| 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) | ||
101 | verticalhold | Who does the descending bass lines? | Sean | which ones? both of us do that | ||
102 | cult fiction | 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? | Sean | it usually gets a descriptive filename and goes in the 'current' folder | ||
103 | 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? | Sean | 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 | |||
104 | mcbpete | Was there anything more distressing for a child in the UK growing up in the 80s than Threads? | Sean | prob not tbh i mean that and being repeatedly told while in primary school that we would prob never be able to get jobs | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MCbTvoNrAg | |
105 | salvaKPO | How was to use Mac/ PC Supercollider or Max/ MSP for sound processing back then? Were there any major annoyances like lots of and catastrophic crashes? How was the audio latency? Did you record stuff played in real-time or you had to render that in a sound file? What sound quality you could get the most in real-time? | Sean | we would never use sc live back then cos it could only really handle doing one thing at once on a laptop, apart from boring things like sound file playback etc. it was good for realtime fft tho, and a few other things so u could load up a patch and do like 2 min of stuff with it, but you couldn't realistically do a full set unless your work was really boring we got into max originally to make midi sequencers and so the first few years using it were crash free, but then we started making really simple synths in there so we could run the same midi patches without hardware and that was when it started crashing (just cos of poor/naive design really) | ||
106 | wabby | Have you guys noticed how the first tracks on several of your albums (probably all) sound like boats, ships, seas, water, pirates, wooden decks, sailing and basically evoking an overall nautical theme of adventure on the high seas? A classic example of this being Xylin Room? | Sean | oh that's interesting we also have a background in pirate radio | ||
107 | Kavinsky | Will there be any project with Cunningham again? | Sean | yeah we'd love to work with chris again at some point, and alex both of them are visionary geniuses imo | ||
108 | and do you guys like my interpretation of Eutow ? | Sean | 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 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMguyAZgQcE | ||
109 | mcbpete | Is Gen~ as useful as cycling 74 make out ? | Sean | i dunno what they make out it's prob more useful than reaktor core (i will prob get flamed to fuck now for saying that) | ||
110 | chassis | Whats your favourite album, of your own and of someone else's work. | Sean | i find these kind of Qs impossible depends on context and timing | ||
111 | jasondonervan | 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? | Sean | 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 | ||
112 | DorkingtonPugsly | Do you guys plan to or want to work with Alex Rutterford again? | Sean | 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 | ||
113 | Franciscus | Sean, do you have pets? like a cat that just lies there when you're making sounds? cats are awesome pets | Sean | i used to have a cat not presently but i reckon i will again in the future yeah cats are mental, really | ||
114 | poblequadrat | 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? | Sean | 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) | ||
115 | funkaholic | I understand where you're coming from in regard to architects and designers (i'm a graphic design and my brother is a architect but we do not try to remove our selves from the politics of our work, that in its self is a political statement anyway.) forgot where i was going with this, anyway, do you like the work of architect peter zumthor or graphic designer karel martens? two people i adore both of you obviously know how to use synths and music programs very well, i find some people dismiss music if it doesn't show a certain level of technical know how which gets on my nerves because early wiley (i think he now has a good technical undestanding) or tracks like more fire crews 'oi' i love as much as autechre tracks. i doubt you do this. this is a statement not a Q, currently filling out a application form for a job, needed a break. | Sean | oi is unreal imo still sounds futuristic to me now, prob still will in another 20 years | ||
116 | feltcher | 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. | Sean | 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) | ||
117 | LimpyLoo | 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? | Sean | 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) | ||
118 | Rulohead32 | Serious question: the L-event EP were outtakes from Exai, or same-level songs that you wanted to release separately? Because, totally in my opinion, I find them a bit not so good to be on Exai. I mean, Exai songs have something L-event songs don't have, I repeat, In my opinion. | Sean | the tracks are from the same sessions but they got separated out when we compiled exai basically it was all compiled as a series of 12" records, and l-event was the one that didn't fit, so that became a separate entity it was originally going to come out before exai but warp flipped the release order having said that we see l-event as interchangeable with any of the 12"s in exai (which we see as a box of four 12"s) | ||
119 | hello spiral | What was it like to be making the beatless and more drone-oriented stuff for the Hafler Trio collab? You were saying earlier that you'd have a hard time making more 'academic, rigid' music without beats or flexibility but some would view those recordings as that. Also, are you pleased with the end result? Seeing as, on here at least, quite a few people were a bit wtf over them. I love them btw. | Sean | well we approached it as though we were temporary members of the hafler trio, formally deferential to andrew if we had put beats over it that would have made it more boring for us working with him on that gave us the opportunity to explore some of his territory without plagiarising him too much (while simultaneously plagiarising him too much) he's a brilliant man inb4 awepittance says something petty | ||
120 | LimpyLoo | Do you guys ever name your gear? p.s. can you please please name my MPC4000 for me? | Sean | your mpc is now called 'derek' | ||
121 | 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 | well i mean, obvious people, entry level - wiley, preditah, footsie, ruff sqwad, trim, dot rotten, jme, wonder tbh it's not a genre we checked a lot, not being in london etc | ||
122 | Ivan Ooze | were some of the tracks on exai influenced by heavy sub/bass music? | Sean | probably i was listening to tons of hessle and hemlock etc in 2010 | ||
123 | 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)? | Sean | 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 | ||
124 | 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? | Sean | 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 | ||
125 | lumpenprol | have you ever tried your hand at rapping over your tracks? | Sean | you really don't want a detailed answer to that q | ||
126 | feltcher | Have you ever released music under a pseudonym that we do not know about? | Sean | probably | ||
127 | dr lopez | 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. | Sean | 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 | ||
128 | noise | do you know who killed Phobs? | Sean | i haven't been there for so long now how is it still online? | ||
129 | Boxus | 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? | Sean | yeah max - and gen now as well is ace for anything feedback related loads of my reverbs end up sounding nothing like a reverb, but that's why i got into it, cos there's all that grey area as you say, tbh that's one of the most enduring things for me, all the overlaps between physmod and reverbs was using kyma for it a decade ago, well worth a try if you can get your hands on a capybara cheaply | ||
130 | 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? | Sean | yeah def the water as well, the way the air smells all that grey | ||
131 | chartnok | are you playing any video games or old video games? | Sean | lately just dodonpachi on my phone | ||
132 | jasondonervan | Do you play/prefer Resurrection or MAXIMUM? Resurrection is great, but MAX has that cool minimal graphics vibe going on (if you can even use the word 'minimal' while describing a CAVE shooter!) | Sean | not tried max, i'm playing R will check it, sounds good | In response to Sean | |
133 | 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! | Sean | i still wish krs had joined ultras yeah i mean thing is i rate ced gee so highly, i would feel a bit weird probably but i would love to work with keith, and krs if he would stop fucking shouting | ||
134 | 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? | Sean | it's more that categorical description generalises the past into oblivion, and people even manage to fuck up teaching that properly, and i reckon we stand a better chance just picking gear up and fucking about but it's not necessarily pointless, just depends on what you're actually trying to achieve, why, who for etc it's mostly generated. like 95% still using occasional samples but it's just nature telling us who's boss | ||
135 | 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) | Sean | we don't really chart progress by album, it doesn't really work like that from our point of view there's lots of stuff going on besides what ends up on the albums, and things aren't always released in sequence but i can think of millions of tiny little realisations, i have several a day usually hard to know which are the important ones | ||
136 | Ivan Ooze | is the sample in deco loc david bowie? (i'm too hi) | Sean | nah i keep waiting for someone to get one of them but no one has yet there are 2 main ones | ||
137 | kieselguhr kid | ^ "Being Boiled" by Human League? read that somewhere in a review... | Sean | nah | ||
138 | SR4 | do you or did you have recurring problems with acne? what were those experiences like? | Sean | i didn't | ||
139 | Claudius t Ansuulim | Any plans to release another AV DVD? | Sean | not plans but yeah would be cool in principle | ||
140 | SR4 | what is your favorite food? | Sean | i don't deal with these favourites Qs very well but probably unagi | ||
141 | Lesley | I've always had ideas for music in my head but never tried to make any tracks, what are one or two things I would need to start making tracks? Even just one thing or program. | Sean | ableton is quick to learn if you want to do looping stuff logic is better for more complex arrangements, also quick to learn or any daw to be honest they all steal each others' features eventually | ||
142 | feltcher | 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. | Rob | iirc bloc was quite early on in that particular set, i remember not being able to hear the system properly, and the gig ended up a bit more ad hoc. Some venues have impeccable sound system and we get full confidence in what we hear is what you get, so it tends to fully kick off at those shows, domino was one of them, bloc turned out well under the circumstances tho. | ||
143 | Sean | oh yeah that bloc gig was terrible some people think that if you just fill a room with f1 that it will sound good, that was one of those times altho tbh we never really sound very good on f1 but that was horrible. there wasn't a lot we could do with it | ||||
144 | ivan Ooze | is it ok to play home made video's with an autechre track | Sean | yes this is allowed | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjFGElBNPM | |
145 | SR4 | are you fans of Law and Order? Do you find SVU to be the superior show? | Sean | yeah my gf watches both, def prefer svu cos the dilemmas are way more weird | ||
146 | lumpenprol | Sean, do you remember answering "Watmm? What's Watmm?" to an interview back in 2008? Guess you've been dipping in a bit since then | Sean | i was trying to be polite yeah i mean, i come here, not as much if we don't have anything out but around release everyone does it, they're all in here | ||
147 | SR4 | have you ever met Gaz and Brian of FSOL? Are they really pompous, or just insane? | Sean | actually yeah in 88 i was in salford college and brian was there, i would see gaz but like, down the corridor waiting impatiently a guy on my course booked them to play at the riverside in hyde as stakker, and there were tapes going round college as well, they were college celebs for a brief time i left college to buy gear after that, partly cos of their stuff being so good and him making it at home (rather than in the college studio) they were key to us even existing, looking back if they hadn't been there i would prob be an engineer in some studio by now | ||
148 | wabby | Do you consider it a challenge that while you are working on a track, you have to be listening to it a lot? Or do you ever create without listening? Do you have any methods to avoid prematurely tiring your ears of a track and getting into situation where you can't see the forest for the trees? Is it enough to simply step away from the studio and go do something else, or is that the point at which you pull the oblique strategy cards out of your sleeves? Do you ever obliterate tracks to see what will happen (or is this an irrelevant analogy in an organic system of bifurcating iterations)? | Sean | just leave the room, do something else for 10 mins, go back in the room yeah sometimes, completely destroy it, save as | ||
149 | Rob | Haha you said oblique strategy | ||||
150 | kirm | Are you listening to any Music while you type your answers? If so what? (Or are you watching the X factor like I am right now!) | Rob | Bullion crazy for u is on right now Following your love frankie knuckles | ||
151 | Sean | i'm testing my theory and listening to acid eiffel it's good, it's doing it | ||||
152 | gmanyo | Are you going to retire these accounts after this thread and go back to being Troon and LUDD, or do you plan on posting occasionally under these aliases? | Sean | paranoid much? | ||
153 | Drix | Do you ever feel that you have locked yourself in a musical style, even though you invented this style yourself? I guess your fans expect your music to sound a certain way, so is this ever an issue or do you simply just make whatever you like and that's the music we get? | Sean | yeah we just do what we like, we just ended up here by moving point to point, occasionally hopping branches we didn't even make a style, it just seems that way from over there | ||
154 | cult fiction | What is my 2 week old baby thinking when he's listening to fleure? | Rob | Like this mov, my firstborn was the same at quaristice dev | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re2HnTMd2lw | |
155 | Sean | yeah it's ace i wonder how much more synaesthetic babies are are his eyes even fully working? | ||||
156 | Panoptic Sweep | 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? | Sean | they might have, it's hard to tell from here as far as impact is concerned, if anyone wants to adapt it that's cool, that's what it's all about i don't think of our sound as being that singular, i just see a web of connections and us linked to a few of them, in the way all other music does the same thing (only maybe people take it more for granted with things like genre music) | ||
157 | logakght | what do you think of OPN new album (R+7)? | Sean | brilliant, weird as fuck like he folded vaporwave inside out context got obliterated, music just got handed a ton of new parameters | ||
158 | Drix | 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? | Sean | not sounds so much as whole tracks usually after some drugs trying to get to sleep i will get whole full morphing tracks going on, but i can never remember specifics, like dreams i dunno about recreating | ||
159 | Rob | Yeah me too, esp. falling asleep threshold, the morphing unfolding instant music thing. | ||||
160 | poblequadrat | 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... | Sean | yeah the 4-op model lends itself well to some kinds of modelling and i think its cos of the number of surfaces and their diff harmonics roughly correlating with a physical object structure i dunno i just try to make things that appeal to me stylistically, a bit like sketching out some graffiti (i never tried any other kind of design or drawing much, i got pretty into messing with letters, maybe the rules of form appealed to me) music is a bit like that, at least the kind of music i like that has usually some sense of movement in space to it, it's usually fairly restricted structurally and i like flexing the structures but not quite breaking them, it creates a kind of tension | ||
161 | SR4 | do you look forward to the day when Benn Jordan makes Diet Coke versions of your music? | Sean | as long as he does the beats on his guitar i don't care | ||
162 | 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. | Sean | not really but i don't mind spending ages fiddling with something to make it good, that's how i learn stuff | ||
163 | Hoodie | 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)? | Sean | i'm not really but i like that record for not being squarely in any genre - and still being highly functional and stylish | ||
164 | Ivan Ooze | how much did it cost 2 get the vocalist of uterus on Osla for n | Sean | toplel | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNjTOPfo-oE | |
165 | feltcher | 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 | Sean | i like his stuff, nice aesthetic usually | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgmidfpw-Ac | |
166 | cygnus | do u think that a scene/concert/event being mostly full of dudes has an effect on the longevity of the 'scene' or whatever? | Sean | it prob makes it last longer | https://scontent-a-lga.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash2/285643_10151048340501090_1301690991_n.jpg | |
167 | unteleportedman | is this how you envision yourselves creating music? | Sean | yes | ||
168 | mizuki | "naivete" versus "maturity, straight reasoning" regarding production ? i think the more you grow accustomed with production techniques, the more you lose a kind of simple approach to making music, which can lead to boring or overly intellectual music. is it important for you, whats your opinion ? if yes, how do you preserve an unsophisticated playfulnes? | Sean | keep moving out of your comfort zone soon as you feel like something is easy, change things to taste follow taste where it leads you | ||
169 | LimpyLoo | You talk about seeing normal things from different angles...can you site an example of this? I'm really curious what this means to you exactly... p.s. thanks so much for naming my MPC! Can you name my sh101 too? (It's grey, of course...) | Sean | say you're listening to a 303 and it might be part of an acid track but for like 20 seconds it sounds like a perspex sheet being hit with a spoon your 101 is now called maca | ||
170 | unteleportedman | if you had a "Magic 8-Ball" right now, what question would you ask it, and why? | Sean | wtf are orbs? | ||
171 | Salvatorin | Sean do you like Flep the dolphin? is it 'mental' ? | Sean | yeah flip is correct in more or less every way, a masterpiece of shared modal processing | http://24.media.tumblr.com/da7df2f42bf2889e74b174a13c699347/tumblr_mkt0ifMqyE1rhj4ggo1_r2_250.gif | |
172 | Salvatorin | did you guys ever see this: | Sean | a fine example of quality journalism | http://25.media.tumblr.com/44d2fa5291518e30ff9df7eede0f1a84/tumblr_mh3d9i02X51rhj4ggo1_1280.png | |
173 | triachus | It has come to my attention that the beginning of Rsdio sounds very familiar to the percussion in this Merzbow track from Ecobondage, somewhere between 1:47 and 2:55. I asked on this forum if you guys sampled the Merzbow track, but the response was lukewarm, lots of doubters. I even went to whosampled.com and they rejected it. If it's not from Ecobondage, then it's from another Merzbow track called Enclosure (from Enclosure / Libido Economy, Merzbow CD24) , which has similair percussion at some point My question, so that it is made clear once and for all: Did you guys sample Merzbow's Ecobondage for Rsdio? | Sean | no it's a tiny click going thru a Boss RSD10, i only heard that when we got asked to remix him. pretty similar sound though | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzZvG5LWQ2k | |
174 | YELLOW | Are there any upcoming gescom plans? | Sean | nothing concrete, few things that might happen | ||
175 | logakght | what do you think of fl studio | Sean | never used it kouhei uses it i think, his stuff's wicked | ||
176 | OneToThirtySix | What is one track, by any artist at any era, that you listen to and enjoy every time? | Sean | acid eiffel by choice | ||
177 | Rob | LFO vs FUSE : loop - journey mix | ||||
178 | Terpentintollwut | Here's something that's more of personal interest to me, but I'll ask anyway - How did you get in touch with the directors for your videos back in the day? Did you know them before, or did Warp suggest some to you, ... ? There haven't been any official ae-videos lately, and I don't know whether there are any plans for the future, but I'm wondering whether you ever look at "submissions" of wannabe- or low-profile-directors and such? Let's say, I have a showreel or something, send that to Warp or directly to you - would you even consider working with someone you haven't met or is it a waste of time? I'm not thinking of anything in particular right now, I don't have anything, but your music is quite "visual" for me and I like to do music videos (ones that aren't just After Effects plug-ins..), so I'm thinking it'd be pretty neat to make one some day - Just a thought for the future. If not, just tell me to fuck off now, I can take it. | Sean | chris was introduced to me by caroline, who is mates with chantal, in a club in london in 94. alex lived with chris at the time. yeah pm me | ||
179 | M360 | Are there any artists who have works which came after yours but are similar in style/build to yours that you enjoy/admire/are flattered by? | Sean | tbh the way we chuck things about we overlap with a fuckload of things and it's hard to unravel where people got things from, often it's nothing to do with us like someone like slugabed, when i first heard that i really got it but i could tell none of it had come from us, cos the references were pretty clear. with some things you can't tell at all. even more mushy cos things that we used to do that required weird combinations of gear are now possible using one bit of software or kit, so hearing it on a record isn't so weird, they don't need to have heard of us | ||
180 | kieselguhr kid | last two times you played berlin at berghain had absolutely terrible sound unfortunately... you could virtually hear nothing but the bass, really annoying crowd there too. and way too much light. that's not a question though - so: maybe next time you come around you could choose another venue pls? | Sean | yeah ok | ||
181 | Bertolt Brechtakt | Yeah, they actually have a pretty neat sound system. But they just push everything to the limits so it's all over the place. And moreover, the audience is not there for the artists but for being at Berghain. Just a trendy (even if cool), tourist location. Quite a pity because the venue itself is great. | Rob | When we arrived there were like four F1 towers in the front corners but the other two were in rear corners if u could draw an imaginary rectangle halfway into the length of the huge tall glass faceted room, pointing in at phase nightmare angles, it came across as far from ideal. But i like playing berlin so, well yeah. | ||
182 | Ceqn | If you had to pick one, what is your favorite Max/MSP object? What were a few barriers, or failures you two had to break through in Max/MSP before you could really start flowing with music creation? Do you use RME converters? Your rhythms in your last few albums have been entrancing to me because of how natural they sound. Do you program your sequences in a gridless format, with a lot of steps (64, 128, etc) or are you doing long jams with velocity sensitive pads to keep yourselves interested? | Sean | zl it happened really quickly cos i was coming from being really into logic's environment window, so i was making tracks within a couple of weeks yes we do most of the rhythm is generated, there is no grid as such but we use grid type divisions to do some things | ||
183 | th555 | What's the best scifi movie you've ever seen? | Sean | Alien | ||
184 | Bread | Sorry to push the question Sean but would you and rob consider putting out the Quaristice live set for download? Or a purchase release? | Sean | i don't think we recorded any | ||
185 | AdieuErsatzEnnui | Do you often revisit your old tracks? if so, do you tend to revisit unreleased material or certain released work more? Are there any tracks of yours or periods of work that immediately remind you of some important moment in your life? If so, do you care to share it with us? | Sean | both, it depends yeah loads | ||
186 | lumines | How many unreleased tracks do you have? | Sean | depends on what you mean by tracks actual finished tracks - just a few hundred, but got tons of jams that need an edit done about 350 hours of jams since april this year | ||
