| A | B | C | D | E | F | |
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1 | Asked by | Question | Answered by | Answer | Notes/Links | |
2 | Joyrex | Sean and Rob of Autechre have graciously agreed to subject themselves to you, the Autechre fans for a "ask anything" - you'll have until 7 November, 2013 to post your questions here in this thread, and Sean and rob will choose which posts to respond to - try to ask interesting and respectful questions, and a HUGE thanks to Sean and Rob for supporting WATMM, and keeping in touch with their fans. We're really fortunate to have great electronic musicians with a long history of making cutting-edge electronic music here among us! | http://forum.watmm.com/topic/81109-aaa-ask-autechre-anything-sean-and-rob-on-watmm | |||
3 | Rubin Farr | Will we ever see another LegoFeet release? | Sean | possibly, we still have a pile of decent material from that era, we could have done another CD easily what we have more of tho is stuff from between LF and Incunabula (mostly stuff Warp didn't want for Incunabula cos it didn't fit the AI theme or whatever) | ||
4 | oscillik | Are there any plans to release a compilation of soundboard recordings? I would pay handsomely for such a thing... | Sean | we were discussing this recently (milking it for all it's worth) the main barrier is the sheer amount of it we would have to go through, it's a few months work i reckon, if it was going to be comprehensive (and that's hard cos the archive is WELL patchy) and we were debating what we'd actually do with it as well ie. whether it's better to stitch the best bits of different gigs together (like a lot of 70s/80s live albums did) or to release them slightly edited (george lucas), or to touch them up here and there sonically, or leave them totally untouched it's our style to release them untouched really - but they would sound a bit weak if we left them 100% intact cos they were mixed for a live rig, and what sounds good mixed in a venue can sound terrible as a 2 track master played at home (a bit better really loud on cans but never quite right) the fact that we would prob end up messing with the sound sets off my autism and makes me want to make other changes also there is a bit of a source consistency issue, as in the gigs that were recorded were prob not the best examples of any given set (it was always venues doing the recording, we would just be given a DAT at the end), and a lot of the best captures were actually by fans, so we'd have to try tracking people down to get WAVs of stuff we only currently have as MPEG or whatever | ||
5 | mcbpete | Have you ever been asked to compose a soundtrack for a film - if not would you consider it, and what kind of feature would best suit the Ae aesthetic ? | Sean | we have been offered stuff but soz i can't talk about any of it cos NON DISCLOSURE big fan of shane carruth and neill blomkamp and loads of retired or dead people hollywood is in a kind of creative whirlpool atm | ||
6 | Rulohead32 | Have you ever felt tired or bored of doing these kind of albums and styles? I mean, have you ever thought of taking a rest, or collaborate with other artists? If not, what's the secret to keep releasing the same amount of music after 20 years and still wanting to experiment, being fresh, and making fresh and bound-breaking tunes? | Sean | bit of a leading question, but thanks we're not trying to be bound-breaking but we are interested in new things (basically novelty is really subjective) and novelty takes a lot of different shapes, ie. a familiar thing can sometimes seem good in a new way, because of some change in perception or association i dunno how other people get bored tbh, maybe they're just approaching it differently | ||
7 | Rob | i tend to think we're onto something quite different each time we return to the studio after a tour or whatever, cos we seem to need a break from it (at least in the past its become a pattern i suppose). and also having been involved with making music with mates all these years, like say gescom and all its varying contributors, i feel my best time working is in this way, don't like the idea of being ported to a studio to get on with producing work with others unless i'm comfortable there. so tend to stay at home, (last of the bedroom producers hahah) | ||||
8 | Lesley | Any live events planned? | Sean | not dates but we're working on it | ||
9 | unteleportedman | Will you ever come to Rochester, NY?????? | Sean | ask local promoters but nah prob not, you're too close to nyc | ||
10 | funkaholic | What do you think about the all the hip-hop that has been getting a alot of people have been talking (hudson mohawke, drake, asap, kendrick, odd future etc)? do you like any of it? Basically I would be interested to hear a new hip-hop song you like (if any)! | Rob | haha such a plethora of sub styles in hop hop, hard to be specific and therefore completely straight up... but, say with really big artist like Drake, i'm 50/50. cos i like the things he's doing in tracks like headlines, but mbe the 'craig david-10 years-too-late' isn't so fresh. heralds of change - spotted is an all time favourite, but theres not much as good as that in the rest of the cannon IMO | ||
