in tracks like Ciel Ouvert or Stalakdrama, lots of camps with cash doing it at the time like trevor horn and others with computer workstations n that.

but this was the most oblique for me.

[Rob Ae]

How does scratching/turntablism and influence your approach to producing sounds? The way you manipulate bass sometimes sounds like you're pushing and pulling at gravity and also reminds me of Terminator-X ripping up a kick drum. Is he an influence?

yeah gravity's the key here i guess, inertia more so.

 

Terminator -X wasn't the flyest of Dj/scratchers, but then again neither was Marley Marl, but they both seemed to shake the ground in your head every time they cut up a track.

Bombsquad were massive to us.

[chaproy]

Hello guys,

 

Firstly, very generous in subjecting yourselves to 5 days of WATMM ask anything.

 

Secondly, could either of you please fill the [blank] in below? Cheers.

 

You know society has lost all manner of sensibility when as an upstanding, law-abiding citizen you can no longer [blank] in public.

[lumpenprol]

 

Crystal Method are now doing an AMA on Reddit. Coincidence?

are they as realtime as us?

 

I didn't even bother opening the thread

[Sean Ae]

What's your favourite Gescom track and why is it Slow Acid?

 

errr probably five

 

today anyway

[Rob Ae]

 

What where you doing there, Rob?

on my imaginary phone, yeah sand in my eyes, no crying

[Guest Refund]

You know society has lost all manner of sensibility when as an upstanding, law-abiding citizen you can no longer [KARPLUS] in public.

[Sean Ae]

when listening to music, would you say that you have a preference towards listening to entire albums / longer compositions / mixes, or that skipping thru soundbites of individual tracks on shuffle is more your thing... predictable answer would be "both, depends on context" but i guess everyone does both to a degree... which do you enjoy more, in general, nowadays, or uhh right now?

 

does that differ between your own music & others'?

 

talking strictly about listening enjoyment here, not making playlists/mixes for others (but, does that make a difference for you?)

 

prefer listening to whole things, at least when i like the whole thing

if something's really patchy i might uncheck things for a bit but i only delete things that are totally rubbish

and even then i might listen to what's left as a whole thing with bits removed

 

but obv loads of other ways too - today for example i'm listening to a smart playlist which is sorted by bpm

[Plarkreluke Banloboh]

I'll bump a couple of mine that may have been missed.

 

Interesting thoughts earlier on graff, angularity and architecture and how these influence musical aethetics! Do you like to think about these visual aesthetics when manipulating sound on a wave-form level? i.e. a saw wave can be said to look and sound saw-like, etc..?

Could you please name my Yamaha RS7000?

[Guest Rulohead32]

Rob or Sean (not an exclusive "or"), do you listen Spanish music? If so, which artists do you listen? What do you think about them, or spanish music in general? Thanks.

[jules]

i have no gear to name so can one of you send me something cool to hang in my office so i can say, oh autechre sent me that because now we're bros lel

[Rob Ae]

hey rob, i am not sure if my question was missed or just skipped it, but i was curious about the untilted writing period. your ep's are always so dope and perfect, why was there no ep for untilted?

really dunno jules.

 

i think papers were saying we had been putting too much stuff out.

[Sean Ae]

another question

 

does being signed to a major label like warp ever affect your ability to do things? like could you release stuff on other labels as AE, and could you decide to jet off somewhere and just do a lowbrow gig under a fake pseudonym?

 

is warp a major label now? when did that happen?

 

if we wanted out i'm p sure warp would let us go without too much of a fight

 

and gigs have nothing to do with warp we can do what we want

[joshuatxuk]

No question, just remembered I made this stupid .gif a year ago and I feel it's the ideal time to post it.