187 | baph | Sean, was that your previously-mentioned cat at the end of Tewe? And this is probably way off the mark (sorry, I know nothing about production): was there any conscious decision to sort of explore and widen the stereo/imaging aspect of the music on Exai/L-Event? Seems like a lot of older Ae output had a very effective use of, like, a predominant mono backbone with interesting stereo events fleshing things out a bit spatially on occasion, whereas Exai has this massive sense of exploration all around the stereofield. Some really cool psychoacoustic stuff going on. | Sean | yeah that's winterbottom, first cat i lived with, he was ace yeah i'm getting more into having two speakers again. we used to do it more early on as well but more crudely | ||
188 | mcbpete | there are multiple tracks in LP5 that are almost entirely in mono - was this a conscious decision to concentrate on harmonic and rhythmical content rather than spatial imaging ? | Sean | yeah exactly, across a different dimension | ||
189 | Jev | Do you spend a lot of time choosing and crafting reverbs for your tracks? Or is it something that you make intuitively - not thinking too much? I am asking because many of your tracks like Xylin Room or Tilapia sounds fairly dry on the first listening but yet they have very distinct vibe and depth as if some super-gentle reverbs and delays were used to craft the space as there are no obvious echoes and reverb tails. Xylin Room sounds claustrophobic yet very 3D but the mix is almost mono. Tilapia sounds very spacious, some sounds are distant but again it has this vacuum feel into it. I simply absolutely love it (not even mentioning the incredible compostion). This question unanswered seriously affects my sleeping everytime I mix some "to be dry" track but if some "secret" techniques are involved I will respectfully and diligently continue trying to achieve it by myself :-) | Sean | tbh a lot of that on draft was done with amp envelopes, but there are some really light touches of quadraverb and lexicon on select parts as well, usually with some feedback matrixing thru quite brutal eq and really quiet in the mix we were also doing stuff like making 2 melodies with slightly different notes or in a different order and then sending the muted one to the reverb and mixing the reverb quite low so you almost can't tell | ||
190 | Ivan Ooze | after 20 years of insane music crafting, is this the best videoclip for newbound? | Sean | i love that one flash where she's looking to the left | https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/50830178/aedance.gif | |
191 | mcbpete | Is this really one of your patches or is it someone just aping your methods ? | Sean | it's been modified a fair bit tbh the original was pretty messy though, nothing was encapsulated cos i kept rewiring bits | http://www.ilovecubus.co.uk/pete/powmod.png | |
192 | DorkingtonPugsly | What are your favorite kinds of tea? (Mine are Japanese Green Tea and Lapsang souchong <- now that I think about it that looks like a track title lol) Do you guys like Autumn? Is there a dog barking in IV VV IV VV VIII? Why is Theme of Sudden Roundabout so catchy and also why is the melody so fucking weird? Any cool tips or things I can do in Logic? Been using it for many years but was wondering if you guys have found some weird stuff that can be done within it. Your guys' favorite fruit? Will you name my Machinedrum and Axiom 61 keyboard? (Jealous of Limpy :< ) | Sean | genmaicha yeah loads no dunno, dunno logic still has the event list from creator, which we used to cane and the environment window is really useful for doing odd things with midi strawberries, not really cos they taste the best just cos it does my head in that it is a natural flavour it's so much like a man made thing, like a sweet or something | ||
193 | triachus | There's a thread on this forum somewhere titled "Is autechre relevant anymore?" And all I want to know about that is.... Have you guys ever read my Autechre's Relevant Career Text Adventure? | Sean | yeah i kind of wish this was real and i don't at the same time | http://forum.watmm.com/topic/79436-is-autechre-relevant-anymore/page-6#entry2067678 | |
194 | Herr Jan | Sean, in reply to your comment about Grant / Rephlex, what do you make of Rephlex' recent output and the strategy behind it (or: do you like or follow any of the recent Rephlex artists/releases)? How secretive does a label/artist need to get to let it be just about the music? Is there a point behind it that you can identify with on the theme of it being ´just about the music´ and how do you act on that idea (for example, around Exai and L-Event there was only 1 or maybe 2 interview, a lot less then with previous releases I think?) And because you put a Necrophagist track years ago in a mix: black metal or death metal? Any faves? What do you prefer about it, the complexity, atmosphere/feel or melodic side of metal? | Sean | ah man it's like just let people present things the way they feel comfortable rich was always hiding behind tables and things we didn't want to discuss exai on release at all we wanted to see what people could figure out 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 | ||
195 | phling | how do you feel about people excessively dancing to your music, and girls in particular, seeing as this seems to be one of the rare documented occasions? also, how would a modern ae dance track sound like? | Sean | but we are making dance music | ||
196 | korona15 | I'm curious, have you heard boc's early works like acid memories, hooper bay & play by numbers? I read somewhere once, that soon after you first listened to 'twoism', you contacted them, which eventually led to them recording 'hi scores' for skam. so I thought maybe you've heard some of their earlier recordings. If you have heard them, what did you think? | Sean | nah i just got old tunes vols one and two and box maxima later brilliant tho, still cane them | ||
197 | rekosn | wanted to ask about Metroid Prime. where you involved in it? also does the "Autechre" track still exists? will it ever see the light of day? | Sean | sorry we signed an NDA | ||
198 | Herr Jan | Sean or rob, are you aware of a radio broadcast in the Netherlands back in 2008 where your music was played for 30 minutes (listeners have a chance of 'reserving' 30 minutes to show and tell their fave music) which pissed off the host beyond belief? He only allowed it because it was the basic rule of the whole program, but he was really bummed out by it and said that this would lose a lot of his listeners. Also, they continuously tried to pronounce AE track names and he literally warned listeners about how long the tracks would last before playing them. | Sean | that sounds ace is there a recording? | ||
199 | wabby | If the are Elements Of Hip Hop are: 1. Bboying 2. MCing 3. Graffiti 4. DJing 5. Knowledge, Culture and Overstanding What are the elements of IDM? | Sean | ask someone who makes idm | ||
200 | catchpazuzu | Do you think that in a distant future electronic music will eventually replace all human-acoustic-instrumental music? Do you think that computers will ever replace hardware completely? And, in that distant future, would you consider yourselves to be "early" pioneers of the genre, or be regarded as one of them? | Sean | computers are hardware, just highly configurable nah we're not pioneers of anything, we're just using stuff that's around us | ||
201 | Zeffolia | Do you guys like Osla for n alot? I don't understand how it fits into L-event at all | Sean | it's like when there's a word in a sentence that you don't recognise | ||
202 | ambermonk | Correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand you guys toured in Japan back in '05. What were some of your favourite things about being in Japan in general? (like the local food, the shops, etc) I'm curious cos I used to live in the north (Hokkaido). | Sean | we're never there long enough to get familiar with it i think tbh that's what i like, how weirdly impregnable it is like an impossible game that and the shape of everything | ||
203 | Ivan Ooze | talking about deco loc is the percusion a sample of wood or did you make out of bits and bites? i'm sorry i have no idea about production | Sean | yeah it's wood and rubber | ||
204 | rd1994 | eletronic musicians tend to be quite anonymous but have you ever thought incorporating fans in to the creative process may it be creating beats or just something as simple as a cover art? oh btw. would you consider your music accidental? | Sean | technically everything is accidental yeah we do that already via feedback loops like this | ||
205 | Schlitze | Sean will u use MAX again? | Sean | the majority of oversteps and exai tracks were done using max | ||
206 | LimpyLoo | Can you name my Boss SP-303 sampler? | Sean | your sp-303 is now called agnetha | ||
207 | rd1994 | having the internet around nowadays people either make autechre influenced tracks, make autechre music videos or even spend some time analysing your music and doing some type of essay do you feel flattered by that or does it make you feel uncomfortable? | Sean | neither | ||
208 | paranerd | Do you guys mix in quad or 5.1? I have to assume that playing around with the textures and sounds you guys produce must lend itself to 5.1 mixing. It seems to be made for it at times. And of course it would be great to have Autechre 5.1 mixes as well as LtRt's in the future sometime. | Sean | not yet but maybe in the future for something, depends | ||
209 | rd1994 | did you ever regret making a track? if so which one? would you change them if you could? | Sean | i made some shit ones but i don't regret making them cos i learned how not to make shit tracks by doing them | ||
210 | vincentvc | so you like the venue to be dark, but what about over-the-top visuals like Amon Tobin's ISAM? (did you see it?) do you think something similar would work for an autechre set? i mean obviously the identity of the space is still there, but the crowd gets really focused on an object etc that's in front of them - so in that sense it gets removed..right? | Sean | it's not just about removing identity it's about occupying the space with sound it's something that used to happen in really dark clubs and warehouses, the sound became more physical and tangible, it works my synaesthesia more what i like about sound is how it surrounds you, you are inside it even if it's coming out of one speaker visual things can't really do that yet oh not to mention the cheesiness of using projection mapping, it's like a corporate presentation or something | ||
211 | rd1994 | do you like germany? would you do some kind of tour here? | Sean | yeah a lot, yeah we will | ||
212 | Maxwell | Do you go through a whole bunch of ideas/sounds/doodles before finding one worth polishing? How to you keep that "momentum" for a track going when you have to save it and come back to it the following days? Do you run into dry spells... times when you have all kinds of creative energy and drive but are unable to make anything decent? | Sean | i tend to get into building something, usually when i'm doing that i'll notice something weird along the way and go off on some tangent exploring it, follow that trail where it leads | ||
213 | phling | you said you're not using elektron kit anymore... would you be interested in having a look at that software i'm doing nonetheless? | Sean | i can't run it tho cos my elektrons are on loan atm | ||
214 | rd1994 | anyone you still want to collaborate with or remix? | Sean | yeah, DM | DM = Depeche Mode (Confirmed by Sean later on) | |
215 | YELLOW | Has Ae done any recent remixes? Anything that will see a release? | Sean | yeah, oberman knocks, out sometime soonish | ||
216 | rd1994 | was the way of doing flutter a one-off experiment or ever thought of doing something like that again? Also, would you mind and sharing a bit o the process with flutter IT IS a complicated track to begin with...we DO know what its purpose was...still...nothing more | Sean | it's just a roland r8 doing the patterns and drum sounds, quadraverb doing the delay and reverb, sampler on melodic duties, all written on pads | ||
217 | AdieuErsatzEnnui | of what gear does your home listening environment consist? Have you put a lot of time and effort into creating an optimal listening area? | Sean | nah i listen to stuff all over the place but in the studio i'm still using dynaudio bm-15a's, set up pretty nicely but not too bothered about reflections, loads of gear in here | ||
218 | Zeffolia | did rdj really go into your studio and take your sample tapes and mix them up or something and you got mad lol | Sean | sounds like chinese whispers | ||
219 | modey | Can you shed some light on the composition process for Oversteps? It almost seems as though the main melodies/chord progressions were composed traditionally with a generative process used to add flourishes to the existing melodic content—is there any truth behind this? It's also quite a strange album in your discography since it doesn't seem to share a similarity to anything before or after (besides Move of Ten, but I consider that and Oversteps to be a package deal); are there any plans to re-visit this sound or build upon it? | Sean | most of it's markov chain stuff done in max, with conditionals forcing scales and harmonies we still have those sequencers but we developed them a fair amount since, they're not as trad as they were then | ||
220 | gmanyo | I heard a friend say that 10ish years ago you played at a venue called the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio. Will any shows in or near Columbus happen again? Every cool electronic act seems to be going towards Europe these days, and I can never get a chance to see them. Related but not entirely: do you ever do house shows, and have you considered doing more? | Rob | Columbus wexner centre was a life saver show, great acoustic treated black cube, and their tech guy repaired our 1210s We would probably return :) | ||
221 | Sean | yeah that room was insanely correct for our sound on that tour | ||||
222 | Papillon | How does it feel knowing that your music is being played by people/fans all over the world in so many different scenarios/settings? I remember hearing your music being played on a ghetto blaster by some woman. I was riding the Sakura Jima ferry to attend a wedding that was being hosted on the island. It was 35 degrees and I was sweating my ass of in my suit, all of a sudden I hear this insanely loud music coming from the other end of the deck, and I realized it was one of your tracks. It was so inappropriately loud and awesome at the same time. This smoking hot girl was playing your music and she didn't give a fuck what anything thought about it. It was an unforgettable moment. I realized how cool it must be to make music with that kind of reach or impact on people. | Rob | Great tale, it seems like it was worth it after all, just for that one hot girl with a ghetto blaster to play ae - which track? | ||
223 | pigster | you mentioned earlier that you still sometimes listen to your earlier albums. and i'm wondering if your perception of your own music changes much after the album has been released. or if being involved in the creative process has more or less set in stone what the songs sound like to you? | Rob | Even though we may have reached saturation of a track and know it sooo well before its released i do hear new things later, mostly cos i think as we change, our perception of what we hear develops too, also due to association perhaps. Some contexts alter how the sound feels too. | ||
224 | Zephyr_Nova | Are you big into Scrabble? If so, what was your highest scoring bingo? What should I listen to on my way to the studio this Tuesday afternoon? | Rob | Its been a long time since a scrabble, What method of transport are u planning to use? | ||
225 | rd1994 | do you think about emotions when making tracks? becuase I played VLETmx for a friend of mine and he found it so emotional that he literally broke down and cried | Rob | Crumbs! Yeah some track, actually many are (hard to explain really but...) expected to have some effect, i mean personally i feel emotion in our tracks and i hope others do too, but its pointless to try to predict exactly what or how it will affect ppl if we dont really know the person well. Or at all. | ||
226 | M360 | Do either of you consider Gescom - ISS-SA a part of the Ae discography? (I ask because I separate my albums by artist) Als0 u may haev the hono(u)r of naming my kalimba andor Akai HR-16 (his current name is Dusty) | Rob | Gescom = Gescom , HR-16 , I name thee Glossmore | ||
227 | uelogy | I was wondering if you have a piece of hardware (instrument/effect, not computer) which you rely on and use frequently as a 'go to', due to the character/magic it brings. | Rob | If were disregarding any computers here just for this Q, i would give the mpc1000 a good excercise with its JJOS now n then. Our RS integrator is a worthy distraction too. DMX has always been there for me too. | ||
228 | rd1994 | have you ever thought of doing an aduio/visual collab like you do the tracks and then someone else (or even you) create visuals ...like videos for every track of an album? would it be something you would want to try or is it something you don't want to get your fingers dirty with? | Sean | it would prob take a while, but yeah if it was feasible there's no reason we wouldn't | ||
229 | rd1994 | when you make music ...before you release the tracks to the public do you get some third party with a fresh ear to comment or is it more like "We do what the fuck we want" kind of approach? | Sean | when you ask a question is it always in the form of a false opposition or do you sometimes forget? | ||
230 | Jev | Do you know Dabrye's (Tadd Mullinix) music? If yes do you enjoy his work and would you consider colab/remix with him? | Sean | yeah i love his stuff i dunno about collab tho, he does p well on his own imo | ||
231 | hecanjog | do you guys have dayjobs too or is it Ae 24/7 for the most part? | Sean | we don't have jobs other than ae | ||
232 | DorkingtonPugsly | Sean will you not name by machinedrum and axoim 61 keyboard? Without a name they will have no personality. Without personality they will have no sounds. Without sounds I cannot make the musics. Without the musics there is no me. | Sean | your machinedrum is now called santander your axiom 61 is now called joey | ||
233 | Hoodie | why do you think that some people perceive your music as noise (to quote someone, "are your speakers broken?") but others find it incredibly beautiful and emotionally stirring? this also goes for experimental electronic music in general. | Sean | no idea different kinds of brain maybe | ||
234 | rd1994 | how much stuff in autechre is about mocking ...what I mean by that is autechre has always been about anonymity...and also having strange tracktiles...it almost seems as if you name tracks simply because of the fact that you have to do so...am I just incredibly spaced out or is any kind of truth in that? | Sean | how is autechre about anonymity? | ||
235 | Ism | Do you remember asking me "watmm? What's watmm?" When we did a phoner interview in 2008 just before Quaristice release. And here we are now... :) you also personally made my day back at the time by stating that you'd listened to some of our old tunes - Rubens 'bank holiday'. Pure magic. We talked about Ruth from Krush who worked for Sound control in Sheffield... I was interviewing you for sound controls mag at the time. Anyway... Latest EP is your most polished since Envane or Anvil Vapre. Top marks for still slinging massive left hooks. | Sean | yeah that was a good interview i forgot that about ruth joy, it's mad that she worked there | ||
236 | lumpenprol | If you don't live near each other, do you only see each other when you go on tour? If so are you ever surprised how skinny/fat/old the other has gotten? (disregard if you video chat) | Sean | lolno, we work together on stuff as well, we're only a couple of hours apart. i mean that's probably a lot to people who never leave the uk but it's trivial for us, anything over an hour kind of needs 3 day visits anyway. | ||
237 | marf | how did you teach yourself? did you read up on computer programming? dsp reading? have you ever read old books like the allan strange synthesis book, did you have to re-learn Maths to develop your custom patches? Stuff like your aleatoric sound, did you just do it trial and error? Did you have to educate yourself in any specific way to build your sequencers? | Sean | i just learn stuff as i go, but patchily and not in terms of high level techniques at all. i did have to learn some new physics a few years ago but usually i just need tiny bits of info to get on with what i'm doing. lots of trial and error as well. | ||
238 | Ism | How do you personally view Quaristice? For me, it marked an end to a period that started around Confield where sound design was a much more critical element of your released output. Oversteps marked a transition to more mature review of previous ingredients. Sonically familiar but novel style and still hitting the nail right on the head, despite passing of more time. Do you recognise the so-called periods of work or fans appreciation of a given release? | Sean | i recognise that they recognise it, but it's not as strictly delineated as i often read still, who wants to read a paragraph every time | ||
239 | Schlitze | They taught themselves with tape deck edititing | Sean | this is true to an extent cos i didn't know anything about how machines worked but i learned a lot about how rhythm works just by doing tape edits | ||
240 | uelogy | was wondering if you have a piece of hardware (instrument/effect, not computer) which you rely on and use frequently as a 'go to', due to the character/magic it brings. Also wondering what your worst hardware disaster was - as in, spilling orange juice on a computer type of disaster. | Sean | over the years there have been several pieces that we've fallen in love with for one reason or another, but atm it's mostly stuff we built which i guess is kind of weird but it's just turned out that way, i have goto modules now instead of bits of hardware oh yeah once i knocked a whole mug of tea over mat steel's new atari he was surprisingly cool about it | ||
241 | Deer | do you still think UFOs are real?, ever had a sighting/close encounter? | Sean | yeah yeah | ||
242 | cloud capture | I felt a solid Miami bass/electro vibe in some of your earlier albums/eps. Any truth in that? | Sean | yeah - dave storrs, andre manuel, egyptian lover, aldo marin, arthur baker, juan atkins | ||
243 | Ascdi | Any healthy living tips for those of us who, like you guys (I imagine), are stuck either by choice or necessity inside in front of a computer or LCD screen for long periods of time working? Get up often, take breaks, get some sun, etc? | Sean | standing desks are good if you can handle them altho tbh asking me for health tips prob isn't the best idea | ||
244 | thehauntingsoul | Can we get explicit confirmation | Sean | nah | ||
245 | Shit Attack | Dont you think Another world was cooler than Flashback ? I could never get past the start of that + I think they were made by the same people or something | Sean | i just picked that av cos i expected flashbacks (i was right) tbh i feel a bit like conrad right now | ||
246 | pixelives | So first time I saw you was around this time of year in 98 in NYC at the Other Music warehouse party for the launch of their website (!!). I remember it being pretty mental (w Plaid and Stockhausen+Walkman). Was this set recorded? Any memories of that night? Also: I was super excited when you played that Herb Alpert track in the radio mix. One of my favorite jams. Production is deep as fuck for some 80's balaeric jazz. | Sean | yeah there's a bootleg of that floating around, taken from the mixer ask watmm i'm sure they can find it somewhere yeah that alpert track is so good, i dunno what it is about it, that mid section where it's just looping the low notes for ages is brilliant | ||
247 | duck | are you into any classical composers or periods? | Sean | i'm not very knowledgable about classical music but i really like ligeti | ||
248 | digit | each of your albums have their own unifying 'vibe' or identity that comes both from the hardware / software used as well as the compositional process: untilted - densely programmed step sequenced kit. quaristice - looser & sparser live jams with hardware. oversteps - evolving generative melody (i'm assuming sequenced via Max?). i'm curios what the process/vibe was for Exai? what was the hard/software situation that the album grew out of and how were those early experiments refined and evolved to get the 'Exai sound' ? | Sean | the software used for exai grew out of the software we made for oversteps mostly realtime stuff so, long jams edited down not all of it tho, some of it was worked on more compositionally (the software can do both) | ||
249 | auxien | Is this software that's part of something else (Max/Msp or whatever) or software that you two've created entirely on your own? | Sean | we use max as a hub really, with c externals and gen, few bits of hardware we don't program in OSX Assembler (would that count?) | ||
250 | chassis | How about at present. past and future you will answer different, but I'm asking now. | Sean | of ours - chiastic slide others - residents - intermission that's today mind you | In response to 'Whats your favourite album, of your own and of someone else's work.' | |
251 | jules | ol dirty, gza or rza? anyone better then rakim, if so, who? I'd love some insight into your role in the design process of the last few album identities that tdr had the pleasure of making basic shapes for. | Sean | gza obviously they're not basic shapes, you're seeing it wrong | ||
252 | digit | do you have any interest in making / releasing computer apps or audio plug-ins? | Sean | not yet but maybe in the future for something, depends | ||