11 | Redruth | do u have future plans to produce musics with the mick harris? i'm rather fond of the tracs of yr musics that have bits of warm natural sounds in them, such as water or marbles or these types of things. do u think this might occur more frequently in yr future sounds? do u like jug band? | Sean | no plans to work with mick but we love his stuff he's a legend yeah maybe on the warm natural sounds, we are getting pretty good at faking things now but it gets old fast so we usually end up fucking it up somehow tbh it's hard to make any predictions about what i'm gonna like hearing in a few weeks never mind long term the only jug band thing i know i ended up finding cos gilliam used it in one of his python bits (dixieland jug blowers? awesome track actually) | ||
12 | mcbpete | This advert from the early 00s always sounded spookily similar to Yulquen - did you guys have a hand on it, or is it someone in the advertising agency that's a fan ! | Sean | maybe the ad was originally cut to Yulquen but they didn't budget for it, that happens might just be a coincidence | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIJGI7xaDRU | |
13 | Rob | yeah strange that one, i would def stop what i was doing if i caught it on tv, but its a bit fishy, another one for John Lewis Partnership around the same time (only Xmas tho) was another close copy, more 'tradDM'. | ||||
14 | Sean | lel i think that was tipper | ||||
15 | Ceerial | Have you ever considered "going back to the roots" for an album, and make it heavily inspired by your earlier works? (Incunabula, Amber, Tri Repetae etc.) | Sean | it's kind of impossible, we're not the same people, it would be a pale imitation leave it to people who find it natural | ||
16 | apriorion | I haven't had the good fortune to be able to see you perform live, but I have heard that you play in the dark. I'm guessing that you do that because you want the audience to focus on the music itself. But releasing music means that you have less control over how people experience it: do you have an ideal set of conditions that you would hope people will listen to your music in? | Sean | no partly the decision with the live thing is about removing the identity of the space | ||
17 | kieselguhr | what became of the zoviet*france / AE collaboration - any chance of hearing any of that material (if it actually exists) ? | Sean | ben's got the DAT every time i ask him to send it over he goes 'yeah' and then doesn't, so i haven't heard any of it since we did the gigs | ||
18 | lumpenprol | It's said you were involved with getting Boards of Canada noticed and on Skam, now that your cohort of artists have matured, do you still take an active interest in upcoming electronic artists and scenes? (don't make music myself just curious). Would also be curious to know what electronic artists you listen to these days (I think the rap question was already covered) the Quaristice era seemed unique in your catalog, both because of the shorter more eclectic tracks, but also because you released both Quadrange and Versions, something you hadn't done so explicitly before (in terms of "alternate takes"). Do you also see that period as sort of unique, and is there any backstory to it, apart from just trying to capture a live feel? | Rob | re quadrange, we'd been wanting to do something with variant mixes for a while, in some part due to having a wealth of Eps and extra B sides from artists like Depeche Mode in the past - some of their deepest tracks were unique alternative mixes nothing like the singles or LP versions, and they came across as more intense or over produced even, it was a really nice way to feel what they were doing behind the usual framework they set out in the mainstream…..like a real treat. | ||
19 | futureimage | Whilst being prolific in terms of bespoke software design for your own music (i.e. Max/MSP patches for Confield, Oversteps, etc. etc.), have you considered designing a manufactured hardware product? It's been interesting to see what The Black Dog have done with the CS X51. | Sean | tbh it's tricky cos part of the reason we make software is so that we can hack it easily, and save tons of versions. and the way everything integrates is bespoke as well, the protocols etc; that's such a big part of it that it's hard to make a one box solution or something that integrates with midi (or other equally lame or ancient protocols) that well. we do bounce ideas a lot tho. we'd probably use fpaa and fpga pretty heavily if we did anything, so it could be part modular analogue but still have decent patch storage. | ||
20 | mcbpete | What's it been like collaborating with Andrew McKenzie over the years - he seems like quite a formidable character ! How does the collaboration with such a geographical distance between you guys ? | Sean | we use the internet andrew's a really top guy, he might seem formidable but he really gets it. maybe i just share some of his upbringing being a northerner but i always found him really 'relatable' | ||
21 | lumpenprol | I believe the cover art for Confield (which I think is great) was made by you two...do you continue to experiment with visuals in any form? - Do you keep up with the fan-made videos of your tracks? (thinking here of ones like Plyphon) | Rob | yes | http://vimeo.com/9105827 | |