253 | feltcher | so we picked up on the vague album numbering system. Someone here said you should name your next release "twelb", is this up there with some of the hot favourites? Also curious about the whole Kiosk thing, did someone orig just pluck it out of thin air or did it actually exist as a project? | Sean | twelb is hilariously bad i doubt anyone will ever top that, but peely almost managed we don't know how kiosk originated | ||
254 | triachus | Who is peely? Are you referring to John Peel? (Btw, I came up with Twelb. If you two have any other albums or objects lying around that need naming, just let me know.) | Sean | yeah john peel ok | ||
255 | CJM | Sean would you please name my MPC2000XL? | Sean | your mpc2000xl is now called shaquanda | ||
256 | mokz | Any chance on collaborating with a Japanese singer again? The track with Mari Hamada is beautiful. Have you used Renoise beyond the experiments with Venetian Snares? | Sean | maybe, it was a laugh, altho they remixed the hell out of it. the original mix we did was better imo (unreleased) yeah we used renoise a fair bit, haven't personally for a few years tho | ||
257 | tec | Have you ever seen a ghost? | Sean | don't know | ||
258 | eclipsis | Can you guys name some of your favourite VST plugins you use and find inspirational? | Sean | not used it for ages but i really like zebra (nice sound) | ||
259 | arvy | Just wanna to ask, is there any meaning or purpose behind track title, like, Osla for n? And how should I say L Event, like event "L", or something different? | Sean | i can't get into specifics really regarding titles you can say things however you like | ||
260 | John Ehrlichman | why does Exai sound like it made using an Analog Four? Do you think Ben of zoviet france lost the dats and/or messed up the recording and just doesn't want to tell you? Why was your Dalglish remix never officially released? | Sean | 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) yeah maybe, or he just doesn't want us to have it, or he doesn't like it or whatever no idea, ask chris | ||
261 | 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? | never seen alto, i'll check it when i get back to using DAWs 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. not checked anyone on isolate apart from aaron and chris zander probably cos it was the first one where he nailed the kind of hip hop i like | ||||
262 | 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? :wink: 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 | ||||
263 | which is exactly me, thanks for answering. I think what made me think of Scorn wasn't so much the drums but that really nasty filtered pad sound kind of reminiscent of a Virus synth combined with the 80s hiphop vibes like Mick used a lot back on Plan B and his records in the early 00s | oh, that's a piano, funny | ||||
264 | northernplastic | Where did that "Voice of the Chinese People" sample you used in your last webcast come from? That was the first thing I heard when I tuned in (I had late shift back then and wasn't able to tune in earlier), and it was such a great moment. Thank you for that, the webcast was one of my favorite music-related things in 2013. Oh, and since you're naming devices and everything, would you like to name my future child? One male/female name pls. | Sean | that sample is from B.E.D. 34 by Forevereaction female - Cleopatra male - Photon | ||
265 | blos | Dunno if this is a stupid question. I am about the same age as you guys and my job relates to an interest which is kind of a deep core of my personality. When I burn out or feel overstressed, I think "fuck it all" but I can't help getting interested again after a little while. Is music like that for you? Like something you can't escape? I can't decide if that's a good thing or not. Or if that's too indulgent - over the years Ae has had a very consistent "taste" and I don't know (nor am I interested) in who does what. But do you both "know" Ae when you hear it? Ever had to talk the other into including something on a release? | Sean | yeah i mean it's kind of in my system, i've been messing with sound for so long now i don't think i could do much else, i get itchy if i haven't made anything for a couple of days. hate going on holiday it just stresses me out not being able to make things. yeah we know it when we hear it. really hard to explain but u seem to know already. yeah sometimes we have to talk each other into using each other's tracks. like, it's always me trying to talk rob into including one of his tracks, or vice versa. almost never happens the other way round | ||
266 | Bertolt Brechtakt | What's the reason for this direction? This sounds like you are not very sure about your own creations so you need positive confirmation from the other. | well, insecurity obviously | |||
267 | k h o v | do you remember that gig with fennesz & roedelius ? i've seen pictures & always wondered about it, like some all star game or something. | Sean | that was actually a bit of a weird gig i think roedelius had expected us to do beats like amber, and we were at that point where we had dived headlong into doing algo stuff, and we were giving him really weird rhythms. he kind of gave up halfway thru and starting playing solo piano stuff, so we all had to kind of back off and let him get on with it, cos he couldn't deal with the weirdness in the rhythm. so it sort of happened in 2 stages, with us jamming with christian for a bit (going really well i thought), with bits of roedelius, and then a big solo section of roedelius playing sentimental piano stuff. he shouted at us afterwards, i felt really bad. huge fan getting told off by elder statesman. he actually thought we had deceived or tricked him somehow. it's a real shame, we felt like we had fucked it up by being too adventurous. | ||
268 | xf | You guys are huge on generative music; ever considered releasing an album of puredata patches or something along those lines, rather than prerecorded audio? I recognize the issues with doing so, but it'd probably blow some peoples minds to have that happen. | Sean | yeah this comes up every few years maybe in the future | ||
269 | Pennywise | I love how Lcc develops into a beautiful melody after sounding harsh for a few minutes. it happens in 6IE.CR too. is their a particular reason for it other than it be fucking cool? i interpret it as beauty from chaos. | Sean | i see that LCC transition as a bit like a dream where you drive off a cliff and find yourself flying | ||
270 | beerwolf | I suppose I could ask what you're favorite beers are, but that just seems embarrassing and a bit dumb. | Sean | not fucking stella it's always on riders and we always roll eyes when we see it, but we end up drinking it again and getting that headache | ||
271 | Ivan Ooze | what do you think about flying lotus his music? imo i think he's great and has a lot of talent he uses well why didn't he ask you for a track for gtaV that would have been awesome | Sean | i really like the track he did with earl hoping he does more straight up hip hop stuff tbh, he's good at it | ||
272 | Ivan Ooze | is it this earl? | Sean | nah i don't know if it came out actually it was ages ago, i saw a youtube i think | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRSmK5Ou7vE | |
273 | jasondonervan | In terms of music, do you think that hardware manufacturers and/or software devs are charting a path of diminishing returns? By making the process of creating music arguably 'easier' and more accessible, is music in danger of becoming less experimental, compared to the past where experimentation was perhaps led by hardware/software limitations? And seeing how this has become a (very WATMM) thing: please could you name my MPC1000? it has JJOS installed, if that helps! | Sean | i think the main problem is really people being blinded by options and having to compare everything, so like, someone wants a compressor, they try out every single one and then pick one that suits their needs. which is all cool etc but there's that thing missing where back in the day they'd have been more limited and would just have plumped for one of them and then later maybe found some quirk or weird way to exploit it. it's not so much about the limitations of the actual gear itself, more about the way the market forces behaviour. your mpc1000 is now called 808 | ||
274 | Ivan Ooze | what was the hardest track you made, like when you afterwards say: that was impossibru but we fucking did it! | Sean | errr probably an early one cos they used to take fucking ages something like destroyer (but you probably never heard that unless you were an IBC listener, it's unreleased) actually destroyer is on that bojangles youtube | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC7LGzCZ-q0 | |
275 | Ivan Ooze | you have been a musician/artist for more then 20 years, every release you made was an improvement, i don't even think frank zappa did that and yet you don't get all the praise (and money) it deserves in the world. does it bother you or are you punks in the heart?? | Sean | it's kind of inevitable, the industry prizes youth but yeah of course we're basically b-boys, very close to punk ideologically | ||
276 | salvaKPO | Did you ever have very little sleep (Like what RDJ said he used to do)? Did you ever heard Caustic Window LP (Cat023)? If so; How it was? | Sean | yeah sometimes i work with next to no sleep rae was made in that kind of warm fuzzy state yeah i like almost everything richard's done | ||
277 | salvaKPO | But Cat023 was made available to only a couple of guys (Cylob, Mike Paradinas and a few others I think). Do you work standing up, sitting down? Do you make music in nature, gardens or places like that? | Sean | oh right i don't rem things like cat numbers i work both sitting and standing sometimes gardens but tbh surroundings aren't the thing for me, i get lost in the sound so it's not really important what the room's like, the sound becomes the space | ||
278 | ravedamage | I guess this is probably like having to choose between your offspring, or whether you prefer June to July, but do either of you have a favourite remix/reworking you've done? | Sean | for me it's probably the buck tick remix, an enduring favourite | ||
279 | hello spiral | Could you please name my Casio VL-1 VL-Tone? | Sean | your casio vl-1 is now called zeus | ||
280 | mcbpete | Is the Ae ident music part of a longer unreleased piece or was it specifically made for the DVD ? i.e. this one - Plus mentioning Shane Carruth yesterday, I've always thought how similar his film titles/logos are to this, merely a typeface coincidence or was it the same graphics designer? | Sean | we actually did the design on those releases, and it wasn't us making shane's titles the id for the gg dvd was custom written around alex's animation | http://orgasticfutures.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/primer2.jpg | |
281 | northernplastic | Sean, you mentioned before that you like Germany, what do you like about it in particular? Have you been to Bad Vilbel? Oh and could you name my backpack please? It's an Arcteryx Bora one in case that matters. | Sean | never been to bad vilbel but it's twinned with glossop which lies on the manchester end of the A57, or snake pass as it's known locally (the road that goes from manchester to sheffield) your arcteryx bora is now called graham | ||
282 | rd1994 | is your approach different when you do an autechre album track and if you do an remix...of course it is different that you have source material to work from...but from that point on...does it make a difference to you? | Sean | yeah fully if the source is such that we need to change loads of things to get something that we like out of it then it ends up being more like an ae track then it would otherwise, and sometimes we like it too much to want to change much at all, in which case it's more like pruning and adjusting things than like making a track or whatever all depends on the source and how we react to it | ||
283 | jules | can you name my first born son pls? | Sean | your first born son is now called ian | ||
284 | eclipsis | I can see you are pretty good at naming synths and similar gear so I have a bit of a challenge for you. Can you name my electric guitar? I tend to use it mainly as a source of sound for some very processed and textural things if it helps. And I think it's "she" but what do I know. | Sean | your electric guitar is now called hilda | ||
285 | Friendly Foil | Is it actually possible to add too much reverb to a track, or is that simply a myth? | Sean | no | ||
286 | vincentvc | wasn't a fan of the ISAM set musically anyways - what do you think of Amon Tobin other than that? the oversteps set you guys did in AB (Brussels) is still pretty much the most mind-blowing gig I've ever been to.. but anyways recently saw Tim Exile, not sure if you're familiar with what he does but it's pretty much all improvised on the spot with a lot of interaction with the crowd which is an entertaining dynamic to say the least. musically not as interesting as what you guys do live - but still good fun and in a way on the same track. but you actually see him press buttons/pads, tweak knobs etc .. don't you feel that's something what is missing in your sets? (well you probably don't, but don't you think a crowd sort of needs some visual feedback of the band they went to see play?) | Sean | tbh i haven't heard much amon tobin so i can't really comment i think tim's excellent tho, really talented nah i mean, we're not doing the same kind of display, hopefully the details are all audible enough not to require gestural accompaniment or illustration | ||
287 | lumpenprol | do you guys ever pull any practical jokes on each other? is there any "myth" about ae that you'd like to dispel? Or any myth that has been kind of fun or useful so you let it stick around (I'm thinking along the lines of the BoC myth of cultlike activity, or the Aphex myth of sleeping in a bank and driving a tank around, etc). I can't think of any ae myths offhand...maybe something to do with generative music doing all the work for you? Is there any myth you'd like us all to propagate for you? | Sean | no | ||
288 | Gocab | What is your take on the latest trend of toylike synths that are coming out at the moment? I'm thinking about the Korg Volcas and the likes, and to some extent the teenage engineering OP1 (although that is pretty much it's own thing). Are you mainly creating your audio in computers or do you play around with outboard gear as well? Any new musical gear that has you all giddy (software or otherwise)? I get the impression that you're mostly building the stuff you need in max and that's that. | Sean | yeah p much not bought anything new for a bit but i like the look of tempest, might get one just for sport | ||
289 | pigster | do you have any desires to release more ridiculously long pieces of music in the future? i ask because perlence subrange 6-36 is really fucken incredible. the way it plays with perception is sort of amazing, and the length of the track plays a big part into how well the track works overall. i was also thinking, the longest track on an autechre album is sublimit, which is the length of a record side. but you've also released through your webcast an 18 minute version of uviol. do you have any preference for longer more drawn out versions of your tracks, that don't make it onto an album for whatever reason? | Sean | not really a preference, but often if we're recording in realtime we'll go way over time just cos we're into it and we know we can chop it later the long versions that we play on radio or whatever are (parts of ) the realtime jams usually | ||
290 | Jev | Hello guys, I have been making music till 7 AM here today. I often find out that stuff that I really enjoy making at night often suck a lot when listening in to them in daytime. Obviously it has something to do with how brain works. Do you know this situations too? How do you "combat" it? Are you limiting yourself in this situations when to do music and when not? I know that you used to, lets say, "not use deliberately" musical theory approach with your music when composing. But have you ever been in a composition of a track that you could not figure out at all (because of so many notes in complicated compositions on different tracks and so on) that you had to use some of the classical, methodological approach to complete your track? For example looking up the scales for notes in question? Or is it mostly trial and error? OR you have developed some software that can check it for you? | Sean | yeah night tracks are just different to day tracks i find the deeper stuff works better at night no idea why, i just make both kinds of tracks and that's that really it depends on how we're working. if it's some rule based thing then it can take care of itself usually, but we might still tweak events here and there if we think it needs it. otherwise we just go by feel. it's not like there are many options to try out with there only usually being 12 notes. | ||
291 | danshoebridge | Autechre tracks are a bit unique for me in that for the most part I have literally no idea how they're made. I'm really curious what the process is, especially on the later stuff like oversteps and exai. Whenever you drop little snippets in interviews (like the beat in pen expers coming out of a sample-loaded md player on random) it's always pretty much the opposite of what I expect. Would you be willing to talk us through the creation of one of your more recent tracks, or is that giving away a bit too much? | Sean | it would take too long cos often the programming is something that happened in weird increments over years, and then the actual track might have been done in a day or something, realtime. it gets too fuzzy to be able to explain what led to it | ||
292 | digit | do you guys still build synths in Max or just use it for sequencing hardware? | Sean | we use it for both, and as a hub for connecting other bits of software, and sometimes hardware but increasingly less the line between sequencing and synthesis is pretty much gone now. textures are sequences, sequences are like harmonies. it's all the same thing when you get down to it. | ||
293 | rd1994 | do you think about what people will think of your tracks while you make them or is it just about pleasing yourselves also I saw that my questions sometimess come across weird...english is not my first language so that might be a factor | Sean | we make stuff for ourselves, each other and mates. it's easy to have a person in mind when you make a track cos they have their vibe and you can easily make something you think they might like. i mean you might be wrong but it's a good starting point, and it can become a good game making tracks for people and not telling them you did that, and seeing if you can get it right eventually. making tracks for people you never met is basically impossible without resorting to some lowest common denominator tactics which i mean, that works for some people but for me it doesn't really go deep enough | ||
294 | jules | I've been in the design world for a long time, I'd really love some insight as to how you work with creating the album art recently. do you guys give a set if parameters or just look at some options they come up with and shape it from there? | Sean | we usually go to ian with something. either some ideas, images, or actual instructions. sometimes we are ultra-specific about it, sometimes we give him a lot of freedom to see what he comes up with the last couple of albums were quite different, for oversteps we gave him very little but for exai we gave him tons of written stuff just depends really | ||
295 | AdieuErsatzEnnui | Do you have other creative outlets besides music? If so, what are they? | Sean | yeah i mess with visual stuff, so does rob and sometimes i do other programming/related stuff that somehow relates to music or generation/composition | ||
296 | rd1994 | while we are at album naming: was it something you planned all along or just got carried away with? | Sean | neither | ||
297 | phling | k I wanna be in on that gear naming thing, I would be honored if you guys would give a name to - my E.Machinedrum - my (modded) E. Analog Four (I can baptise them myself then) | Sean | your machinedrum is now called keith your analog 4 is now called pierre | ||
298 | Jev | How such artist as Mari Hamada comes to an idea to have her tracks remixed by you? I mean, I would expect Tortoise to be really into experimental music or Radiohead, given to Thom Yorke's admiration of your work, but Hamada? It is quite surprising for me. | Sean | labels | ||
299 | Jev | By the way, what was the reason for not going on tour with Radiohead? I mean, was it a collision of two different music approaches (in case they wanted you to colab with them on stage) or was it because you were offered being just an opening act for their show (in that case I would fully understand - to play for people that are not really interested...). Don't you regret the decision a little? I mean, money offered surely must had been good! :-))) And what do you think about Radiohead's takes on making electronic tracks like Everything In Its Right Place and Kid A? I personally think they are very well produced, the vibe is strong. | Sean | we didn't want to play in stadiums to radiohead fans really. just seemed a bit superfluous i dunno i mean they were good at writing songs and then they got into our stuff and their stuff didn't seem to improve much, i thought they would take it off in some mad direction but the critics bit hard, everyone around them got upset and they retreated. whatever | ||
300 | rd1994 | some thing that confused me loads...do EPs that you do contain tracks that did not fit for lack of space on the CD, or couldn't you finish them in time? | Sean | neither | ||
301 | azatoth | How many people are or have been involved with Gescom over the years? Has there been a release were neither of you have been involved? | Sean | prob quite a lot, i'd guess about 15-20, it's hard to say cos so many are fleeting or were just around for one gig or something | ||
302 | rd1994 | if some fan asked you to remix one of his own tracks...would you do it? | Sean | iirc that happened already | ||
303 | plstik | Do you ever get together with friends and jam (kind of like the folky gatherings with a pot of shrooms you mentioned here) or has it been mostly the two of you? | Sean | yeah that's how a lot of gescom stuff happens | ||
304 | beerwolf | You stuck (finely placed lol) in a death metal track into your brilliant FACTmix. I've always been a bit fascinated if you, (Aphex, BOC and Squarepusher as well!) like metal and if you did what were you're favorites. You're love for hip-hop is pretty obvious but metal/alternative guitar music less so. Do you get up on a Sunday morning and play Reign in Blood at 11? | Sean | my dad was well into sabbath, and in secondary school one of my mates was really into metal (this was in like 86) so he'd sort me out with tapes of megadeth, helloween, metallica, iron maiden. i only ever really liked metallica and slayer back then tho. i liked the way it sounded, seemed really advanced compared to the other stuff, or maybe it was just closer to hip hop somehow, having more bass and heavier rhythm aspect to it. yeah what is it about sunday mornings and metal. my dad used to do it too. | ||
305 | funkaholic | do you still make tracks like amber and the video of you guys live in sheffield? you look at each other and say "time for a dance off" and bang out a wicked club track. i plan on getting a english mastiff one day, it will be as majestic and mournful as the one in the attached image, will you name my future english mastiff? Do you guys like the smiths? favorite track? | Sean | yeah we think we're doing dance tracks all the time. i guess we grew up at a time when dance music was seen as being more flexible, before the 4/4 kicks took over your mastiff is now called dmitri nah i never got into them. i do like how soon is now tho | ||
306 | MadameChaos | What are your desert island discs? (let's say 5) | Sean | coil - love's secret domain 808 state - newbuild beefheart & magic band - mirror man sessions mantronix - music madness kraftwerk - computerworld | ||
307 | Ivan Ooze | i have an amplifier with 2 speakers and a sub but in my new house i have wires through to wall for 5.1 can you recommand me some awesome speakers to listen to autechre | Sean | i'm not very good at this but i have a mate who works at richer sounds who i could put you in touch with | ||
308 | LimpyLoo | What's the worst or most annoying piece of gear you've dealt with. | Sean | prob something i don't own and never got my head round so it's like, not fair anything i bother to stick with i usually have that fallback of whatever made me like it in the first place the prophecy always seemed annoying but i think it was about just the number of pixels tbh | ||
309 | Alcofribas | what's the deal with the photo of you guys kicking the snow? | Sean | we just don't like snow much. no big deal. | ||
310 | mrmegaman | would you ever consider playing a classic set or sets you did using the old gear you used? | Sean | like, in principle i don't really mind playing old stuff as a one off, but it would be near impossible to do it properly, half the gear is on loan, requires rewiring for each track, there were loads of non-storable patches on analogue gear, plus reasons the really old stuff was done on 4 track so we'd need like 7 of some things, 4 of others, etc. and 8 hands | ||
311 | rd1994 | do you think about what people will think of your tracks while you make them or is it just about pleasing yourselves also I saw that my questions sometimess come across weird...english is not my first language so that might be a factor | Rob | At times we might wonder if theres going to be some reaction to something happening in a track, (knowing theres probably no real way to ever find out) , and yes it is predominantly based on what we'd like to happen..... Like minds may enjoy the same bits i hope. | ||