22 | wabby | Given that's you gus have been at the leading edge of sonic explorations for 20+ years have you developed any personal alternate theories and postulations about what music actually is? | Sean | yeah music = speech - text at least roughly - i reckon it's a kind of super-developed version of the pitch and intonation parts of speech (the aural bit that doesn't contain textual info) | ||
23 | DorkingtonPugsly | What were you guys thinking when you made Cichli, if you remember that is. Thoughts or emotion. Especially the underlying melancholy melody thing, and how it lasts throughout the end. I don't know why but it makes me very emotional, sad, and it feels cold, distant, yet somewhat warm and hazy. It's a strange sensation that I've not felt from listening to any other track. | Sean | yeah i had just moved house and everything was in boxes, so i was half messing with bits of the live set that were in the elektrons and half progging in max on the side, so it just kind of happened that we recorded a ton of stuff that way cos live tracks are fast to do. the max stuff then became the system we used for oversteps and later morphed into the oversteps live setup, and then the exai setup. or part of it anyway. | ||
24 | MastaN8 | How do you feel about your fans? Public image? | Sean | you're gonna have to be more specific than that | ||
25 | Rulohead32 | What do you think about our constant "Sean pls" jokes and the tumblrs with album cover parodies like bullwalletversions? | Sean | i liked the one with rob on the drums also - watmm pls | http://bullwalletversions.tumblr.com | |
26 | Rob | the fact that many stem from an actual WuTang rekkerd, is just perfect | ||||
27 | phling | "the Elektrons", do you still use them a lot? Sounds like they are used on Exai, but more heavily processed than on earlier material? | Sean | nah they've been in a box since the quaristice gigs | ||
28 | apologies if it seems OCD or pointless coming back to this, but most of my dev revolves around Elektron gear so it's simply a topic that interests me more than just tangentially... in Fleure @ ca. 3:59 there is a single 'knock' sound which sounds pretty much like a snare sound in the Perlences, most notably in Perlence Subrange 3, which very much sounds like it's the TRX clap from the Machinedrum. this was actually discussed in the forum, kind of a single percussion hit reaching back to Quaristice: phling, on 09 Mar 2013 - 11:59 AM, said: yes i was referring to the trx-clap from the elektron machinedrum, which is the source of this sound. but maybe it can also be done using a tomato in a closet. is this intentional? is it the TRX clap? is the hit in Fleure sampled from earlier material then, or a different sound source which just sounds like it by chance? the clap: | the sound in perlence is the trx clap but fluere is all msp | http://forum.watmm.com/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_id=27366 | |||
29 | Rob | no its not anything elektron, its a sound taken from a recording using JJOS on MPC1K to smash another custom sound around. then smashed around on an MPC1K using JJOS. | ||||
30 | Sean | lol yeah it is u melon | In response to rob | |||
31 | Rulohead32 | I see you said you're still experimenting with visuals. Have you ever considered to take part in any kind of visual arts festival? (I can't think of many, but I would love to see you play at MIRA Festival one year in my city). | Rob | not really, vis serves as a great aural detox sometimes | ||
32 | skibby | It sounds like you really have a predilection for FM synths, Is this true, and if so, to what extent? Favourite gear? Your work inspired me to develop a plugin that does audio controlled phase modulation, so thanks. | Sean | fm is really flexible so yeah i cane it. also the sound of it does something to me, it can sound like it's inside my head or something - prob cos of the harmonic symmetry being a bit unnatural. fave gear - i dunno at all, i would prob be really boring and say computers, cos flexibility | ||
33 | kieselguhr kid | most of the music you release - while being rather 'abstract' and always innovative - is still clearly rooted in popular music genres like hip hop, electronica, techno etc. do you ever produce stuff that tends towards a more rigidly 'experimental' or 'academic' tradition of electronic music (like GRM, dockstader, xenakis etc)? | Sean | lol rigid see that's the problem innit, all that freedom and they go and buy a strait jacket | ||
34 | apriorion | Your work seems to lead some music journalists to really go off the deep end with speculation and bullshit. I've always imagined that this is due to the largely abstract nature of your work, and they way you guys leave a lot to interpretation. But are there any articles that really stand out to your mind as being the most full of shit? I instantly think of a couple, but I'm curious whether you guys give any thought to what these "professionals" say about your work, if at all. | Sean | can't remember it's hard for any pro writers to get too deeply into things cos their job makes it difficult to specialise that and SEO | ||
35 | Rob | it looks like none have the time to sit and try to enjoy it - they get so much to check out weekly, i can't imagine they get even close to the situation we anticipate our proper listeners reach. so mostly blunt surface level face valuations occur | ||||
36 | LimpyLoo | What advice or criticism would you give to today's electronic musicians? Like, what are we doing right and wrong? What important elements are being underrepresented? | Sean | only advice i can give is do what you want | ||
37 | MastaN8 | How do you feel your music has been received over the years by fans/critics? | Sean | in various ways | ||
38 | Bread | Many on the forum really enjoyed your Quaristice era live set with the elektrons in full swing. Is there a possibility of it being released? There are so many awesome melodic hooks in that set. | Sean | can't rem if there were any recordings i think not actually guess you had to be there | ||
39 | salvaKPO | When was Cichlisuite made? Do you have mutant sound thigs? If so; Does it happen in between the transitions of release material? I mean, tracks mixing gear and techniques used in Tri Repetae and Chiastic Slide, for example. | Sean | cichlisuite was done in 97 (i think it was 97 anyway), after the tour we did with edgar yeah we have tons of mutant half-things, but quite a few are on DATs that won't play without glitch hell. one day we'll get round to mothballing it all | ||
40 | I meant to say hybrid, not mutant. | Sean | mutant is better | |||
41 | SR4 | heat or night? | Sean | night | ||
42 | soma | Hey guys, ever consider doing something acoustic, with non electronic instruments? | Sean | only fleetingly, we usually realise we can't manipulate the harmonics enough and abandon it | ||
43 | Bread | Have you already started work on a potential new release? Are the sounds you're experimenting with now in the studio an evolution of Exai/L-event or do you now see yourselves heading into a very different direction in terms of the next album? I'm curious to know how much planning is involved when you're in the earliest stages of producing a record? | Rob | past lp's are made from tracks that just get made, not to fit a specific brief so early on in the cycle between releases, these forms take shape later as the tracks can often suggest a path, roughly speaking | ||
44 | Sean | at the moment we're working on getting our programs to be reliable and flexible enough to use live again. we added a ton of functionality after oversteps tour but as usual there's that tradeoff between functions and stability (not to mention portability) going on next batch will probably relate to this somehow, hard to tell. we recorded a lot of test files recently and we might use bits but tbh i reckon we will dev it a lot more before we start recording properly again | ||||
45 | Rulohead32 | In one interview/documentary in the 90's you said more or less that "in ten years, music will be nothing like nowadays". Do you still think that same affirmation, or do you now feel that, seeing 80's and 90's revivals and people getting samples from old songs and imitating previous styles, music is becoming "lazier", repeating or lacking originality? | Sean | god no, everyone got blinded by options and retreated into fitting in i was young and naive, what can i say | ||
46 | MastaN8 | Did you guys ever record anything with the late Peter christopherson and jhon balance of coil? Am I mistaken? | Sean | no we did send them some beats once for a potential collab but they said they listened, enjoyed, and thought they couldn't add anything without spoiling it which i mean, it was cute but i really hoped they would hack into it somehow so nothing came of it | ||
47 | Did you end up using those beats on any projects you can remember? | Sean | no, they got archived in the vain hope they may one day become something | |||
48 | Ifeelspace | Do you ever fall out over music? | Sean | usually over really ego things disguised as autistic detail-oriented things, usually we snap out of it once we see that doesn't happen that much, maybe like once a year we disagree on something, and it's always some tiny detail or transition | ||
49 | Bread | What is your favourite track from Exai? | Sean | currently cloudline | ||
50 | lumpenprol | am pretty curious about how you choose track titles, sometimes they seem a bit casual, like just your personal shorthand for how you name different versions of a track, or to downplay the importance of the whole idea of track titles (similar to playing live in a dark room). Other times they seem more carefully chosen or tongue-in-cheek (eg., reniform puls). Are they always carefully chosen? Are any of them more personal? to what extent do you think your local environment plays a role in your sound? I seem to recall around the time of Confield there was talk about how you had moved to (London?) or were no longer working together in the same studio (sorry, fuzzy on the details, it's been a while!), and that that might have informed the tone of the record in some way. Something that also comes to mind is in a more recent interview I think rob mentioned listening to Oversteps repeatedly during train commutes (sorry if I'm mangling this, again memory is a bit fuzzy). Do you just find yourselves making music wherever whenever, or are there any places you like to go to for inspiration...? I think one or both of you may now have families, do you find it hard to manage family time vs. creative time, and any tips? | Rob | originally autechre was a track name, and i guess we have always disturbed a real word or shimmed it into what fits with a track if it will work well, some are literally file names for tracks - iterative or whatever, or just like when we used to do graf, the letters looks better a certain way its an aesthetic choice, so yeah we care but we do it a few different ways, so it may seem more disparate | ||