312 | Alcofribas | do you have a favorite uwe schmidt release? ever met him? | Sean | nah, we emailed a bit ages ago i love this - | http://www.discogs.com/Schnittstelle-Schnittstelle/release/104173 | |
313 | gnarlybog | Sean or rob, my machinedrum is on the verge of gaining sentience. Could you give it a name? I wonder what the design process was like for the Exai album artwork. Did you approach tDR with a loose concept or a few key references? Or do you let him generate a few concepts interpreting what he hears in the music? | Sean | your machinedrum is now called felicity we gave him lots of text and he made something he kind of grew concepts around ours. it was spot on actually how he did it, way better than we could have | ||
314 | feltcher | do you plan a set differently for a festival gig? Sometimes festivals are part of a larger tour where I guess you just carry the same sound on, but (iirc) the Glade gigs were kinda separate? | Rob | Festival slots for us can be so varied that, some in old bingo hall like bloc, or outdoor field natural amphitheaters so it totally shapes how we play it, mostly cos of how we hear it and whats most exploitable about the setting... Vibe.. Acoustics etc... | ||
315 | egoretop | How about Mark Fell's Composing With Process PodCast? in the upcoming second part of the first episode they will play a track by Sean Booth called Horizon 31:44 Sean Booth 'Horizon', 2004 (20 min) 'Horizon' is a generative piece composed in the BBC BASIC programming language. It was composed for the rand()% generative internet radio station in 2004 but was never broadcast. The aim of the piece was to use as little code as possible and be interesting enough to hold the attention. Where is it? | Sean | oh yeah basically we're exclusive to warp, but we can do stuff with mates as gescom (but we can't do solo stuff or use any other names, particularly our own names) mark just didn't know so he put my name, and we couldn't put it out then even if he changed the name.. it was my fault for not saying happened w/kouhei as well but that was already produced when i found out (oops) | ||
316 | Zeffolia | This seems ridiculous You're one of Warp's top acts and they can't give you a little bit of freedom? | Sean | they pay us for it, and it wasn't too important at the time we negotiated it | ||
317 | o00o | How can someone learn to compose great melodies? Do you start tracks by loading midi files of tracks you like and start to manipulate until they sound like you like them? Do you generate your melodies using tools or do you jam them on a keyboard? Do you take melodies of tracks you like and change them? What is your favorite key? | Sean | don't know no both no don't know | ||
318 | o00o | so what exactly do you mean in this interview when you say "modifying what existed"? Sampling? Quote "At this stage we weren't really thinking about making music that was our own. What we did was modifying what existed. We didn't really think about ownership of the music either. It was a few years later, when someone said, 'Oh, these tracks are good, are they yours?', that we recognised that we'd almost stopped making sounds that were recognisable. It seemed as if we had been in a grey area for ages, and then suddenly we were aware of actually creating music and playing it to other people, and they were saying it was ours. I think these congratulations satisfied our egos so much, we decided the music was ours!" | Sean | yeah, we started out doing pause button mixes of other people's tracks and then that turned into using samplers and drum machines, eventually we stopped sampling so much | ||
319 | Alcofribas | what ae track has the lushest pad? | Sean | drane 3 | ||
320 | k h o v | i remember an interview with russian film maker Andrej Tarkovsky, he said that as an artist, he did not fear anything, but as a man, he feared for his family and beloved ones. do you have that same confidence regarding your creativity ? | Sean | yeah why would anyone fear making stuff? | ||
321 | ivan Ooze | is there any audio available from the last gig at DOUR festival belgium, it was amazing and i was stoned like helll while people in front of me were puking out their drugs, it was with VxSx and otto von schirach i would like to hear that again | Sean | no idea, we never heard anything | ||
322 | feltcher | do you plan a set differently for a festival gig? Sometimes festivals are part of a larger tour where I guess you just carry the same sound on, but (iirc) the Glade gigs were kinda separate? | Sean | yeah usually with festivals they're more sporadic, we usually have the same setup as the prev tour but with fresh ears sometimes we change things a bit first but usually it's like a subtle remix of the tour set | ||
323 | Kavinsky | How do you guys agree wich each other on the "sound -style" for your next album ? for example Untilted is very hardware related and harsh , oversteps is more software i guess and sounds friendlier and happier for me. or does is simply evolve ? | Sean | it just happens, over time something grows and as we become aware of it we shape it | ||
324 | Jev | L-Event is very night-time stuff for me. It seems to not have enough impact during daytime, especially Osla for n. I mean I can hear the, lets say, compisitional logic in those tracks during daytime but at night real emotions come into it and everything seems more enjoyable. One of my theories is that brain tends to make up more things into the tracks yet in reality those things are not there. I mean sleep has to have effect on the brain comparable with passing out because that is how brain defends itself and the body so that you don't feel pain anymore etc. So maybe the brain is making up things to "sound better" then they really are? But I am not saying that L-Event suck during daytime :-D not at all. | Sean | :) daytime is just noisier imo osla for n was made at night | ||
325 | azatoth | I am going to keep on the Gescom theme. What makes a Gescom track? Is it something you fuck around with and end up liking but does not go with current Autechre and it gets filed under Gescom. How does this Gescom thing even work? A group of individuals make their things and share and let others mess around with it and then something eventually gets released? | Sean | as far as our stuff goes, gescom = the involvement of a third party (altho that can get tenuous sometimes) but the other gescom people sometimes use the name without us as well | ||
326 | MIXL2 | Do you guys like Jungle? Do you like owls? | Sean | yeah bits yeah | ||
327 | Little Lord Faulteroy | Is it possible to see a musical collaboration involving you & Oneohtrix Point Never in the future? | Sean | dunno | ||
328 | lumpenprol | I believe in this Q&A you said you didn't keep any quaristice tour soundboards. But I believe during that tour you also had some guy expressly shooing away any fans that tried to plug in to get a soundboard (or so I heard). We speculated that maybe you didn't want people ripping the soundboard because you planned to have some sort of live release later, or planned to keep the bits for later use on an album. It sounds like that wasn't the case, after all. Do you think you'd make a different decision now, re: keeping soundboards or letting fans record them, or do you like keeping the live stuff strictly live? | Sean | on that tour we wanted to keep it as live as we could. just depends, on the oversteps tour we tried to record as much as we could, we have soundboards for over half of them. no plans for any of it we just wanted to try recording everything in the past whenever one got recorded it was the venue doing it, so now and then we would be handed a DAT at the end of the night, as a result we don't have anything like a comprehensive archive and usually the mix sounds wrong cos it was mixed for the venue | ||
329 | hertsdonut | You listen to much Actress stuff? Guy is pushing boundaries, feel that he has a similar aesthetic to AE in that his music operates somewhere in the outskirts of the (avant garde)techno-continuum. A lot of stuff he's done sounds really electro too. Same thing in regards to his live sets and yours, in that they're usually pretty dancefloor. Please name my casio CZ-1000 (i found it in a skip if that helps) | Sean | yeah we like actress (controversial) your cz-1000 is now called samantha | ||
330 | auxien | How the hell did y'all get the main synth in Glitch (the one that starts the track) to sound so random, pulling in and out? I can guess as to how I'd replicate that sound now with current software, but I can't imagine how the hell you two figured it out back in 94 or whatever. Do you remember where the sample/s at about 24 minutes into the infamous Radio Mix (...the police are gonna raid you!) come from? I'm guessing some old radio show or another.... Were there any outtakes from the Peel Sessions you guys did? I've got a live rip of a New York show from 2000 supposedly at a venue called 10 degrees. What drum machine/routing of drum sounds are you using in the first bit of that set? The sounds it morphs into are fucking amazing and I've always loved them. I cannot wrap my head around what the hell y'all were doing there. Did most tracks on Untilted start out as different bits of tracks that you then patched together? | Sean | glitch = 202 and quadraverb that sample is off some korean film, i can't rem er not outtakes as such but maybe some versions, can't rem i don't rem playing in nyc in 2000 some of them did but most were written serially | ||
331 | Kavinsky | Why didnt you come to the Elevate Festival in 2005 ? (if you dont remember just ignore) I recognize you have been often to Austria , you have some relations with Austria? just curious! | Sean | there was a good audience in vienna who really got this kind of stuff, in the 90s there was a long line of excellent stuff coming from there imo | ||
332 | duck | Do you see your tracks as 'songs'? Or perhaps more impressionistic? | Sean | just tracks really, dunno, that seems open enough | ||
333 | Diabrotikos | my UC-33 midi controller is still alive after 10 years of intense use (seriously, i was pretty sure it would be my first piece of gear to die, but it won't). Could you give it a name ? :) | Rob | I'd recommend u call it Rocky Six Lite from now on. | ||
334 | Sean | your uc-33 is now called adrian | ||||
335 | marf | are you sending CV/ Gate out of your computers to external synths with these new computer cv boxes like expert sleepers? or is it Midi or native computer synthesis on the computer in your last couple releases? | Sean | we have a motu interface that can send cv but most of my stuff's internal we don't use midi we made a better protocol. midi is stone age really | ||
336 | Jev | Will it be published for free or commercialy in the future or is it already available somewhere? How does old hardware recognize this better protocol? Does it behave significantly better when syncing software (DAW, or MAX) with external hardware? | Sean | nah we're only using it with our own stuff. it's incompatible with anything external, if we need midi we have to convert and we use sysex to do that usually, it works well enough i'm not using any midi gear atm at all, rob still uses a bit but not much these days | ||
337 | o00o | "we don't use midi we made a better protocol. midi is stone age really" - could you elaborate on that? what did you improve exactly? | Sean | baud rate, resolution, the type of messages it's not really a good way to ask the question tbh cos it wasn't designed as an improvement to midi, it's a different kind of protocol but it makes midi redundant apart from for talking to old gear | ||
338 | acroyear | You didn't come to the U.S. for your Oversteps tour. Was there a reason, and will you likely be coming back to D.C? Please do... | Rob | We wanted to do northern europe territories instead, we hadnt been there properly before and we had limited overall time between previous commitments. | ||
339 | Sean | no reason just thought we'd leave it out for once we'll be back | ||||
340 | auxien | What's with myslb? Would you divulge what it stands for at least? Do you keep detailed files of tracks, or is it more of a 'well that's track's done, who cares how we got there' sort of a thing? | Sean | nah we don't keep files other than things like undo history with programming i make backups really regularly tho, nightly builds usually, so i can get back to any date if i need to. the files are tiny. | ||
341 | o00o | Would you do something like this topic inside the EKT Subforum? Giving tips to producers about their tracks or lecturing them based on a track you did? What is the best record label besides warp? | Sean | i always liked mego so they get this shout | ||
342 | m0rb1d | Do you guys use kyma at all anymore? Also what are/were some of your favorite things to use it for? I saw you mention earlier about the reverbs and totally agree. For me the samplecloud + reverbs are worth the price of admission alone. | Sean | nah we gave it to daz fitton i wasn't using it and i don't like having stuff just siting there it's ace for reverbs tho, mainly just cos the outputs on the capybara are so silky also amazing for fake analogue stuff with a high degree of control, and realtime fft stuff | ||
343 | ghsotword | You mentioned synaesthesia on page 22. What kind of synesthesia do you have? Is it sound-to-color synesthesia? | Sean | auditory/tactile and spatial/sequence | ||
344 | Lesley | Does 11 is have any relation to Snorkel by Gescom?, Later on in the track it sounds like Parhelic Triangle, were these deliberate things? | Sean | not deliberate | ||
345 | Rob | They do share a kind of toughnut bboy style, i think its more like we sometimes arrive at certain tendencies, we dont realy make a track to actually sound like another. | ||||
346 | you mentioned earlier that you use markov chains as a method for generating things... while one could apply these to sequence basically any data, i guess they can be especially useful for melodic/modal and rhythm transforms... that jazz-solo-like (for lack of a better word) melodic interplay in irlite (get 0) around 3:00 - 3:50ish, is this an example where you used the chains to generate the notes, prominently? dunno, the way the melody moves in irlite somehow strongly reminds me of this lush piece by Miroslav Vitous: you dig? hear/feel any relation? i recommend to check out this record if you don't already know it.... | Rob | Not markov in that particular case, and i get how u can see the connection there. I like the sound of this, hadnt heard it before thanks, will check out on proper spkrs later :) | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgQR3HM3EOA | ||
347 | o00o | Would you ever rerelease Quaristice Versions or Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae on vinyl? I am sure a lot of people would buy it | Sean | are you? based on what? | ||
348 | MastaN8 | We spoke about the tracks you sent to coil that have been archived. Also mentioning that chiastic slide has been getting some spins lately as well. I love that 97 vibe you guys had going, is there any other unreleased stuff archived from that era that may see the light of day? | Sean | yeah there are some bits, i dunno about releasing it tho maybe i suppose, never say never | ||
349 | thehauntingsoul | Can you guys elaborate on how you feel out the structure of a track? Like how do you decide on the intro, and what elements to bury away, which ones to tease at throughout the track. Also what's the one track you think took the most amount of effort to finish? Any tracks that stand out in your mind as being particularly frustrating to pull off? | Sean | i dunno we just get a feeling for what's better and go there really, sometimes things occur to us but in terms of narrowing down why we make choices it gets harder the closer you are to it i suppose. it's like when you're a kid and you realise you can keep asking 'why?' | ||
350 | jasondonervan | In regards to Japan-only Autechre bonus tracks: - Do you mind them being included at the tail-end of an album, especially if you have put a lot of consideration into the running order/length of the album 'proper'? - Is there any specific criteria for the bonus tracks, or is it more a case of "this was knocking around in the 'current' folder at the time we were working on this album, let's use that"? - Some of these tracks are very well regarded outside of Japan, certainly '18 (keyosc)' is a fantastic piece in it's own right. Will we ever see them released domestically somehow, or are they forever lost to international licensing only? | Sean | really it's just the fact that CDs are so expensive there that they need something exclusive, otherwise everyone buys the import as far as putting them at the end goes, i dunno why, it just seems like the place that will fuck up the album the least | ||
351 | 20XX | "so what exactly do you mean in this interview when you say "modifying what existed"? Sampling? " prolly mean like they were modifying ideas from other trax from other people that already existed in the patterns they were making | Sean | yeah that too to a point, and taking established forms, things like that | ||
352 | gnarlybog | can you name a specific track where you thought 'we've reached another level!' and maybe hi-fived each other in the studio while popping and locking? do you guys push yourselves to explore 'unconventional' melodies? say someone creates a simple catchy pop hook- do you mess with it so its more subtle and perhaps less immediate? imo, I would say that the early albums were more explicitly melodic. do you ever go back to old stuff and think 'aahh i wish i used a different snare sound'? I would imagine its inevitable with such detail-oriented music. | Sean | lol another level. i mean nah but we do look at each other sometimes with that bateman pursed lip face when a good bit's on i mean just select any track at random, we're always doing it nah we don't deconstruct that much, we tend to build things up these days - rather than taking normal things and altering them not really. the tracks are sort of whole things by now it's hard to separate it out, it would be like getting scissors out on your family photos | ||
353 | triachus | I love the "EPs, 1991-2002" box, but the collector in me is a bit disappointed that the Basscad EP isn't complete (it's missing the beaumont hannant and seefeel mixes). And I'm also a bit miffed by the fact that EP7 was spread over two discs, instead of keeping it on one disc as I assume it was intended.Why were some Basscadet mixes left out? Why was EP7 split like that? Were those your decisions, or was is Warp's decision and you had no say in the matter?Also, the OCD filetagger in me is confused about the Garbage EP. Originally the tracks were named with numbers (Garbagemx36, PIOBmx19, etc...) But on the EP compilation box those numbers are left out of the tracknames. Was this a mistake, or a conscious decision? | Rob | The remixes by other ppl weren't to be inluded on this collection, and the split ep7 i think was a good way to reflect the way it was split onto two vinyl. The garbage titles weren't left incomplete as such, more like they weren't relevent that way anymore in this collection. | ||
354 | What do you mean, not relevant in that way anymore? What did the numbers refer to? Also, did you edit your post to make that typo on purpose? ;p | don't make us spoil anything no its spelled just fine | ||||
355 | purlieu | I always thought the numbers were percentages of the disc, so if they're on a disc with other tracks they don't really work. edit - Garbage, that is. | Sean | yeah exactly, 100 watmm points | ||
356 | Cornphlex | How do you organize yourself to be able to come back to an unfinished track when it relies on a complex setup, a mix of softwares, hardware and specific routing. Do you write notes ? Did you ever considering using Ableton - Live and Max for Live for you gigs. | Sean | yeah usually we record it as soon as we can, but if we might need to change something analogue later and there's no patch storage, as a kind of last resort we'll make notes we use max on its own cos ableton is like bolting on a load of functions we don't need tbh i mean it's good for certain kinds of stuff but we have what we need already | ||
357 | Pennywise | I don't have any musical equipment, can you name my toaster? | Rob | roxy ? Re: corn, i couldnt resist. | ||
358 | konxompax | hey guys... just out of interest what hardcore labels are you favs? | Sean | r&s, radioactive lamb, kickin', jumpin' & pumpin', moving shadow | ||
359 | Danny O Flannagin | Was the snare rush in Doctrine from Incunabula tongue-in-cheek? | Sean | it's a kick rush a kick rush is always deadly serious | ||
360 | Root5 | Oversteps really jumped out at me as having to do with counterpoint, the interplay between multiple voices talking to each other. I noticed this particularly in O=0 and redfall. Is this something that you intended? Is this something you noticed? Is Pro Radii based around samples of a sporting event? If so, what kind of sport. Basketball? | Sean | yeah oversteps was programmed that way yeah sports not basketball tho, wrong continent | ||
361 | Root5 | What do you mean by 'programmed that way'? Were the voices programmed to directly influence each other in a generative type of way? Were they programmed independently, but in such a way to compliment each other? I guessed basketball because it sounds indoor on a hard floor. My first guess what tennis, but the space sounds wrong for that. Squash or racquetball? | Rob | Nah there are no floor sounds in there. | ||
362 | Sean | yeah the voices were independent but communicating it's just conditionals really nothing too fancy nah | ||||
363 | kokoon | Favorite Islay scotch? | Sean | dunno i only recently started on whisky recc me some | ||
364 | lumakey | An old interview mentioned you had some ideas for instruments or hardware that hadn't been invented yet, but hoped might come along someday. Have your feelings changed on that? Has there ever been one new piece of equipment that really expanded or changed how you work? Still using Nord's? | Sean | rob is a bit i have a g2 here but i've not used it at all, it's just there to run his stuff we used them pretty heavily on the oversteps tour (basically every sound was nord) | ||
365 | o00o | are you a fan of outdoor actives like trekking? (considering you preference for northface clothing) | Sean | nah i just wear that stuff cos i like the build on it, lasts forever and works well | ||
366 | Redruth | if a man came to u and asked u to fix him 2 sandwiches made of rotted mushrooms, soggy newspapers and peely caulk, would u attempt to suggest an alternative or would u fulfill the request? if plants could communicate with human language, what plant would u prefer to talk to first? how many fingers am i holding up? name something u consider strange about yourself hypothetically, if u were to choose an alternate record label to release musics, which would u choose? it can be past, present or future if u take a moment to think, what would u consider to be yr most precious belonging (gollum) | Sean | i would not make the man a sandwich at all i would talk to oak trees. they just look friendly 2 i dunno what I'm doing mego laptop | ||
367 | futureimage | What were/are your favourite machines on the Elektron Machinedrum and MonoMachine? And with all the gear naming going on, could you please name my MD and MnM? | Sean | either the fm ones or the physmod ones can't even rem the names now it's been so long your machinedrum is now called wolfgang your monomachine is now called john | ||
368 | Herr Jan | Was AE ever requested for a Red Bull Music Academy lecture? If not, would you consider it? | Sean | prob not those things always seem weird esp when the artist plays a track and everyone sits there nodding earnestly, it's like those acting masterclass videos but worse cos of the weird tension | ||
369 | cygnus | what are your graff tags back in the day mine was VEXER do u reckon that sounded/looked threatening ? | Sean | i lol'd i'm not putting my tags here man :) | ||
370 | Jev | Are you in contact with Steven Wilson from Porcupine Tree or robert Fripp from King Crimson? Steven somewhere said that he would be interested in collaborating with you but I always thought his music (even the electronic one - Bass Communion) would not be interesting enough for you. Also, were you influenced by Einstürzende Neubauten's early albums? | Sean | you mean toyah's husband robert? :nelson: nah we're not in touch, but i rate king crimson don't know porcupine tree at all i dunno any einsturzende neubauten either, i think rob checks them maybe | ||
371 | Coalbucket PI | Do you think there is something about your music that is obtuse, and if so is that something that you embrace or do purposefully? It seems like a defining feature of the autechre sound to me, that it requires some level of effort to appreciate. Is there an effort to make the music more accessible when performed live? I personally found it easier to connect with it in the live scenario but that might just be a result of being forced to listen to it very loud and in the dark. | Rob | Not really, i mean, i know its a bit ' different' ,not run of the mill type stuff. but its not as weird as something like scratching. | ||
372 | Panoptic Sweep | My missus really wishes she was present for this but can't get to the net right now. She's a really big fan of you two, your music means so much to the two of us. Could you please give me a nice message I can pass on to her? | Rob | How about we send a smoke signal for this one or we could postpone until there's sufficient development of 3d printers, we'll print the same spec bud/bowl config. | ||