51 | wabby | The recent proxy link mahem http://p.autechre.ws...p://factmag.com via autechre.ws was a really fresh and weird spin on album marketing IMO. It genuinely freaked me out at first as if my machine had been infected with AE! :) Care to divulge any thoughts on this? Was this a tDR or Warp marketing idea or something you guys initiated? | Sean | both they had the idea for hacking other sites (inspired by our myspace antics), and originally wanted to use it on things like .gov sites - we had the idea of using the referer and gave them a list of URLs, as well as making a lot of aesthetic contributions | ||
52 | Friendly Foil | Weird question, and probably impossible to answer, but: Would you ever do an entire album without any drums/percussion sounds? Quaristice especially had some sweet stuff, like notwo and altibzz. Quite good | Sean | maybe, depends what we have at the end really it's unlikely i would spend a cpl of years doing non beats tracks but if we ended up with a few, and some way to separate them off onto their own thing, then yeah. just hasn't quite happened that way yet | ||
53 | Ivan Ooze | Autechre is the most amazing music ever on a psychedelic drug like mushrooms, did you guys ever experiment with it and if yes have drugs influenced the music of autechre?? | Rob | yes, but sometimes when on certain substances it will really distract u and make u do shit music, so sometimes the only memory of use is all it takes to get things turning out just right. | ||
54 | lumpenprol | to what extent do you think your local environment plays a role in your sound? I seem to recall around the time of Confield there was talk about how you had moved to (London?) or were no longer working together in the same studio (sorry, fuzzy on the details, it's been a while!), and that that might have informed the tone of the record in some way. Something that also comes to mind is in a more recent interview I think rob mentioned listening to Oversteps repeatedly during train commutes (sorry if I'm mangling this, again memory is a bit fuzzy). Do you just find yourselves making music wherever whenever, or are there any places you like to go to for inspiration...? | Sean | over the years we both moved a number of times, we've been living is different cities since late 99 local environment def plays a role, in terms of aesthetics, attitude, vibe we can work anywhere but tech and room sound has a role as well so some kinds of work happen more while travelling than others making sequencers is easier to do without good speakers than making synths, but a lot of our stuff isn't strictly one or the other so it tends to happen incrementally in weird stages based on circumstances | ||
55 | bread | - Do you take an interest in neuroscience and how music stimulates the nervous system and our physiology (not just in terms of emotions)? - Is your main goal to produce music that is emotionally appealing to yourselves, or do you lean more towards the sound designs/textures that music can be manipulated into without having the emotive element in the forefront of the music making process (or maybe a mixture of both)? | Sean | tbh i think everything has some emotional element, but we're not really thinking about that when we do stuff it's not that we don't feel like emotions are important, more that it's hard for me to imagine a sound that doesn't convey some sense of something, and quite often when people discuss emotions in music they only think of happy or sad as being emotions, when imo emotions are a lot more than that e.g. if we put out a really angry track, then people rarely describe it that way. they would more likely say it was unlistenable or difficult, the emphasis moves from expression to design, maybe they just fail to recognise it as expressive if they think it's very technical | ||
56 | mcbpete | Is R M I Corporate ID 2 the raw file of Mira Calix's Humba loaded into a wave editor ? | Sean | no it was the residual ram contents of an ensoniq eps, revealed by making the loop length too small on an unrelated sample (an ensoniq glitch we exploited a few times) those samples hadn't been loaded into that sampler for months but they were still there living in the ram | ||
57 | lumpenprol | - what's the weirdest/most unexpected door that being electronic musicians has opened for you? - the Anti ep may be the only time in your discography that mentions something political (Criminal Justice Bill). Do either of you consider yourselves political or socially active? | Sean | tbh not too many doors, none weird enough to mention anyway re politics, not active in any visible sense, nothing connected to autechre | ||
58 | skibby | Can you think of any other legendary musicians in the 'genre' that are long overdue for a new release that you'd quite like to hear new music from? Sorry if this has already been asked, but who influences you this week? | Sean | other than our stuff i've not been listening to much apart from old stuff lately not for any reason - just the relative amounts of new and old stuff in a lib spanning 90 years (well not really more like 50) tends to weigh in favour of the old | ||