373 | MastaN8 | Let's say you could have just 2-4 pieces of hardware (excluding your laptop) to record your guys next album, what gear would you choose? | Rob | Spacerail, 24track, 1 piezo, 1overhead, (today that is) | ||
374 | encey | What influences how you order the tracks on an album? Are you thinking in terms of LP-side 'chunks' of music, or is it different for different LPs, one maybe where you'll have CD in mind and think of all the tracks together as a long-form sound experience? Do you have any albums you've thought of in terms of one-off files, where you would be indifferent to the order the tracks are listened in? | Rob | It has differed from release to release, but with exai, (this is probably a gross over simplification), they were choice of track grouped in pairs in most cases, optimised for vinyl. Then arranged to taste. | ||
375 | OneSixSeven | I know absolutely nothing related to music production but I have listened to your whole discography for many-many times and I enjoy it as nothing else in the music universe, so my question is: do i still miss too many elements in your music due to not knowing anything about music making? | Rob | I doubt your missing anything of any value, knowing can lead to assumptions i guess. My best early memories of favourite tracks were from not knowing anything about what they did. | ||
376 | Suffocate Peon | I remember in an interview you said that Confield 'is like pop music compared to some of the stuff we had considered putting out', do you condense whole new sounds and whole ideas into single tracks and try to make that track as distinguished and individual as it can be, before moving on to the next track? Like try to maximise its quality? Bine for example is pretty unique on the album and in your output as a whole, and the darkest track on there imo, is there more like that? Like the other music of that period when making that album (or any album really), are there fully completed tracks that have not been released or are they covering the same ideas as the ones on the album? Is there a distinction between music and a track for you, like a point where it starts to take shape from the discovery and experimentation? Just wondering about the creation process because the strong contrast from one track to the next is one of the aspects I like most about your music, and your albums. Few do it as well, or as [seemingly] intended. | Sean | it's something we end up doing by default cos after doing one thing we rarely feel like doing the exact same thing again, unless they're really fast to do and then we might do a few in one go | ||
377 | soma | I'm also going to throw it out there Cus it's in style right now, that it'd be nice to give my Electribe EA-1 synth, which I bought from a nice gentleman named Tony off Craigslist a few years back (gotta give that shout out man), a name:) | Rob | Snyd Meed | ||
378 | Obel | Travel back in time with me for a second, you're the younger versions of yourselves, the year is 1994. A strange, vaguely familiar looking man approaches you (see picture) He speaks in a northern accent and says "hey m8, heres a tape check these tunes out". After the initial horror subsides you put the tape in your Sony Walkman (with Smash Hits magazine stickers on it) and play the tape, it plays a collection of tracks assembled from Confield, Draft, Untilted and Exai. How do the younger versions of yourselves react to this music do you think? Do you enjoy it or think it's a little too out there? Also you played Hearn St car park in London on the Quari tour in 2008. This was really coincidental for me as I got a job around the corner there a week before you played. Do you remember this gig? The sound was incredible, it's the best I've heard you guys live (Bloc 2010 was a bit shit due to sound). This isn't really a question I guess, I just found it novel that you played in a car park with your own setup. What do you think of my ae subforum moderating? I like to think I'm firm, but fair. I do my best to keep vagrants out and am thinking of introducing uniforms here soon, thoughts? | Sean | reckon we would have been bang into em tbh, we were pretty open i dunno if i've ever seen your handiwork round here but i'm prob just not on enough to notice | http://i.imgur.com/7QXiwHY.jpg | |
379 | vincentvc | What's your favorite western movie? (i need it for school) | Sean | once upon a time in the west | ||
380 | Rob | A Fist Full of Travellers Cheques | ||||
381 | Sean | bastardos | In response to rob | |||
382 | Rob | They can play, they just need a new manager | In response to Sean | |||
383 | hah thanks guys! i actually need 3 westerns each one from a different decade, but the decades need to follow-up..? (eg 60s-70s-80s) so if you could give me one from the 70s or something that'd be awesome lol | Rob | WESTWORLD | |||
384 | Danny O Flannagin | Do you guys have any background in music theory at all? I always joke with my friend, who knows music theory, to tell me the time signature of some of your songs. | Sean | not really we knew none at all when we started | ||
385 | triachus | Not a question, but here is something you guys might find interesting:Back in 2007 I went to Venice and visited the Biennale, the big art festival. I went into a pavilion, can't remember which country, Norway, Sweden, Finland... something Scandinavian (I might be wrong). I see this art film thats playing. Pretty weird, had lots of snowy landscapes, white and blue colors, and sometimes people, don't know what they were doing, it looked like it was made from still photos with subtle differences that mutated into eachother. It was edited to various musics. It was weird and I liked it, so I decided to watch the whole thing. And lo' and behold, I suddenly hear Melve. I've heard it play three times or more in the movie. It didn't play long, it was used as an intermission between scenes or something. At the end I looked at the credits, and every song that was used in the movie was credited... except Melve.So hey, your song was used in an art film at the biggest art festival in the world. Without you being credited.Were you guys aware of this? | Sean | Had no idea. | ||
386 | triachus | Can they just do that? | Rob | Looks like it, thing is though, they may well have posted the details of use on the local rights management organisation, in which case it couldve been attributed correctly. But yeah mbe they didnt even know who it was. Or care. Sorry | ||
387 | Bread | what headphones would you recommend for listening to your music? does it matter a lot to you or do you prefer listening to your finished pieces on a pair of decent speakers? | Sean | i'm not very good at this kind of thing but i have a mate who works at richer sounds who i could put you in touch with | ||
388 | beerwolf | What do you think about Streetsounds Electro Compilations? Were they really important to you? I'm pretty sure these compilations were key to your early days and getting you into music? I remember an older friend of mine playing me Knights of the Turntables, off....Electro 5....I think, just checked, and yes it was number 5 (Techno Scratch). That moment changed my life (I was about 11 years old). I'd never heard music like that before, though elementry it seemed beamed in from another planet. Like your music seems beamed in from another planet. | Sean | yeah the whole series was totally key, made it loads easier to actually afford music knights of the turntables were amazing, and chris the glove taylor's stuff, they had a similar weird future acid vibe. wish there was more stuff like that out there tbh i used to love that ray gun omics track as well | ||
389 | AdieuErsatzEnnui | Does it bother you that for the most part creating electronic music and putting on shows is not environmentally friendly? I guess in your case it is more so, because you have tendency to turn off the lights. Did this factor play a role in your decision to experiment with a low light atmosphere? I appreciate this aspect of your performance. It seems so often that people decide to throw a random video on screen to entertain their audience. More specifically solo electronic artists tend to do this. I believe this is what Squarepusher was attempting to overcome with his Ufabulum project/tour. (as he sort of stated in an interview) What do you think is the next step in the evolution of electronic music performances? Do you think Squarepusher did a good job of challenging this boundary between artist and presentation? | Sean | i didn't know that was what he was trying to do i dunno i haven't thought about it in any depth tbh, i just thought he was wearing a helmet with lights on | ||
390 | rekosn | bit of a daring question: ISS Sean Alone ? | Sean | do people actually think it means that? eew | ISS S and A are highlighted in BOLD TEXT | |
391 | auxien | What was the resonant structure referenced in Extended Ambience Sample from a Resonant Structure? | Sean | you really don't wanna know | ||
392 | soma | What would you put on a pizza? What would you think about coming to Memphis and/or other southern delta states?....loads of nature and moonshine :) | Sean | mushrooms yeah i like playing in the south tons | ||
393 | digit | can you guys persuade Clavia to release a nord modular g3? it would be much appreciated. | Sean | yeah somehow i don't think we are their target market they should tho their algo's fucking own | ||
394 | Obel | Are the vocals in IO a heavily cut up recording of one of you two rapping? | Sean | nah | ||
395 | Danny O Flannagin | What do you guys think of Anthony Fantano's review of Exai? Do you guys watch him? | Sean | he seems fair and subjective, and he doesn't front that he knows everything i mean he's pretty real, i wouldn't say he was a melon or anything | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04flJC_4pv8 | |
396 | 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? | Rob | It wasnt unusual to spend time in the wet bleak grey green wide open low cloud spaces when i was a kid, dotted with out of use two hundred year old utility works on the border from lancs/yorks, and growing up not far from there feels like it had a bearing on things we do. | ||
397 | Obel | Oh, just remembered a question, Dual Purpose is you two, right? And which one of you wrote the lyrics to Augmatic Disport? Or was it a joint effort? I find them very emotional, especially the bit about the bowl of crisps. | Sean | nah dual purpose is another gescom related person the lyrics came to us both in a dream | ||
398 | I want to say rob Hall, I feel like I can hear similarities between that stuff and Viral... but you wouldn't tell me.. would you? | Sean | nah | |||
399 | terra incognita | What's the name of the last track on your Radio mix (WARPCD51)? | Sean | you know what i can't remember i know the track tho, and it does have a title | ||
400 | dubathonic | from this thread & recent interviews it seems like you work primarily with software now, but you have used a lot of gear over the years. do you spend much time these days checking out other hard/software to see how it might inspire you or meet a need? i expect the answer to this next one depends a lot on situationally specific factors, but fwiw: what has been your general approach to trying a new piece of kit? put another way, what goes into deciding whether you'll find use for it? does it for example need to make immediately inspiring sounds that you can hear yourselves using, have a great interface that leads you to dig into it even if it doesn't instantly speak to you, etc.? | Sean | could be anything really; the sound, ease of use, apparent workflow, a feature sometimes we would buy things not even knowing if we wanted them and later find something cool about it i think cos we grew up using anything we could get our hands on we don't really care about what's supposed to be the 'right thing' to use. you can get good stuff out of anything really | ||
401 | PikkioMania | pls can you give a name to my cheap mfb2 synth? thank you!! this AAA is awesome! | Sean | your mfb2 is now called julianian | ||
402 | auxien | Earlier I was asking about the drums in a live track, the track is this one: Do either of you remember what drum machine/routing set up/manipulation you were using to create and modify those drum sounds? They're amazing, every damned time I hear them. | Sean | that's the nord rack | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTWYjCAcCs8 | |
403 | MastaN8 | Let's say you could have just 2-4 pieces of hardware (excluding your laptop) to record your guys next album, what gear would you choose? | Sean | mic soldering iron mpc1000 rs integrator | ||
404 | sweepstakes | When programming, do often spend a long time trying to make more general purpose tools with a ride range of uses, or is it usually more ad-hoc? What are some of the more interesting/unexpected design challenges for you when making these tools? I'm particularly curious about how you decided to handle recording/storage and playback of continuous parameter changes, i.e. stuff you control with knobs/faders. Do you ever find it uncomfortable to use a mouse as much as Max requires? If so, how do you mitigate the effects on your wrist/arm? Could you talk a little bit about how your custom communication protocol differs from OSC? Could you pretty please name my Nord Micro Modular and my Octatrack. | Sean | i might start out making a specific thing but then i get distracted by an idea for something else do it becomes the new thing i don't really care if i get to finish the thing i started everything is continuous basically, there is no recording as such, just a stream of data being generated strictly it's no worse for wrist burn than anything else, i use a massive trackpad, ymmv how it differs from osc? hugely, it's not packet-based for a start your micro modular is now called miranda your octatrack is now called waterwaterwaterwater | ||
405 | Jev | 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? | Sean | more into finding things than making ersatz versions of imagined things | ||
406 | 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 | ||||
407 | soma | If y'all were doing something else today, what would it be? | Rob | Listening to fireworks | ||
408 | mrmegaman | just a funny story i saw you at i think se1 for the untitled tour and was very drunk. there were some posters up around the gig and everyone was taking them, but when i tried the security would stop me. because of my cheeky drunken state i would keep on trying to take it. when i did get the poster as the security was not looking he then walked up to me and got on his radio and called for back up. i was then walked in to the corner of the room so he could then screw up the poster and put it in the bin. i thought i was going to be kicked out of the gig. he then made me take it out of the bin so he could laugh at me. the poster is now on my wall and it puts a smile on my face when i look at it. you also talk of playing in the dark and reading the post i agree with you on why you do it. Are you aware of all the camera flashes that go on? they totally screw with your eyes when they go off its very funny. its kind of like a strobe and how they mess with your head. its a good thing when they go off some people get very confused when one goes of next to them. i also wonder why people take them as all i have managed to get a good picture at your gigs. o i do have a question. what was your last gig you went to and what gigs have you been to that stick out in your mind. | Rob | Oh thats a bummer , wouldve been better to hand over the poster to u. I actually dont mind the flashes much, in a way, to freeze a scene that no one can really see the rest of the time, it works. Egyptian lover not that long ago, untold & mensah, KRS1 came by here in the recent past. Havent been out much tho at all in quite a while. Its hard to pick a real stick out moment. | ||
409 | ExtraLife | Were the Peel Sessions done in the BBC studios in a short period of time, or were they older tracks dusted off? It amazes me how so much pure emotion is funneled through Drane. | Rob | No they were done at our studio, pretty close together. yeah drane's still a breathholder. | ||
410 | canzoniere vaticano | there is a metaphysical approach in ae's music? something related to speculative realism, or object-oriented ontology that rejects the privileging of human existence over the existence of nonhuman objects, or just hyperrealism? whats the final goal of your music if it lasted for thousand years? | Rob | By nonhuman objects do u mean man made objects? Or other lifeforms? | ||
411 | all things made by men, whether physical or fictional: a panpsychic reality where humans and objects have the same dignity.[/size] | Whose dignity? | ||||
412 | Hexahedral | What is your favorite flavour of icecream (currently in existence or yet to be created)? It can be either real icecream of icecream consumed only in lucid dreams and/or seen during a psychedelic experience boiling up from between floor tiles. Also, thank you for creating vletrmx21. | Rob | Actually, tequila ice cream. Failing that, most of the others. | ||
413 | DVDDTRTH | Was wondering if you could confirm whether the track in this youtube video really is by you, or whether it was mislabelled - doesn't sound like your other stuff, but i guess you guys aren't known for keeping to one style. It is at the second half of this video, starts at around 4 min. (also its not the track labelled in to comment section) | Rob | http://www.discogs.com/Various-Artists-Remixes/release/13017 | ||
414 | John Ehrlichman | 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? | Rob | Nah we've never been mean to Moby, we've been in the company of, once at a show, it was a bit clumsy, but he was courteous. He gets picked on cos hes a bit older and skinnier and vegan, leave him alone - not funny. | ||
415 | triachus | I heard it was Aphex that was pestering Moby on some tour, hiding his shoes stuff like that. Moby got pissed and left.I don't know, something I vaguely recall reading here. | ||||
416 | soma | Biggie and/or Tupac? | Rob | Biggie , not by much, only really like one track. | ||
417 | LimpyLoo | Is it "Playa Hater"? I bet it is. | The What | |||
418 | sergeantk | the synths in Eutow are super phat, how many layered saws did you use? | Rob | It wasnt so much a clean cycle from an osc, more a homemade wavetable. | ||
419 | phick123 | Do you still write graff? What names did you used to write? Any old pictures? | Rob | No nothing beyond paper n pens nowadays, my peers were way more skilled than i was on walls, but i'd do a mad outline. Sean had great alphabets. And was more mobile than me. No names pls | ||
420 | Jev | What is your opinion on In Sides by Orbital and later evolution of the band to the more simplified, mainstream tunes (after Middle of Nowhere)? Did guys just burnout but still wanted to make music no matter what? | Rob | orbital threw me a bit somewhere around snivilisation, but always loved their stuff from chime through green, brown, midnight - incredible, omen - incredible, belfast - incredible, and some more. | ||
421 | Lewps | Do either of you keep up with the Manchester or your local graffiti scenes? Seeing as it's how you fellas met. Do you have favourite writers and do you still paint yourselves? | Rob | Yeah locally there are some really talented writers. 3dom does alright round here. Ask & Soker have done some good colour schemes not unlike syd meads' lusher acrylic pallettes, but i dont get out much, grafs a saturated scene in a way. Probably old hat by now, but i remember seeing daim for the first time in switzerland on tour years ago, that changed a few things. | ||
422 | thehauntingsoul | I asked something to this effect earlier but I think it got buried Can one of you elaborate on some tracks that you think are particularly complex with a high level of attention to detail, or some tracks you found were a particular pain in the ass to finally finish? I could make some guesses but I'd like to hear your thoughts. | Rob | Sorry . Not ignoring this, just hard to answer fairly... Cant remember a pain in the ass track, some get really slippery , but its always a lesson in something eventually. Recognising 'what' is usually the most elusive bit. | ||
423 | coax | is fermium a club / pop track in the world of untilted which is totally different from today in the far future or some other unidentified place? thats what i hear and i also see blue and gray on untilted. on exai did you recreate sounds from older albums but yet didnt source from actual old sounds? i feel like i hear kick drums from draft, vocals from untilted and so forth? | Rob | Mbe a bit of a pop track, but is mbe over shrill to fit in regular club sound systems.. Would be atrocious in say berghain, only a Nexo rig and a felt lined space could pull it off, but its worth it, we got close once in france i think it was. No, exai, is all from fresh endeavours. | ||
424 | RandySicko | I imagine most famous people would like to still think of themselves as "regular guys"... but I can't imagine not having some sort of complex if I was in the spotlight for two decades and becoming more well known then most people ever be. Do you feel this has gone to either of your heads or manifested itself in ways that contributed to a loss of touch with the rest of society? I tried not to load the question too much. | Rob | I think we all must experience the same changes as people, that we all go through as we live/grow whatever, so no. But there is a wedge shaped dynamic to being a singular 'artist' reaching more people by releasing stuff, we are fans of other peoples work. We dont lose touch. | ||
425 | jules | do either of you guys have kids, and if so, do you create music for them? | Rob | I have 2. They're not entirely sure what i'm up to though. | ||
426 | pigster | Also, on the gear naming bandwagon. Can you (Sean pls) (or rob, pls) name my sh101 and Yamaha tx81z. The 101 is modded with extra inputs and output so you can get it to modulate itself and create FM acid, if that helps:) | Rob | The namegear OP is getting cross with u all grabbing names!! Shlol and Zibtax respectively. | ||
427 | rekosn | any of you ever get tinnitus? (esp.after too much fm) how do you get around it, when it stays for a while?(days, weeks) | Rob | No i think im lucky, have been stung by onstage sound guy accidents a few times, managed to avoid permanent damage. | ||
428 | DorkingtonPugsly | Do you guys like Turkish delight? If so what flavor? | Rob | I like all but the taste. | ||
429 | Jev | rob another taste-checking question. What about Laughing Stock by Talk Talk or Mark Hollis' solo album? I find it really fascinating how they developed from a new wave/synth-pop band to an experimental post-rock legend. | Rob | Sorry i dont have that, but i do rate talk talk and mark hollis. I think Sean might have more of his stuff tho'. | ||
430 | Sean | i always liked them tho even when they were doing more normal stuff, there was always a kind of sophistication to it, or elegance or something | ||||
431 | Pennywise | marmite? | Rob | Marmite is in | ||
432 | mcbpete | 48 seconds into bladelores there's a glitch just before the track 'fades' into reverb. Was this you hitting stop on your sequencer after noticing the glitch and decided to keep it in the track, or deliberately programmed ? | Rob | It was deliberate. | ||
433 | rd1994 | 1.Is autechre for headphones - yes or no? 2.do you see the use of vocals as a instrument or just as something to adorn the track with? 3.is there a studio version of that MCR Quarter track? 4.If I pm you a link to files of a track of mine...would you remix it for me? 5.If I pm you my adress would you send me something signed for my birthday | Rob | 1 yes absolutely, since the start. Having bedroom studios forced us to do it all on cans a great majority of the time early on. Late night manchester radio shows - listening had to be done covertly. We also had quite a few Walkmans (yeah 80s er), journeys to school/college would be essential headphones time. Later on we would 'idiot check' tracks' final mixes on cans during each DAT pass.. And still a lot of cans throughout the entire process - where necessary. 2 yes - an instrument. 3 iirc theres only one MCR QTR. 4 we're very busy at the mo, so its unlikely in the near future, shit put me on the spot dude why don't u. <3 5 agh, as much as i'd love to say yeah but looking at the namegeargate explosion, i'd be fucked if i could actually keep it a one off. But hypothetically speaking, sure. | ||
434 | mcbpete | Is your remix of Jello's Neph you just telling Daz that they track is great as it is, just lose all the fluff and keep it simple | Rob | not really, we've been into the way he uses the keyboard since we met, and he does fluff very well. I think we just got mesmerised by the keys, and ended up focusing more there. | ||
435 | jasondonervan | When you listen back to your tracks, are you able to distance your mind from the creation process? In other words, can you just kick back and enjoy the fruits of your labour, or are you always thinking about the building blocks that went into it? Favourite 2 Live Crew track? | Rob | yeah i can distance myself from the processes, assuming theres been enough time to fill my short term buffer with other things. early 2 live crew was best ; ghetto bass, trow the d, what i like, get it girl. however yakety yak etc was bad. | ||
436 | o00o | Do you like any sepecific ios / android music app you would suggest? | Rob | when Sean pointed me to SunVox on IOS i was pretty chuffed. | ||
437 | hertsdonut | What's is(was) your favourite effect/fx chain on a Quadraverb? The thing is so damn flexible, am I right in thinking it had a big influence on your early sound, in terms of what it made possible? Any tips? | Rob | yeah love the quadraverb, tended towards the reverb phaser delay ring mod - can't rem if there was the spectrum shifter on the plus or not now (its at Seans) , not so much chorus or distortion back then - its quite apparent in the early trax…. and its noisiness was not a problem. | ||