59 | wabby | What do you think of the whole all-of-our-communications-are-being-surveiled-by-the-US-government-under-the-guise-of-anti-terrorism thing? | Sean | a necessary phase in human development | ||
60 | lumpenprol | Can you clarify when the Japan earthquake track 6852 was made? Was it an older track dusted off, or something created fairly close to the time of the quake? (fantastic track by the way) | Sean | really close, was made like a few weeks b4 iirc, but unrelated until we were asked, and it seemed to fit in some way | ||
61 | logakght | How do you create your sounds? Do you create them completely in your minds or do you discover them tweaking the knobs? | Sean | discover i get ideas for things to try out, but rarely get ideas for actual whole finished things which i then have to approximate i read interviews where people say they did that and then when i check their tracks its like, i can't even figure out what the idea was half the time. like the track is often something i already heard, at least from a formal point of view | ||
62 | Philip Glass | A lot of artist turn "mellow" with the years, going into dad-rock and stuff like that. Others create their best work as they age (architects, classical music composers, etc...). After all these years, what are your plans for the future? Is the duo something you would like to continue for another 25 years? | Sean | no plans, just see what we feel like doing the future is the kind of 'elephant in the room' of mysteries | ||
63 | unteleportedman | Do you guys like italo disco? New beat? | Sean | if i had to answer with a word, nah to both i mean there are bits i hear and like sometimes, but there's a slight element of shitness to both genres plus they are often liked (as an entire genre) by awful tasteless people who can't seem to discriminate the good tracks from the shit ones i mean i'm pretty uninformed tbh, i grew up with american electro so to me italo and newbeat sound a bit wrong somehow and i ignored them for years | ||
64 | Deer | Which team do you support? | Sean | none | ||
65 | k h o v | after years of techno/noise gigs, my ears are kinda damaged, bit deaf (grandpa style), so how is your [h]earing ? | Sean | better on the right lost top end on both but you just eq your monitors and boom, new ears | ||
66 | lumpenprol | this whole "questions only" approach ends up feeling a little one-sided, just want to say thanks again for doing this, and also I can confirm Awepittance is indeed a nice chap - we went to your SF Quaristice show together! Question: What is a question you've never been asked in an interview, but always wished you had? | Sean | can't think of anything i want to be asked i mean i can write anything here so it really doesn't matter what the questions actually are | ||
67 | hoggy | Did the collaboration with Venetian Snares inspire you at all? Was it an over the internet thing? Are you into his music? What you do is so unique - I often get the sense that in your music you are making something which has it's own life separated from this reality, that interacts with itself in it's own space, is that deliberate? Some of your tracks (particularly on Exai) make my legs feel kind of epileptic, do you get any of those kinds of reactions? Do you consider your music to have a stoner sensibility? Do you have a sense of trying to make something 'different' or 'other'? | Sean | yeah i love aaron's stuff. he's one of them - when i hear it i think 'god why isn't all music this good'. we did some jams over the web a while ago, passing .rns files back and forth. they would get really fucked up really quickly it was hilarious. he's really good at renoise, he should wear a special renoise crown or something he's amazing at relating things to each other well those last 4 questions all relate something about detail and being in a state where you're able to notice it, or at least not having the blinkers on that usually determine what info is relevant i like considering things from different angles so sometimes i can get really into a normal thing just by fucking with the way i perceive it | ||
68 | Atop | Will we ever see any footage from ATP '03 in a formal way? Do you get tired of people saying your music is weird? Should we as musicians strive to make the world a better, more interesting place to exist in? | Sean | atp 03 footage? i never heard of such a thing, u got a source? no we know it's weird no just concentrate on making good tracks, the rest will follow | ||
69 | SR4 | whats the 'chre drinking culture like? what is your opinion on pimms cups? | Sean | i'm a silver patron person, also like slivovitz and sometimes palinka lately i've been getting into auchentoshan (which is like babby's first single malt, but the lightness reminds me of patron) | ||
70 | Deer | re-listening to Amber, i find some stuff in there very cinematic (Silverside), if offered would you guys do a soundtrack for a film (kind of like what plaid are doing) were you ever offered to do a soundtrack? | Sean | answered this somewhere already | ||
71 | Ivan Ooze | except for exai/L-event what is the best release this year you heard | Sean | i'm just scrolling thru by date added and tbh it's like 99% old stuff, i do keep buying things but there are so many old things still to be heard with the occasional splurge of bass tracks and industrial techno i've been caning vladimir ussachevsky lately and there was a collab between asmus tietchens and moebius that i liked a lot oh and i only head binray really recently as well but really enjoying his stuff, in a kind of remote 'it was another era' way | ||
72 | funkaholic | what new bass and industrial tracks have you been caning? | Sean | oh more of a buying splurge than a listening one i listen to the first 32 bars and then, well that's the whole track tbh i only buy it cos i think i might like it later but then it just sits there, coming on shuffle once a year or something | ||
73 | philip Glass | Have you ever wished trying to compose a piece with anything other than electronic instruments? Say, a choral-only work, or using a classical ensemble, piano, jazz trio, a single string instrument, anything? | Sean | i mean yeah if i could really control it i would i reckon proper accurate voice simulation is actually a lot closer than people realise, weirdly the uncanny valley is a bit easier to traverse cos of people being used to processed vocals, so it's likely that you could get away with it with no one realising but that's not what you were asking about haha i mean, nah, it's kind of boring for me, unless i went for singing lessons or something | ||
74 | Ivan Ooze | Autechre is the most amazing music ever on a psychedelic drug like mushrooms, did you guys ever experiment with it and if yes have drugs influenced the music of autechre?? | Sean | yeah yeah | ||
75 | Bread | @Sean - I remember reading in an interview somewhere that you lived in Suffolk for a while. I'm from Ipswich - I'm curious to know what brought you to Suffolk since there's not a lot going on over here!? | Sean | we were both living in sheffield but rob moved to london and i was like 'fuck london' so we moved to sflk to be near-yet-far was alright for the first 3 years then it started driving me mental | ||
76 | bread | what role do you see computers and mainstream technology playing when it comes to music production in the next 10-20 years from now? will they constantly be taking the labour and time away from the production processes and not permit experimentation/flexibility which seem to be inherent in the subjective human approach to music making? | Sean | no they don't even do that now | ||
77 | kieselguhr kid | what's the last book you read? who are your favourite writers? | Sean | valis pkd | ||
78 | Terpentintollwut | What's the story behind the "Second Bad Vilbel" name - have you ever been to Bad Vilbel? I think I know some people who live there. Also, have you ever read Alcofribas' Lego Feet review and how do you feel about it? | Sean | humbled | http://forum.watmm.com/topic/74390-lego-feet-lp/ | |
79 | korona15 | any plans to reissue/repress past releases on vinyl in the near future? | Sean | ask warp | ||
80 | jasondonervan | I've always been curious how the lengthy Autechre webcasts are put together... are they mixed and recorded in sections, and then stitched together? Or is it 10 hours of the pair of you arguing the toss over what track goes on next? | Sean | bit of both, some live mixing, some prepared mixes shoehorned together. we tend to have something prepared waiting to go for if we enter a zone of pure fuckup | ||
81 | Zeffolia | How much influence does randomness have on your music if any? Aleatoric is the word I think | Sean | given that neither of us had any say in our genetic code, i would say quite a lot | ||
82 | CJM | What kind of Movies do you like? What is your All-time favourite Movie/Director? Are you inspired by any Movies? | Sean | kubrick, lynch, tarkovsky yeah mostly dystopian 70s sf, nothing too obscure just stuff we saw on bbc2 as kids in the early 80s we're not librarians really but we did tend to soak that stuff up as kids | ||
83 | bread | overall, what is your most listened to album that you have produced - the one you have kept going back to the most, and why? | Sean | no idea, i don't keep track really right now i like chiastic but it might just be flavour of the month or something | ||
84 | vamos scorcho | Inspiration? Any possible ways other than drugs to encourage the positive, adventurous, purely inspired state of mind. | Sean | no idea it's not something i ever had to work on i dunno about inspiration, i mean i tend to find it when i'm in the middle of something, so i guess just 'get stuck in and see what occurs to you | ||
85 | salvaKPO | I am curious about the sound in We R Are Why and Gantz Graf. At which released Autechre era do they belong to? Are they mutant? By era I mean LP release periods. | Sean | we r are why were the first two tracks we did on the ry30 they're both entirely done in the ry30 - with a bit of fx on the diff channels maybe, can't rem gantz graf was done before ep7 was released but it was too distinct so we held it back, then it occurred to us to get alex to do a vid for it cos he'd already sent us some test vids so it got held back even longer | ||
86 | YELLOW | how many North Face jackets between the two of you? | Sean | i don't own any and prob never will (i'm not the right shape) i think rob might have about 40 or 50 of them though :D | ||