438 | phling | caffeine? | Rob | not for me generally, hard to breathe :) | ||
439 | jamesanderson | could you name my juno-6? | Rob | johnnotrixpointrevver =) | ||
440 | azatoth | Will you pop in after this thread is over or will you retire these handles and return to the ones you were using before? Ever considered restricting yourself to just a couple of pieces of gear and see what would come out without using any computers to mangle and manipulate sound? Just as a fun exercise. | Rob | 1 should we? 2 thats our daily tea break exercise. | ||
441 | modey | What are the weird high-pitched noises at the end of The Trees made from? I've heard something similar in a few electronic tracks (not just ae tracks, even though I seem to remember it being at the end of reniform puls too). It reminds me of FM radio noise when a station is slightly not tuned correctly. | Rob | those noises are made from The Trees. | ||
442 | Food | what is your favourite cartoon? do you really dig any drummers in particular? have you ever sampled rubberbands? zen/mindfulness/meditation: is there the odd buried reference in yr material? did you know valis is basically a true story? there are online doco's and the exegesis is a real thing - you can buy a pretty large chunk of it in paperback. It's pretty wild. RAW also got hit by a pink beam of information, he and PKD wrote letters to each other about it. Big thank you both for the amazing music over the years! and the lols in this thread to a lesser, but also important extent. | Rob | 1 yeah good q, we love cartoons, rem, hard to say from which is most fave so mbe i'll think first for a while. 2 same answer but will return fewer options i expect 3 easy 4 easy thanks back | ||
443 | have you considered yr answer to the favourite cartoons/animation question froma couplea days ago RB? | cartoons animation yeah i forgot i have a few bests, but my mind froze with the prospect of trying to package them up . here goes moebius - collections like Starwatcher, Chaos, film Maitre du Temps, nearly all his, as long as its not early cowboy era giraud really. jodorowsky & moebius - Apres L'incal Druillet - Delirius, Yragael, Chaos, Lone Sloane Roland Topor & Rene Laloux - La Planete Sauvage prob some i can't think of again sorry , might crop up later. | ||||
444 | I am citizen insane | "in a world ruled by immediacy and ease , contemporary artists try to deconstruct reality, and reconstruct it in a much complex way, which offers all kinds of prospective and aspects" : do you relate to this statement? have you ever used modular synthesizers? what do you think of this kind of instruments? is there any chance to see you live in Italy? | Rob | not really too attached to statements about contemporary artists, i mean not to miss the point of the q much, but if people have more options, i expect more outcomes, dunno. yeah we have a handful of modulars, real and unreal, bought and made. yeah we visit Italy almost every time. we've had lots of support from italian people thanks! | ||
445 | concerning modulars, how much do you use them in the studio? because it happens to hear some sounds in your record that make me think: "that awesome sound... must be a modular!" | good, that suggests its deep - which is nice because i have a tendency to feel that modulars give deeper results - and the studio right now is all maxmsp. for other older tracks - that depends on which tracks your thinking of | ||||
446 | like tapr in Draft 7.30, the texture in the background sounds a lot like a modular patch. could it be? | to me most of the texture here appears in the foreground. | ||||
447 | pigster | is there much modular on pre-untilted stuff? | yeah some | |||
448 | mcbpete | Have you seen Jeskola Buzz - It's very much what SunVox is but with an insane amount of user created generators and effects - | Rob | is it on more platforms? | http://ilovecubus.co.uk/pete/buzz.jpg | |
449 | Unfortunately Windows only - I think the older builds (released in the early 00s) are compatible with WINE, but I don't think there's any Mac support. | Rob | ||||
450 | triachus | I read somewhere there's an interview where you guys said you consider Incunabula and Amber as the 'cheesiest' albums you made. Can you elaborate on that? What do you mean with cheesiest? Most accesible? Least challenging? It does sound a bit harsh to say something like that about your work. Did you imply that you feel a sense of shame about those releases because you were still trying to find your feet? Does it bother you that those are the most popular amongst listeners? | Rob | yeah that was me, i said it in a way that was easily misinterpreted. a classic case of assuming someone knows what your on about and them not at all. it was in relation to incunabula i guess. lol no shame at all, i still rate these releases, i mean they're the first stuff to fully come out. it meant a lot to us to actually have an album on a brilliant label. i think what i meant was (in the context of the original interview, as the journo was commenting on the striking differences between old and ((then)) newer work) i think i was trying to say how they were perhaps more simple, but not in a shit way. | ||
451 | katmat | We're you aware of Basic Channel etc in the mid 90's? do you rate their work? | Rob | dude these releases were absolutely seminal | ||
452 | phling | how important is a "hands-on" interface for you when you work on music?, obv. you guys like play all sorts of gear, but when you're using your Max programs for instance, param editing, composing, jamming, is your mode of working more prevalently computer-y with a screen, QWERTY keyboard & mouse? or do you consciously spend time to think about & augment your HI's with dedicated controllers (monome, ipad etc.) to get a more instrument-like feel from your applications? seems like last couple of years controllers have evolved quite a bit due cheaper/better parts from mobile phone tech etc.. use any of these like, dunno, q-nexus? data-gloves? vr-helmets? | Rob | hands on is important to a greater/lesser extent depending on what were up to, like configuring one that adapts as fast as the system (in the case of max) initially the cons outweigh the pros. so mouse/trackpad is cool enough for blazing through patching. something super simple but mega flexible that mirrors what were doing works well on end results, (as seen on oversteps tour). but i rate most of my hardware for its controls interface, i.e. old nord modular V1 kbd. my bitstream BS3x's. | ||
453 | Woozz | Do people often recognize you in the streets of your city, or wherever you go ? Do you have special memories, or exclusive infos about "Garbage EP", and specially the track "VLetrmx", (which is for me the beautifulest track that a human being ever made) ? | Rob | not really on the whole, it has happened, mostly when were in a town with a show that day and theres some likely attendees floating around. yeah i remember being particularly excited by the nature of the kick drum transient with the bass tuning that we got on garbagemx, and yeah the result of vletrmx | ||
454 | salvaKPO | Was the software used in the Oversteps tour the same as the one used for the album? What were the roles that your Macs/ PCs played in live shows, over the time? I remember you (rob) talking about that you could do entire tracks on old computers and that now we need lots of processing power to do that same. What software did you run on those old computers? I remember seeing Sean in a video with some IBM laptop, making stuff with granular synthesis. What software was that? | Rob | its been changed quite a lot since oversteps, on that tour it was expressly designed to drive the sequencing for outboard nord synths. the load i would get on a thinkpad w/48mb ram, was higher at one time that i could on later macs (PPC 7200), but not a true or fair comparison, cos i reckon the reliance on plugin inserts had shot right up in mac os compared to windows. once when we used an early mac laptop for live work, we also opted to get an IBM thinkpad so we had both at the same time. the thinkpad ran windows version of NM editor amongst other things exclusive to PCs in a live set. i think that granular synth was Granulab, what video, i wouldn't mind taking a look. | ||
455 | telefunken | from ~4:30 mark | thanks for this, not seen this before. yeah thinkpad, yeah Granulab, but they've hit the screen hard with that premiere plugin its hard to be certain. they knew they were pushing their luck with that camera fully in our faces so i think they were scared to show it. | https://vimeo.com/9551622 | ||
456 | jhonny | I spend most of my time driving the snake pass and can see why it's been important/referenced by you (and rdj). It really pulls you in but is massively frustrating as well (mottram bypass pls). It's also pretty magic in the dead of night and a great time to listen to tunes. Do you still get up to Sheffield much? Fancy DJing the new Computer Club night at the uni that Hanal is sorting? | Rob | can't say, not been to sheff for a while, Hanal is a close friend so anything he does is good by me. | ||
457 | Refund | during your periods when you were working with raw audio files, how did you manage collaborating with each other? did you have a system of tagging? any sort of timecodes or marker systems for syncronisation? categorise them as percussionhits/soundevents/beds/beats or did you just go freestyle? (also, any related anecdotes about co-operative workflow could be extremely illuminating) do you have any methods for organising/planning the overall 'form' of a track, (as in, labelling and co-ordinating all the 'sections') and have you built up your own vocabulary to explain these things? | Rob | when we first met, we got on well because of a similar lack of musical training but a similar descriptive understanding of what we liked in the forms of actual sounds (more than full tracks). kind of a bottom up language which works well to this day. no real anecdotes recently - its quite easy to remove whole channels by accident - i ruined Seans' latest version of the skeng remix by losing a track. it was a while before we realised, while i was commenting on the mix so far, that what i had was completely wrong. i guess just staying up to date with contents of folders is easy enough, say in older work, DP's 'edge edit copy' creates new files each time theres a change, so only latest files needed sharing. | ||
458 | Refund | PD vs Max: I use PD and find it hard to manage the cpu usage by hiding all the gui elements in subpatches, (and it seems that not many people really do huge compositions within it like you do) is max any easier to manage this specific problem? | Rob | yeah it has presentation mode. | ||
459 | sergeantk | i've been kind of at a wall with putting together releases lately (burnt out on the whole dub techno scene), any advice for experimentation? i always get stuck doing the same things on most tracks. | Rob | try really hard to do a very shit track | ||
460 | Gravity | I saw you mentioned footwork in your recent Fact interview, has it been inspiring you at all? Been getting more and more into it recently... people have been making some interesting fusions with it as well. The drums in Runrepik sound a bit footworky... | Rob | not inspired by the current incarnation per se, but as a form of what i like to think of as general hip hop styles, we've always been in into the kind stride some heavy percussion at the right tempo has. Runrepik beats are oversteps tour sound system test patches. | ||
461 | mcbpete | Hah, still using Granulab to this day myself (after about 10 years of near daily use I thought it'd only be fair for me to pay for a registered copy :lol:). Is there any other granular synthesis programmes you enjoy using (or do you mainly make your own granular stuff) - It's by far my favourite tool in my kit, making a simple 16 bar loop getting evolve into a 10 minute ambient thing is my usual trick : | Rob | ok if u can squint hard enough to verify, cos i can only make out horizontal controls there, and our granulab is all vertical, memory is patchy here so might be another app. also i can sort of make out a waveform across the top. ah yeah course. doh edit yeah they filmed us playing back files in wavelab. but the tracks were granulab jams iirc | http://www.ilovecubus.co.uk/mp3/small_mercies/Track03%20extract%202.mp3 | |
462 | Sean | yeah we do our own usually these days we used to do similar stuff with an eps but you'd get clicks | ||||
463 | telefunken | there was another one realtime granular app at this time (and still is), called CrusherX. did you used it? | Rob | no sorry didn't have that one | ||
464 | Rbrmyofr | How did you do that great repeating delay feedback sound in Drane where is sounds like the delay time is being changed a lot? LP5 sounds really clean and crisp (for want of a better word) compared to anything that came before it, was this your first major move to Max/MSP and away from outboard synths / effects? Who is Jacobean? | Rob | not telling no sorry? | ||
465 | Jacobean from Mask 500 | now u have me playing the Dranes back to back really loud. | http://www.discogs.com/Various-MASK-500/release/19800 | |||
466 | sergeantk | Has being a full-time musician ever put a strain on the enjoyment of making music? | Rob | no, it makes it more enjoyable. | ||
467 | Root5 | Can you say anything about the melody in irlite (get 0)? It's a really insane melody, like nothing I've ever heard before. How'd you guys come up with it? | Rob | this was partly covered in an earlier post, its quite a long track, hard to know which bits you mean really. | https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-DROVNRVHFv8/Une2ttDcRoI/AAAAAAAABKE/3MaSkCHChhY/s640/IMG_0349.JPG | |
468 | Refund | Would either of you like to name my synth? | Rob | chuckshene btw none of our gear has ever been named afaik, this isn't something we do to ourselves. | ||
469 | arvy | Whats your favorite track on L-event? | Rob | currently Osla for n | ||
470 | Bertolt Brechtakt | There is a quite interesting book by Jan St. Werner (of Mouse On Mars) & Klaus Sander from 2006 called "Vorgemischte Welten" (Pre-mixed / Prepared Worlds) where they discuss about music composition / innovation etc in the age of Ableton & Co where you can basically build an entire discography on preset sounds and beats only - like cooking with deep-frozen food. Their argument is that this sort of preset-based production has killed innovation in music and simply interesting music. Would you agree with that? And have you ever tried to work with presets of plugins / softwares only (and achieved anything satisfying)? | Rob | i think its been the same situation since presets were put there. we have though there are plenty of arguments to the contrary - like we grew up listening to music with hundreds of tracks illustrating variations on say how a DMX or an 808 through a studio desk can turn out, i think custom is better overall, cos its more you. but only if thats the point. | ||
471 | Friendly Foil | Can you name my desktop computer? It's old and dusty, if that makes any difference. | Rob | Heater | ||
472 | jules | i feel like untilted > untilted tour > quaristice > quaristice tour was like 1 big creative chunk of exploration. has working out live stuff from 1 record always contributed to the next album as much as it did with that stuff? | Rob | yeah this throughput was useful defo, but hard to answer definitively cos live sets were very often a separate setup cos we ether a) not like to 'do' studio tracks in live context. like whip out bass cadet on request. b) couldn't do it with the gear we wanted to jam onstage with. c) or other. but after each tour we'd come back to reset, untitled/elektrons et al - like Sean said earlier were easy to get out the box after moving house/studio…. so it was a starting point to mess with what was in there. then moving on from hardware live setup, had the effect like in reverse. theres been a strong sense of contribution from previous live set to the following album, but not always in literal use of gear terms. sometimes just a reaction to it. not sure if that is clear tho' | ||
473 | mcbpete | Is there anything more hilariously distressing than the sound of a broken merry go round: | Rob | shit i need to insure my ribs, this is the sonic equivalent to the bull wallet versions | http://www.sweetthunder.org/tapes/tapefindings/week119/11_76Trombones.mp3 | |
474 | http://www.sweetthunder.org/tapes/tapefindings/week119/12_TheSoundofMusic.mp3 | |||||
475 | coax | do you you have specific visuals / spaces / ideas for your tracks that persist, or do they change over time so you see the music in a new light? | Rob | yeah nothing specific visually, its usually too wild or turbulent to be literal. yeah things change mostly down to adding more experiences on top of experiences. disembarking off a cliff edge but horizontally is a recurring good one. | ||
476 | Obel | If the yellow power ranger is a girl then how the hell do you explain this? | Sean | the director was obviously implying that gender is a social construct | http://i.imgur.com/Z6YyBg0.png | |
477 | lumpenprol | 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). | Sean | 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 | ||
478 | thief | 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 | Sean | i dunno i guess we were reacting a bit to everyone asking why the japan only tracks were always a bit rubbish | ||
479 | hoggy | What do you think might be the effect of extreme cerebral stimulation of listening to for example especially long tracks on Exai? Especially when that stimulation is hard to vocalise or simply emote to or physically express? For example, sometimes when I really love something and find it intangibly stimulating, I find that I have no way to express it to people (a description can't really express 'that thing') - do you ever get this kind of frustration? Do you think it might effect how someone thinks, behaves, feels? To try to clarify a bit more - I'm talking about extreme stimulation with no real world counterpart - that thing where something just 'does something' you can't explain it. | Sean | tbh it's only frustrating in a third party kind of way like, if i'm seeing someone trying to explain to someone else what's good about a track and they end up resorting to ill-fitting metaphor or cliche-speak but in terms of us, and process, or playing rob stuff, nah, u can just tell if someone is getting it, there are a ton of unconscious signals i think. or i feel, i mean | ||
480 | That makes sense, but I meant that I sometimes get an impulse to act (don't you?), driven by something inspiring, but because of the strange nature of the inspiration, there's no way to act on it, there's nothing that correlates in the real world - it's like watching a film containing the secrets of life but made by aliens, and totally connecting with it it, but then having no way to apply it It's the impulse to act on it more than the desire to explain it verbally I was talking about more It's like that thing Francis Bacon said: “Supposing I was satisfied with what I did? How can you be satisfied, because everything escapes you. You know that perfectly well. You know that even if you’re in love with somebody, everything escapes you. You want to be nearer that person, but how can you cut your flesh open and join with the other person? It’s an impossibility to do." | Rob | Yeah well, i get that, but its a normal human thing right?, to want to rinse the things you love so much for all it may have. With inspiration, i see it as similar, that it can simply be something transferring from a persons one idea to another, like the film effect u mention. The actual idea can be way different, but still knock you onwards to do your idea. | |||
481 | Jev | There you go Ae, one of the victims of your musical output. | Sean | i think bacon's assuming some things about death there | ||
482 | ExtraLife | Were the Peel Sessions done in the BBC studios in a short period of time, or were they older tracks dusted off? It amazes me how so much pure emotion is funneled through Drane. | Sean | they were done in our studio as a chunk of tracks, i.e. we got the request and then did the tracks one after another | ||
483 | SammyTheCrab | What is your fav acid house 12" What is your fav album or 12" cover art Can you remember the label of that acid 12" with the hip hop acapellas ove the top (ice t shante ) etc.. as im trying to find a copy. are your decks original or did you ever have to replace them | Rob | it changes, prob my most awesome fave is very often : Jaquarius - Love Is Happiness(Acid Rain) 1988 what!? one cover? right now as yr asking : Unsane. the one with the track : Bath on it does todd terry count, not acid, but house, such a prolific house producer u mean like 'sharp as a knife', brandon cooke 12" - club records?, ones my proper first 1210mkII the others a bit newer. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LNMDsdtLFc | |
484 | xy_politics | Just thought I'd chip in and say thank you for playing that track in the last radio session you did. I heard it a single time, live on the radio, over 25 years ago and always wondered what it was. I bought every single Phuture/Pierre record in the hope of finding it, convinced it was by them. Not having a recording of it, I couldn't play it to anyone, and had to try to describe it in words - cloudy, sleazy, convoluted chicago acid, etc - didn't get very far with that.. As soon as it started up on your broadcast I couldn't believe that I would remember it so well after all that time (and that it was so great, of course) Shame it's so bloody expensive, lol. Erm, question.. Do you have a few words to say about 808 State, and what kind of impression they made on you in those early days? As a manchester teenager at that time following Chicago/Detroit music, 808 were largely responsible for shaping my musical language, and when Warp got into gear, it was just a logical progression. Oh, and could you please name my SK-5? :-) | Sean | martin price sold me that jaquarius record, i used to go in there after college and bug him for the weirdest acid tracks, he was really chuffed when that came in, he was like 'here, listen to THIS' 808 state were a huge influence, particularly newbuild/deepville/loungejays - and the first gerald album 90 and ex el got a lot of plays as well. the r8 use on 90 was a big influence your sk-5 is now called melon | ||
485 | Rob | running behind on these, so hope its not been done yet…. SK-5 , 'Vimt 0' yeah 808 state were a major catalyst around here, them and baby ford and gerald, a few others too. but 808state had that whole step seq shift thing going on, yknow more notes than steps, or vice versa (like Tdream but fully mancunian hard-nosed about it) and all the scallies would rate it as much as the toffee nosed critics. they would always make tracks that got in the charts yet had major drops or breaks that were an 8th note short of a bar. | ||||
486 | DVDDTRTH | Was wondering if you could confirm whether the track in this youtube video really is by you, or whether it was mislabelled - doesn't sound like your other stuff, but i guess you guys aren't known for keeping to one style. It is at the second half of this video, starts at around 4 min. (also its not the track labelled in to comment section) | Sean | yeah it's our remix of various artists | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o_zc4kEwo4 | |
487 | http://www.discogs.com/Various-Artists-Remixes/release/13017 | |||||
488 | Adam | Do you like the matrix sequels? | Sean | god no they were absolutely shit | ||
489 | Zeffolia | What item under $100 would you suggest to someone who wanted to start making music? | Sean | renoise | ||
490 | PikkioMania | What are the best/your favourite records to listen while on train? | Sean | super linear stuff works well i like basic channel, chain reaction, acid tracks (actual acid tracks not people making techno songs on a 303) | ||
491 | Rob | yeah roland kayn - tarego II - is a good one for rotating perspectives | ||||
492 | encey | 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. :) | Rob | 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 | ||
493 | ExtraLife | What is the first track you play for people that have never heard you before? | Sean | 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' | ||
494 | northernplastic | So you worked on tac lacora for several years? Impressive. | nah it was done in a week or so, i was playing him the edit the original live jam was done in a few hours tho, a few months before that | |||
495 | o00o | Do you always take time to get a distant view on tracks before you know what you did there and release them or do you just work on them very long? | ||||
496 | Rob | that really varies from track to track. some get turned over in an afternoon, others are built on ideas that took years to facilitate hahah we're about to phase each other out! | ||||
497 | Papillon | Is there some other artists' song that you wished you had written? Do you guys even listen to mainstream music? | Sean | 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 | ||
498 | mrmegaman | 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" | Rob | 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. | ||
499 | John Ehrlichman | 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. Sonderemawe sounds like it had some virtual metal plate/membrane action happening in it. A | Sean | 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 | ||
500 | John Ehrlichman | 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 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? | Sean | 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 | https://optic-isolate.bandcamp.com/album/hardcore-indie-punk-muzak-for-angst-filled-rebellion | |
501 | Schlitze | 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? | Rob | yeah sometimes its like that for outside radio programmers, we get quite busy with requests when we announce a new record. | ||
502 | John Ehrlichman | 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? | Sean | 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 | ||
503 | Stickfigger | what did you guys do in Australia in between gigs? Did you get to do anything or just hang out in the hotel? 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. | Sean | 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) | ||
504 | RandySicko | I imagine most famous people would like to still think of themselves as "regular guys"... but I can't imagine not having some sort of complex if I was in the spotlight for two decades and becoming more well known then most people ever be. Do you feel this has gone to either of your heads or manifested itself in ways that contributed to a loss of touch with the rest of society? I tried not to load the question too much. | Sean | not really, most people don't have a clue. it's not like we get recognised in the street | ||
505 | olo | 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? | Rob | yeah it was fun tempered with a carnage kind of angle. just being there is enough, detroit's reach has been deep for us… like going to the centre of the universe in a way. | ||
506 | Did you rub elbows with any of the Belleville Three? Was Derrick May like, Awww my GOD! it's the Autechre! You guys comb my hair back with AwEsomEnEss!!!? or were you guys like Derrick May, OMG! Noooo Waaayyyyy!!!? knuckle bumps. | no we didn't meet any of them, but we got Juan to play with us in japan some time after that. which was stupidly hard - cos even though we hung out a fair bit, i remembered all the things i wanted to pester him with, as i landed at heathrow. | ||||
507 | luke viia | are you working on tunes while you watmm? | Sean | nah i'm listening to stuff other people's | ||
508 | kirm | If 1 of you died would the other carry on releasing music? and would you still call it Autechre? | Rob | dunno if it would be fair to call it autechre, sometimes we have impersonated each others' styles in a track in any absence, but i doubt it would be fun to do it post lossage. | ||
509 | lumakey | any idea how long it took bladelores to come together? was it something you kept returning to over a long period of time? the wash at the end is beautiful. | Rob | a while, some of the back end was built before the track became what it was in the end. also timeline in this context isn't accurate because we had a few tracks on the go simultaneously, so divided by them, dunno. hahah | ||
510 | Schlitze | In the lead up to Draft being released you did a mix for Radio 3: Mixing it and a mix for Mary Anne Hobbs. The Radio 3 mix was full of bombastic dance beats which almost left the presenters speechless, while the Radio 1 mix was more cultured/refined. It was almost as if the two CD's had got mixed up in the mail and went to different areas in the BBC. I thought that was a nice touch :-D | Rob | yeah the mixing it mix was super condensed to like 15min | ||
511 | Sean | cheers yeah we thought a show called mixing it should get a mix where we're really 'mixing it' and MAH i mean, yeah playing dockstader and wendy carlos on a usually trendy show just made sense somehow | ||||
512 | Deion Sanders | What do you guys think about this? [Laurel Halo - Years] | Sean | some nice harmonies and the bit where she sings low is well trippy | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYqZ6IQPUhM | |
513 | rekosn | any of you ever get tinnitus? (esp.after too much fm) how do you get around it, when it stays for a while?(days, weeks) | Sean | yeah i have pretty constant hf tinnitus and occasionally i will get either a kind of rippling bass sound or like a 70% reduction, both of which can last for anything from a few seconds to a few hours, and then seem to clear up by themselves. i found that listening to computerworld by kraftwerk seems to make them go away faster. not joking there, it works for some reason. prob cos it's a neural feedback thing, i think i'm shoving something in the feedback path and kind of washing it out. | ||
514 | northernplastic | Does your family like your music? By family I don't necessarily mean your wife/gf or possible offspring. Maybe your parents? Or your aunts or something like that. Did your family play a role in the making of Autechre back in the beginning? Like, supporting you and stuff like that. At what point (release) were you both able to make a living off your music? | Rob | some of the music they had on around us had some bearing on things. after touring the US in the first tour, pretty much lost my job on returning cos i used up all my allowed holidays, then got offered a week in moscow, so from that point on i had little choice but to try to keep it up. | ||
515 | John Ehrlichman | is it strange to either of you guys to see the corporate world appropriating the style of imagery presented in Gantz Graf? I'd imagine it would be somewhat off-putting to create something as amazing as the Gantz Graf audio/visual presentation and have hundreds of knockoffs being used in anything from a car commercial to a scene in a bad hollywood film. this takes me to another question though, what does it feel like to have a ton of people imitating your styles? Was there a conscious decision to just go so ahead of the curve that no one could possibly predict or emulate the future of AE? Or did this just happen on its own (because that's where you are now). | Sean | nah not strange at all in fact i think alex's graphics work suits that environment, in a good way cos that he's pushed it so far it makes it something else if alex was actually designing corporate presentations they would be fucking excellently done but yeah i mean sometimes people think they hired someone to appropriate something and they get the result and they can't tell it's like a totally shit version of the thing they asked for like the robots in I, robot, imo they are like a really shit ripoff of the bjork robot, but the director/producers prob couldn't see how badly done it was so it got used i don't mind if people want to adapt what we've done (in principle) at all. whether i like the music is a different question tho we never thought we were being ahead of other people, we've always felt like we are making music for here and now | ||
516 | Panoptic Sweep | The first half of d-sho qub is one of the most floor-friendly moments of your later years, with a sublime melodic hook. Are there more 'accessible' versions of this track? You could have made a few bob off that! Have either of you found yourselves treading a particularly commercial-sounding path and felt the need to dial it back? Or do you just release what ever, paying no mind to something sounding commercial or not? | Rob | it doesn't seem particularly weird because they're more normal = commercial, making stuff purely for commercial supremacy would be a rod to beat ourselves with, so not something to dabble with lightly. i think the first parts of D-sho qub aren't a million miles from say bike or tracks on our first releases. so its been a thread we can't help its something we do naturally, commercial or not. | ||
517 | limbae | how does one mix such complex tracks, so that various sounds don't nullify each other? simple eq? | Sean | i don't have a snappy sounding answer to this i know a lot of producers would say something lame like 'turn everything down' or 'mix with your ears' but i can't go there i read so many stupid posts on gear forums like that, it never actually works like that. every case is different | ||
518 | Rob | for me - something can just click into place after running it for days, then just changing one thing, and suddenly theres a moment of awareness like was just totally meant to be that way and it couldn't tell us. | ||||
519 | triachus | can you name my acoustic guitar? I haven't played it in years, needs a new life. | Rob | Rifdent Stroakes | ||
520 | Suffocate Peon | Any tracks you've done that you thought went unappreciated maybe? Calbruc and Iera spring to mind.. Or do you not care? Do you have a general interest to find out what tracks people seem to prefer? | Rob | nah, things vary so much, people change minds, tracks age well others don't then get cool again, theres no short term stability to it. | ||
521 | Ivan Ooze | do you like ween? it's 2 crazy musicians making a bunch of awesome tracks | Sean | yeah i fucking love ween pure guava is in my all time top 10 most days | ||
522 | Ivan Ooze | describe the machine that is autechre in a haiku | Sean | an easy one, then i guess i should have a go actually, fuck it | ||
523 | feltcher | syllable fail. :facepalm: | not if ur from manchester | |||
524 | YELLOW | I'm curious as to how soon in the creative process one of your tracks will be given a track title or a working variation on a track title? | Rob | most likely as soon as we save some of it. and the process then can continue | ||
525 | RandySicko | Sean, regarding your answer to the question about the resonant structure in question... I remember reading somewhere a long time ago (interview maybe) that the sounds were infact from your rectum - the piece made as a joke or "statement" referencing the sort of rabid fan who would purchase their favorite artist's new album even if it was straight farting for 45 minutes. I won't ask to confirm or deny ...but I think it is hilarious if true. | Sean | nah that's not it | ||
526 | baph | I have to do full disclosure on this one, and I apologize in advance because I mean no offense, but back when I worked in construction and it'd be a brutally long job without a porta-john or other socially-sanctioned urine receptacle around, there would always be some corrugated sheet metal shack set up as a temporary structure, and man, to pee on those things was fucking bliss because the sound was really beautiful and capable of all sorts of textural nuance. I mean, I know I'm pretty weird, but even your typical tough guy construction bloke loved to piss all over those things and serenade the vacant-lot skunks and pigeons with lovely resonant pee sounds. So uh, were you peeing on something metallic? Or can I if nothing else get validation from someone respectable that peeing on metallic things is ok and normal? | nah we weren't but i mean, sure m8, it's totally normal | |||
527 | Boxus | Could you tell me anything about what you like to do in Jitter? Have you used jit.repos much? Lately I've been trying to do these weird polar coordinate morphs in repos, I like to just set up the math, then get high staring into the webcam playing with settings. Also do you ever draw/manipulate spectral data for visuals? I'm kind of obsessed with spectrograms. Actually the first thing I did when I got the Exai digital release was make a max patch to play the wavs through a spectrogram with some symmetries and stuff. Still one of my favorite ways to listen to the album! | Sean | i've never used jitter for spectrograms, might give it a go sometime. i've not used it for a bit, i don't have java se6 on here so i'm locked out for now i was doing stuff with gl mostly, no video stuff just graphics | ||
528 | Food | what is your favourite cartoon? do you really dig any drummers in particular? have you ever sampled rubberbands? zen/mindfulness/meditation: is there the odd buried reference in yr material? did you know valis is basically a true story? there are online doco's and the exegesis is a real thing - you can buy a pretty large chunk of it in paperback. It's pretty wild. RAW also got hit by a pink beam of information, he and PKD wrote letters to each other about it. | Sean | time masters, akira, my neighbour totoro the first cartoon i liked as a kid was battle of the planets. i liked it a lot keith leblanc, sly dunbar, john french yeah it wouldn't be buried actually that makes a lot of sense i really liked ubik as well, i get chills when i think about it | ||
529 | zleep | Do you still use eurorack modules? I remember you said you use some doepfer modular in an early interview. Do you have any recommendation/favorite modules? | Rob | don't think we said we had any doepfer, we have a british modular. | ||
530 | limbae | Do you use microphones to record one-shots of some sort? | Rob | have done | ||
531 | Alcofribas | one of the most notable things about your records for a long time now, but especially with exai and lel event, is how unique the textures are. on watmm lots have noticed that the latest ep has a very "frothy" and "wet" sound. I don't mean this in a gay way. anyway, are there any records that you guys like that have such a distinct textural quality. for instance, phoenicia's "brown out" or gas "pop" come to mind as examples of records that have a really unique feel and detailed textural aspect. don't say computer world. | Rob | always liked redundance 3 - porter ricks, for this additional note re: much earlier post about driving music, i mentioned Erik Satie on entering a new town or city, this also rocks for that, but its the flip of that coin really. good scoping-place-out tune. was tempted to post the youtube but its shitty quality sorry | ||
532 | northernplastic | Sean, do you get pissed when you see Autechre albums in sharethreads? And what's your general stance on music piracy? | Sean | i grew up taping stuff off my mates i prob wouldn't be making tracks if we hadn't been able to do that. well, not very good ones anyway tbh i don't care at all as long as we get enough to live on | ||
533 | Redruth | what is yr opinion on the new bladerunner project? can u describe a strange, noteworthy sound u have heard? with no restrictions, logistical issues or politics, no problems of any kind; where would u most like to play live musics? it could be anywhere (under the ocean, the bottom of the mariana trench, the core of the sun wherever) memorable, unusual sounds or things u have sampled, field recordings in hopes of using in musics, regardless of whether u did use it or not? which artists / abstract paint do u enjoy? cy twombly, francis bacon, jean-michel basquiat? | Sean | i try not to read about it i mean maybe it will be amazing, i dunno i wanna give them the benefit of the doubt yeah the sound of ice sheets being hit by small stones and the sound of claps echoing off a large corrugated wall which is set at an angle a gig deep inside the untersberg would be interesting i'm sure a metal master of a record (which is attached to a wall by a nail, thru the centre hole) being spun so that the rough unfinished edges of the disc rub against the woodchip wallpaper, recorded with a mic positioned underneath, quite close to the edge. yeah we used it i like bridget riley a lot | ||
534 | skyking | What is your stance on illegal file sharing? A collab with VHS Head possible in the future? What are your thoughts on Vatican Shadow output? That last track on Radio mix - one of your own unreleased tracks or a remix? Sean, that Casio Databank is still working? | Sean | voice in my head saying 'do not answer' every time i see your name answered about filesharing already, don't mind as long as i can live off music dunno, it never came up, but i like his stuff loads. not sure how good a collab would be he has his thing i dunno how we would make it any better i've not heard enough to comment unreleased track nah it snapped where the strap goes , got a replacement | ||
535 | s1l1c0n3 | Was wondering about the soundtrack work. I know you can't talk about current things in development (or not) but I did want to know if there were any films you wish you could have scored, or how you would have approached the scoring of certain genre films (say Blade Runner, or Alien for example) | Sean | kind of hard for me to separate the existing soundtracks from the films, to me blade runner would be shit without vangelis and i know he doesn't rate it but i reckon the alien music is some of the best stuff goldsmith did so i dunno, 'what they did' basically | ||
536 | Schlitze | 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? | Sean | yeah back then we would just mail them a cd, nowadays it's file transfers not usually inundated, but if i told warp we want to do as many as possible then we are, just depends on how available we make ourselves | ||
537 | Bread | 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.... | Sean | really? i can't hear it | ||
538 | 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 | nah i don't know why everyone is focusing so much on the nsa everyone's at it, all spying on each other it's not like some nice neat pyramid, it's like a web in the future we're gonna be so much more networked than this, even the concept of monitoring will be totally antiquated | ||
539 | John Ehrlichman | what do you think of this quote by raymond scott Quote "Perhaps within the next hundred years, science will perfect a process of thought transference from composer to listener. The composer will sit alone on the concert stage and merely 'think' his idealized conception of his music. Instead of recordings of actual music sound, recordings will carry the brainwaves of the composer directly to the mind of the listener." —Raymond Scott, 1949 | Rob | Haha, god yeah that could get well messy. Nice sentiment though, but i like the spot we're at right now, i like ppl climbing into the bass bins at gigs, and ppl on balconies jostling for the best sweet spot..... | ||
540 | Jev | Sweet spot on a balcony where all bass cumulate into mud and mids bounce like crazy? Sweet spot is definitely a subjective term then! :D | Yeah theres something for everyone when u throw a huge acoustic space into the scenario. | |||
541 | Sean | or an outdoor space | ||||
542 | Yeah I mean, with abstract music (your music) one can really benefit from inaccurate acoustics - interesting experiences may occur. I have unfortunately never been to your show so can't tell but I was pretty disappointed how most of my favourite bands sounded live. Sometimes I was even unable to recognize what track is playing at all and it was not because of them jamming unexpectedly - it was shit mix and acoustics basically. | yeah the last tour was completely dry nord stuff so we were mixing it differently every night to make the room give us the reverb and echo, every room sounded different edit: actually rob had some verbs in the g2 as well | ||||
543 | Rob | Well say if you were drunk on booze, that wouldve smashed yr hearing at loud levels in addition to the shit rig/space. Getting pissed spoils things a lot. Not saying you were btw, just saying how most gigs come over to a lot of ppl. | ||||
544 | northernplastic | What do you think of Yoko Ono's latest stroke of genius? | Rob | Makes me instantly think of all the things New York is capable of. | ||
545 | MadameChaos | you said you like Lynch's films, but do you like his music? | Rob | Really like the track Crazy Clown Time ,I prefer the dirtier side of his music to the slinky housey stuff But the most special ones like the thought gang tracks with angelo badalamenti, Pink room. | ||
546 | soma | I'm curious if y'all feel like masters Or more jack of all trades, master of none. | Sean | nah we're not masters of anything, and def not jack of all trades, we got like the least transferrable skill set ever | ||
547 | 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? | Sean | i dunno it's hard to pick a favourite, either a broken frame, some great reward or black celebration, depending on mood exciter was ok but tbh i liked them more when alan was with them | ||
548 | mcbpete | Oooh, I know what I've been meaning to ask for ages. The code inside the tape inlay of Draft7.30 My theory on here a while ago was this - mcbpete, on 16 Jan 2013 - 08:37 AM, said: It kind of looks like Rube-Goldberg code (i.e. a convoluted way of doing nothing) in what looks like Pascal - A whole bunch of 'for'/wait loops with no actually functional part of the code, so it's either a timing section from a larger piece of code or (more likely) a bit of geeky humour by the boys about the process of the audience listening to the album (eg. Repeat Listendraft; until time = 1894 for tracknum = 1 to 12 ) So what actually is it ? | Sean | that description is pretty spot on | http://xltronic.com/media/images/attachments/2_592492.jpg | |
549 | coax | are you already now starting to hear material you would release on a new album? and like, since your albums sound so different from one album to the next, do the tracks typically come from the same sessions or do you pick and choose from tracks before like, the previous album and so forth. and do you find that you have many aesthetics and ideas that are not released that you could have done a new album out of? | Rob | Its been over a year since we delivered exai, normally we might be sitting on some work that could end up on the next album, its hard to say at the mo, my instincts are that we'll not need it. The tracks have in the past been typically from the same period that end up on them, sometimes quite a few dont make it cos theyre not fitting for some reason, these could in one way form a non released aesthetic that u mention yeah. But have something that might've not worked well with the style of the lp. In exai's case there was a lot of other material available to us, some similar styles to exai and some out of style stuff. | ||
550 | o00o | Boards of Canada said they jam a lot and then sample the best parts to create songs. Do you also work that way? | Sean | sometimes, but loads of other ways as well | ||
551 | YELLOW | I'm curious as to how soon in the creative process one of your tracks will be given a track title or a working variation on a track title? | Sean | soon as we have to save it usually sometimes it gets changed way later tho, when we compile a release | ||
552 | Ivan Ooze | when i listen to cloudline it's like i'm stuck on an autobahn in da future did you guys plan it to be like this | Rob | Yes it could be, the forward, pressing on vibe but no. Its more of a sonic retina retention excercise, to smear emotional responses to music. | ||
553 | soundwave | you guys seem to be quite consistent in release an album + following EP/mini album every two years, is this a contractual thing or a deadline you set yourselves for motivational purposes? Do you take time out from music making after a release or are you constantly working on something on a regular basis? | Rob | Pretty regular basis. | ||
554 | Boxus | Have you guys done any coding in ChucK? | Sean | nah but i saw it years ago and it looked interesting iirc it was made for live coding, is that right? would prob appeal to me if so | ||
555 | Yeah you can queue up different bits of code on the fly. I just started checking it out last week, it seems pretty slick. I like how you approach time in it, you set up all the parameters then tell the compiler to pass chunks of time to let sound happen with that config. Kinda trippy, makes you think differently. I was listening to Oversteps today and I was wondering - did you have specific patches for those tracks that would generate them in an ongoing way, so you could leave them open as long as you wanted and have the melodies keep varying? Or were the songs set up to go through a certain number of variations / loops and then end? I just imagine it would be so sweet to pop open a patch and have it play a couple hours of pt2ph8 while you're doing things around the house. | yeah exactly the original takes are long as fuck. i was doing that most days, followed by loads of editing in the evenings | ||||
556 | YELLOW | How large are your personal music libraries? Records or CDs or Tapes or digital? Which format do you consume the most? | Sean | never measured it i don't even know how many records or cds i own 23881 tracks in my iTunes lib er digitals mostly, depends on what room i'm in, i only have one deck atm | ||
557 | sergeantk | Any experience with anxiety disorders? Some AE is so disassociating that it induces a state similar to the total dissociating feeling I get during severe panic attacks, such as Cfern. | Rob | Apologies for that, honest, but i find most tracks we do more comforting than a panic attack. | ||
558 | John Ehrlichman | were you guys inspired by the production methods of older dub music for Exai? One of the distinct differences between that album and the other before it is the overwhelming use of various delays/flangers/reverbs. A good example is how at one point in Irlite the snare sounds almost like it's entirely made up of some kind of flanger noise from being automated at a quick rate. Also tons of cavernous reverb bursts, which you guys have been doing since Confield arguably, but on Exai there seems to be a distinct focus on some of these classic effects (but not being used in classic contexts always). Things being fed into the effects, especially the delays and then having the delay line suddenly stop (like in the ending of newbound) are techniques i've not heard in earlier autechre. | Sean | not directly, our ref points are a bit different, we grew up on stuff like duke bootee, d-train, egyptian lover. they were doing weird things with drums, processing them in tasty ways, but the music wasn't like totally about that the way that dub is. i don't even know if it came from dub directly for them either i think my life in the bush of ghosts was really the record that made a lot of that stuff happen, at least in nyc anyway. but yeah if u wanna find stuff that's influenced us listen to tons of 80s hip hop, it might become more obvious if you let your blinkers down for a minute | ||