87 | LimpyLoo | Do you guys see a parallel between what you do and what classical composers or jazz musicians do? Do you like any of that stuff? | Sean | yeah sometimes i hear jazz and i like it a lot but i'm not digging into it or anything like - phil washington (cygnus) sent me this album called yellow fields by eberhard weber which i reckon is amazing, silky smooth strings, but when i tried to follow it up by going thru other things he did or other ECM things none were as good. it tends to be a really occasional thing, where the sonics are just right or something. classical, same thing really, it depends on how it was recorded a lot for me. like, i like shostakovich chamber works but only when the strings sound really grey, somehow that sounds like i imagine he wanted it to. i might be way off there tbh i know so little about him really | ||
88 | Terpentintollwut | Even though I love Exai and your recent stuff (except Oversteps, that one totally misses me), one of my fav track of yours is Tazmx - I never really see this one get mentioned anywhere, but it's just such an honest, nice and atmospheric little piece. Do you have like an archive of some other old drafts or out-takes that you're not embarrassed about and might release some day? | Sean | warp actually own every sound we make (true story) but yeah maybe some retro thing might happen one day. i dunno cos like, stuff like that never sounds as good to me as it apparently does to you lot i do like how fsol keep doing those archives albums totally under the radar tho, they released like 10 albums without anyone noticing. i keep buying them as well | ||
89 | mcbpete | With the rise in prevalence in the 'alternative'/indie videogame scene, are there any games that you're interested in? I'm thinking of games like Memory of a Broken Dimension and Fract | Sean | they both look totally wicked and no, i know nothing about them | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxvrRXoUjJA | |
90 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3k6n5_KYDo | |||||
91 | wabby | Is improvised jazz a point of reference for the way you approach your live sets? | Sean | nah, i mean our main inspiration was ppl like 808 state doing live acid tracks, and mantronik before that (he was using a studio 440 or an sp12 on stage) we just thought that was how you did it, just plug the gear in and see what comes out rather than playing a song, we thought it would be more fun to store a ton of patterns and then manipulate the gear to create the arrangement on the spot we weren't interested in jazz at all, more the idea of being able to do what a dj does but a lot more deeply | ||
92 | Rob | 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. | ||||
93 | cult fiction | Grant Wilson Claridge has said he doesn't think Aphex will release any more records, because he has given out enough of his music already. What motivates you guys to keep releasing? | Sean | that interview with grant is weird, it's like he genuinely doesn't understand why people release music maybe someone fucked up his brain | ||
94 | phling | when you say you make sequencers/synths, what's your preferred way of development? do you prefer clicking boxes in max or juggling your RAM in C? | Sean | i was getting quite into c a couple of years ago and then gen came out so i dropped it i way prefer using max to coding | ||
95 | poblequadrat | In music and generally in anything that is designed, what do you think about technique, both by itself and when compared to theory (meaning any sort of reflection on technique), and what do you think about the way advances in electronic music are organised nowadays, where developments in both technique and theory seem to be something private, a particular musician's chops, or something tied to a very particular scene or genre? What do you think about facelessness in techno in respect to this? | Sean | well theory is a bit stifling in some ways cos it gets in the way of nuanced development by forcing people to quickly apply categories to things and it can blind people to aspects of what they're being presented with, ironing out subtle differences or even preventing people learning their own techniques facelessness was more about people not wanting to be famous, because connotations | ||
96 | verticalhold | I would like you to tell me how you feel about "see on see" | Sean | surprised | ||
97 | Rulohead32 | Yes, any curiosities about that song? It's one of my favourites all-time. | Sean | just a lucky combination of parameters | ||
98 | cygnus | i was talking to this friend the other night and he told me that when u hold yr finger up and move it from one point to the next its not really like pushing space out of the way or occupying new space but its more like pixels where your fingers disappearing and reappearing very quickly in the interim of that movement . (like thats what it would look like if u were to view the smallest individual things in the finger, u feel me) so first of all was he telling me the truth and if he is and thats the way the universe works then what can be said about things like biological systems that function on this macroscopic scale where things obey different rules ? what is the cause-determinant of the macroscopic thing and is this what they mean they say the universe is fine tuned? what is the fine tuner ? | Sean | bluefin | ||
99 | YELLOW | 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!" | Sean | 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 | ||
100 | feltcher | 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. | Sean | 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) | ||