559 | futureimage | What are your favourite analogue filters for sound synthesis? (This is for a uni paper I'll be writing over the next few weeks) Also, Reproduction or Travelogue? | Sean | i dunno about filters i don't have a fave really, i'll use anything travelogue but only cos i had that first for years | ||
560 | blos | Over-thought question time: one of the main differences between "early Ae" and "later Ae" is the tension between rhythm and arrhythm - at least that's one of the main things I get. Obviously "flutter" was consciously in that vein but it wasn't a major part of the toolkit until maybe cichlisuite / chiastic / envane. At least that's how it seems to me. Obviously we all like a massive 4/4 boom-bap, and that's like junk food when you guys do it well (e.g. 6IE.CR, IO, 1 1 is, etc) but my very favourites (e.g. Pencha, Osla for n) seem to scatter beats around like confetti while a steady pulse runs invisibly through it. Oh yeah, the question. How does that come about? Is it usually programmed? Some kind of time-scatter algorithm that you push right up to the bleeding edge of rhythm v chaos? Micro-editing? Played live and tweaked? The reason I ask is that it's probably the number one thing I like about Ae and the most difficult to describe. | Sean | various ways, sometimes it's all programmed step by step, sometimes played in, and sometimes defined in advance and then run off in realtime (i guess you could call that algorithmic) my spellcheck was turning realtime into teatime then | ||
561 | How hard is it to hit the spot, just a feel thing? Or trial and error? | both really. trial and error, feel to make decisions | ||||
562 | John Ehrlichman | how much influence if any did Farmers Manual's work have on you guys? I know the terms 'idm' and 'glitch are rather crass these days but are there any pioneers of this genre that you feel laid important ground for future music? | Sean | i'd say less than ramon i dunno i mean no one i know uses that term so i don't even know what artists qualify. i always think of general magic tho when someone says it really i guess it means yasunao, which i mean, well he's fucking brilliant isn't he | ||
563 | 30equals | Do/did you play any 'traditional' instruments like guitar, drums, etc... yourself before you started with electronic gear ? | Rob | Not really, just the kind of stuff primary schools put in front of you. | ||
564 | Sean | for me it was electro that did it, seeing people scratching and realising i could do that and seeing tomorrow's world with the emulator, and then seeing an sk-1 in dixons for 25 quid | ||||
565 | soundwave | Do you guys dig slow drone/ambient/minimalist type stuff? Perlence Subrange 6-36 was certainly a step in this direction, would ever consider doing more stuff like it or was this just a dabble? | Sean | yeah def i mean that kind of happened cos that loop had been already going for hours just as a kind of ambient relaxation thing and we decided to capture it for a bit that happens a fair bit tbh, i might do a 5 bpm mix of a track just for myself, or set it off running and just leave it on for a bit while i do stuff | ||
566 | Rob | since we got access to DAT then CDR then AIFF / ways to record long pieces, programmed or jamming, weve been doing stuff along these lines quite a lot. | ||||
567 | Panoptic | An old friend of a friend from Manchester, who claimed to know you, told me this story about you being on a plane - around the Chiastic Slide era, maybe on tour - dipping mics into cups to get an interesting effect. Did this actually happen or was he talking out of his arse? | Rob | Yeah i think thats true, i remember that. airplane service plastic cups, small stereo clip on a wire sony mic ( plug in power kind) . It spins by itself as u lower it inside the cup giving u good results. | ||
568 | John Ehrlichman | i've noticed recently in your music there is a 'fractal' like quality to some of the sound manipulation. for example those high end pad sounds on Y7, the bassline sound on Treale and most recently that twirly little white noise sound in Osla for n. Was this a conscious decision to somehow create an audible sound that conveys a fractal pattern? Have you ever attempted to use a shepard tone like LFO controller to control parameters of sounds/synths/effects? I'd love to hear a track of yours which is a bare sound in this vein, like some kind of barber-pole shepard tone drone AE track. edit: and side question, what's your favorite thing to make a tuned/melodic delay on? Nord? they seem to be particularly good for that. Glad to see this sound making a come back on tracks like Spl9 and Tac Lacora. | Sean | there's some shepard stuff on that .dial track off gg (u prob noticed already tbh it's pretty obvious) ha well if i do anything like that i'll fire it over i've been using msp for that cos as u prob know i like shoving things in the feedback path used to use the desk and whatever crappy delays we had around but i like being more in control of it if you get me | ||
569 | 30equals | Are you familiar with early Belgian electronic music like Front 242, Neon Judgement and did it influence you in any way ? | Rob | I was a bit averse to it tbh, only later more recently did i give a shit. My uncle left me some 12"s decades ago, more along the newbeat end of what i would've thought as disco. I liked that stuff but i didnt associate it with bands like front 242. Ill look up neon judgement thanks | ||
570 | 30equals | How hard is it do decide when a track is finished ? | Sean | i dunno i just realise i can't think of any way to improve it, so it gets shelved for a bit come back to it later see if i feel the same way | ||
571 | burnibus | With a track like treale did you have a good idea earlier on about its trajectory? It builds harmonic tension throughout and then that sweet little melody at the end is a pure release and blissful. Just wondering if it kind of just happened or was more stategic? | Sean | it was strategic but only after we had put down a load of sequencing, it kind of revealed itself as a possibility with all the bits we had available to edit together | ||
572 | John Ehrlichman | never noticed it in dial, first time a fractally timbre really stood out to me was in Y7. It's a fun mind-fuck to try and figure out how you guys achieve sounds like that, and I try to guess how (most of the time I'm probably wrong). what's most amazing to me about this point in your musical trajectory is how much shit is going on at once, that if a typical musician tried to attempt it the mix would sound muddy, things would lose transients, it would sound like a flat mess in the wrong hands. You're one of the only artists doing sounds this crazy that also seem to have a high level of audio engineering skill to work with all the elements. for example if someone tried to reverse engineer Tac Lacora to what appears to be it's individual elements, a reverse order approach would be the only way i could see getting it to sound as nice and slamming. It makes me wonder do you guys jam out some of these more crazy 'full' sounds, record them and then later refine them through audio engineering tricks like clever use of sidechain compression and eq, careful multiband compression, parallel compression, etc? | Sean | in the case of tac lacora it was mostly like that as it went down in realtime, but yeah there was a ton of bus compression happening apart from that it's mostly in the envelopes | ||
573 | Jev | So you really manually adjust every single bit of the track by envelopes? That surely needs a lot of patience (or motivation). | yeah but not editing by hand, changing according to conditions | |||
574 | So you mean like AMP envelopes (or gates etc) in MAX or a DAW - not volume envelopes per each track (?) | yeah usually people are asking us about transients and it will just be a really radical amp envelope | ||||
575 | John Ehrlichman | the envelopes thing is intriguing because it seems like the whole concept of an envelope follower has been taking to the extreme in a lot of new AE compositions. like using env lpf type sounds to squelch the drums. I love how fwzE sounds like the whole song is going through some kind of really tasty wah-pedal type filter, seemingly using some kind of drum controlled envelope. | yeah tbh it's prob the result of listening to old hip hop radio tapes while tripping you get all that extra texture, and the whole track being fucked, i dunno we're just really into it | |||
576 | Philip Glass | I see you guys mention Jerry Goldsmith, always thought the mid80's sound of his Yamaha DX-7 (that and the dozens of other synths he used throughout his career) was way before it's time. Stuff like Legend or Total Recall or Hoosiers, Damnation Alley or the awesome stuff on Star Trek : The Motion Picture. | Sean | i always liked that kuato mind meld sequence from total recall, really nice | ||
577 | John Ehrlichman | It's kinda too bad not many composers followed in his footsteps ie: the total recall soundtrack. It seems like most orchestral/electronic music fusion after that point took a nose dive into the shitter. I've never heard anyone after Goldsmith be able to so seamlessly throw synth/electronic elements into a traditional orchestra sound | i think badalamenti does it really well but it's maybe not as overt | |||
578 | yeah his stuff is a little more blended I suppose. He's a good example of someone, I'd put him sort of in the realm of Mark Snow but far better. I just recently found out the ridiculous (but good) choral patch-laden Nightmare on Elm St 3 : the Dream Warriors soundtrack was by Badalamenti, worth checking out. | o rly didn't know he did that, cheers for that | ||||
579 | Rob | dope, i didn't spot that 16yrs old! i'll rewatch it | ||||
580 | lamourfou | Do you guys remember the process of each track? What about Surripere? How does Draft feel to you in particular? | Sean | most things surripere was two tracks originally, the second half was done before the first but the first half wasn't done to go with the second, they were just the same tempo and it occurred to us once we had both bits that we could put them together draft feels skeletal to me, kind of hollow but deep as well like a ruined city in the distant future | ||
581 | Obel | I'm cooking dinner for a lady on Saturday night and struggling to know what to do for a starter. What are your thoughts ae? | Sean | prawn cocktail 70s style make sure you use too much of that pink sauce | ||
582 | Rob | i once had grilled green chilli peppers with a fried egg, and sea salt crystals. at a smart joint, and was like, hey this is posh truckers food. is she into truckers? | ||||
583 | Sean | ah brill i've got green chillies that's brekky sorted then | ||||
584 | thehauntingsoul | How do your parents/extended family rate your music. Do they enjoy it or are they really confused why you make it and why anyone would buy it? | Sean | my mum likes amber i guess that's predictable though | ||
585 | soundwave | What did you think of the sound FX design in the new Transformers movies? | Sean | it sounds like it looks, like piles of rubbish fighting each other | ||
586 | Obel | That's what some people have said about Fol3 to be fair :) | haha shit man you're right oh well | |||
587 | salvaKPO | Do you know any sound design that you liked in movies? | Sean | yeah pretty much every little detail on Alien is amazing might just be context but we used to really fetishise it all oh and THX 1138 and star wars, i mean i don't wanna be boring but ben burtt was seriously a big figure to us as kids the making of empire strikes back where he's hitting the cable to get laser sounds made a huge impression on me | ||
588 | 21B | alien transmission sound design was ben burtt | Sean | never knew this, awesome | ||
589 | YELLOW | Could you recommend an essential record in your opinion that most of us might now know? | Rob | Not sure if youre after something more obscure, but an all time mind blower for me as a schoolkid quite new to more grown up hiphop electro. the bit that rolls in from 3'04" is one of my favourite moments in popular electronic music. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwh3BL9cCpM | |
590 | Taciturn | Can Exai be read as [1]? Searching around, I found this wikipedia article on phonons, which give rise to sound, and states: The positions of the masses are denoted by [2], [3], [4], as measured from their equilibrium positions (i.e. [5] if particle [6] is at its equilibrium position.) In two or more dimensions, the [1] are vector quantities. I may be reading too much into things, so here's a secondary question: Any interesting wikipedia pages you have read as of late? | Sean | funny, coincidence err here's one [LAST LINK ON LIST TO RIGHT] | http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/0/5/e/05e42209d67fe1eb15a055e9d3b3770e.png | [1] |
591 | http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/3/d/2/3d24b6ea393a005a6455de6863fd00c2.png | [2] | ||||
592 | http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/3/d/2/3d24b6ea393a005a6455de6863fd00c2.png | [3] | ||||
593 | http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/3/d/2/3d24b6ea393a005a6455de6863fd00c2.png | [4] | ||||
594 | http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/7/1/2/7120a9a536094b727bebc2ca6e21b977.png | [5] | ||||
595 | http://upload.wikimedia.org/math/8/6/5/865c0c0b4ab0e063e5caa3387c1a8741.png | [6] | ||||
596 | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler–Feynman_absorber_theory | |||||
597 | thehauntingsoul | So this little game called 140 came out on steam a few weeks ago, and I immediately thought how awesome it would be if something along these lines was done with you guys and your work. It's basically a rhythm platformer where all of the obstacles move around in time with the beat, with ever-increasing complexity. Would you guys ever consider doing something along these lines and try dabbling in interactive/procedurally generative track writing? | Sean | yeah - if we had time to properly get into it i reckon it could be really good does seem like it would be tricky but then i never made a game with things that actually move around | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItqGbGd3c94 | |
598 | lamourfou | I have a very specific question about a single track. Surripere. It has been my favourite since Draft came out and seems to have a narrative to it, a story almost. Do you remember the process? Or could you pick a track you could give some more meaning to? (Surripere to me is an alien train on a doomed path). I imagine your tracks as pulsing and moving visual objects or scenes, do you ever think of them visually? | Rob | Surripere was something pretty heavy as it turned out to be 'that long one' on that lp, i think at the same time we knew if we got it right it would get to be a really good part. There wasnt a descriptive narrative as such but it was mostly down to getting the relay of quite a few events to work into each other well. I guess its got some visual sense of flow and then some still, then turbulence and such. | ||
599 | Jev | rob, Sean said you may heard some Einsturzende Neubauten. If so did they influenced you significantly (early albums)? Like "oh cool sounds and possibilities"? | Rob | sorry no that was a three point misunderstanding, i don't know any. i said to a journo recently something about caspar Brotzmann, and i think the Skype went weird | ||
600 | o00o | I keep asking about harmonics as you guys do it so well you give the most abstract sound a soul by adding harmonics to it that still send shivers down the spine 10 years later. You say you can not play instruments well so how do you create these great melodies? Are they all max generative patches or do you just jam and harmonise everything after? All your records since the first sound like you really know what you are doing with your melodic / harmonic content while for me its really hard to nail the expression in a way you just seem to do with ease. Any suggestions where to start? A book? A tool? technique? | Rob | i dunno, i mean even when we first started doing tracks being new to working with each other, we hadn't really learned anything by then, we'd do bits of tunes separately and they turn out to be in key with each other - or if not - something that really worked in interesting ways harmonically. | ||
601 | YELLOW | Are r ess and t ess xi related in anyway? What about other tracks with similar namings? | Rob | i've seen mentions of how those two titles are sharing some meaning but they're not. tracks like bronchus's are from an imaginary series, we add to when they sound like from the same cannon - in our way of thinking about them, or used to be, thats a kind of habit thats not happened in a while. | ||
602 | Jev | rob, I asked this already but I understand not every question from that huge pile can be answered: How big role plays a mastering engineer when it comes to the vibe of the records. Is he only supposed to make sure the mix of the album is consistent by light touches here and there or were there any situation when he really pushed a track sound to another level? | Rob | yeah sorry i saw it and wanted to answer but sometimes the best response isn't the immediate one, cos i know what i mean, but it may not articulate to be worthwhile. noel summerville,he's the only guy that could actually cut draft 7.30 to vinyl (yeah think thats the right lp). we weren't happy with the first few test presses we got from another plant, so we got warp to throw the premasters to all the cutting rooms they trusted. noels' TP was spot on given that Draft was heavy on the really quick transients, wooden mids, tight and and rubbery bass - hard to commit to vinyl and get it loud without limited to mush - and keep all the air in the tracks. since that we went in there every time, sit with him talk about our thing. he gets it, suggests often simple transparent approaches he'd like to try, explaining why, and the outcomes etc. we get into it and its done. | ||
603 | Interesting. Thank you very much. So if you disregard vinyl mastering for this question would his impact on the final sound be also as significant? I mean, there is really a thin line between what needs actual mastering (not just check of an engineer if the record sounds good) and what not. So I always wondered if there were times when he, for example, gave you an advice on how to mix something problematic in you tracks properly to simply make it sound better (to underline the emotions in the track, make it bigger or whatever) or if he really fixed some track that you two were not capable of pushing the right way. Sometimes a master sounds almost identically to a final mix but sometimes there is a big difference that makes a real impact on the track. So were there any situations like this? | Sean | his goal really is to try to get it so the vinyl sounds the same as what we gave him but we worked with other engineers who like to get busy messing with stuff (pretty much all of them tbh, noel was the first one we met who had that opposite approach of trying to keep things intact) | |||
604 | Rob | we learn from their actions of tempering a final mix for cd/dig/vinyl, and work to get the differences minimised for next time, but usually they really don't want to tread all over our thing. but they're really important to us when were at that stage. mastering engineers - or good ones - are pretty good at quickly spotting a situation that can cause problems, they do it all day everyday loads of styles come their way so they have a great non-interfereing overseer role. as long as they don't go trying to make 'creative decisions'. yes theres been plenty of situations where its been done right and wrong, luckily were using noel and so far he's been great. | ||||
605 | gabrielconroy | Do you both mainly listen to sequenced electronic/synthesised music, or are you also into hand-arranged sample layers stuff? What do you think of Burial, for example? | Rob | where would u put burial in the above categories? | ||
606 | Those categories were a bit rubbish, sorry. I'd put Burial in the second one. I guess I'm interested in what you two think of stuff like his that's made completely from samples, using a computer, but still arranged by hand (and not necessarily sequenced according to some complex metre and tempo structure). Are you drawn towards listening to stuff that has machine precision as a major part of its identity, or do you also appreciate stuff like his that has a more heavily human character? disclaimer: I realise this question is a bit stupid and you can draw the line on human intervention/decision making in different places, but I suppose that's what I'd love to hear your thoughts on. | yeah i've got a fair bit of Burial. i used to catch stu allan's hip hop radio shows and house shows, in-between these slots he'd play2 hrs of soul (was the original slot b4 the others came about), i was one of the few kids i knew that could get into it. the britsh stuff was even better than the US, so to me what Burial does is a continuation of that, very UK take on that dripping wet emotional R&B. i would argue perhaps its not so much by hand, i like the roughness and sometimes unpredictable mixing, but i def hear a strong if somewhat elliptical swing. i get tired of the zippo snares sometimes heheh | ||||
607 | jules | hey rob, I noticed you clicked on my profile. I'm just going to assume it wasn't one of those accidental clicks and you were intending on sending me a soundboard or a cool photo for my house. thanks man. | Rob | ok cool. quaristice or untitled? ;) | ||
608 | auxien | So at the end of The Thing, Macready and Childs are alone in the snow, with everyone else seemingly dead, drinking whisky. Which of them is an alien and which is human? Are both still human? Also, are you John Carpenter fans? Love his 80's films, and the soundtracks him and Alan Howarth were doing are great, are y'all fans? Do you use digital/analog feedback ever in your tracks? It's one of my favorite tricks to breathe life into tracks...I started doing so often digitally when I got comfortable with AudioMulch (which if you've never heard of, is a pretty nice little prog). What was the last track that you remember scratching with actual turntables on? Who did the scratches in Goz Quarter? | Rob | i'd say human, triumph over alien scum. yeah big fans of carpenter yeah big feedback fans, haven't used audiomulch u mean which track of ours did we last scratch on or which track ever did we last scratch on? not sure if i should say - we can both scratch | ||
609 | thehauntingsoul | rob! I know I asked this earlier but I have to know haha. Can you name drop a few tracks that were exclusively you and exclusively Sean? For science! | Rob | no we like knowing just for ourselves, when its all over someone can cut us up for science then and only then all will be revealed. | ||
610 | Colani | Hey rob, I'll ask this again too, even tho it's a boring gear question. did you ever check the octatrack? i remember reading once that you initially weren't over enamoured by the MPC when you switched from ensoniq. After the elektron heavy untilted and quaristice I thought you'd both be all over it when it finally dropped but it was nowhere to be seen on yr live sets. I've read mixed reports about it as a whole, was just interested if you had a take on it. | Rob | no not tried it, my initial disappointment with mpc1k vanished when i got JJOS as it dealt with most post Ensoniq issues, by the time octatrack got out, we were heavily software only. i might mess with one given the time - have to get one first tho' | ||
611 | modey | I've seen mentions of tracks being edited jams; are they recorded in multitrack for maximum editing possibilities or do you just work with a stereo mix? This is one of the biggest hurdles for me when I jam with others. Sometimes one of us would be on to something awesome and then the other comes in with something that totally destroys everything. Do you guys just generally record long enough stretches of everything so that editing out a mistake/unwieldy experiment won't matter too much? | Rob | with jams, on a good part find a kind of holding pattern which the others can come in on, then they do the same, and u come in with mods to your thing etc etc…after a while if its all going well things can get risky and more interesting as u know what is likely to work well. its ok if u have enough time to space it out and keep good bits to trim back down, or trash the stuff thats not working. if u mean real jamming like all at once then u need to get a quicker feel for things. i mean me n Sean have been jamming since day one so we can fit quite well. the unwieldy bits are usually the fresh ones. | ||
612 | amni | I find you guys to be one of the most unique electronic artists and the most advanced when it comes to composition. There have only been 3 times in your career where i thought, oh this track sounds heavily influenced by...and wanted to know if these artists did inspire the tracks. Slip on Amber reminds me of Severed Heads VLetrm21 from Garbage sounds like Arvo Part Pce Freeze2.81 from Oversteps reminds me of Breathing in Fumes | Rob | shit yeah pce freeze does, wasn't intentional, Breathing in Fumes is one of DMs most amazing. the other references, i've not really heard any songs by. | ||
613 | modey | Woah, really? Any track in particular? | yeah thats totally fly. reminds me of a lighter keith leblanc, and Propaganda in production terms, quite Trevor Horn. | |||
614 | amni | Severd heads era 83-86 check 3 mins and Dead Eyes open. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E--oGXcC79Q | |||
615 | yshf | I think I can recall awhile back one of you guys said something about how hard it is to leave home because you always feel the need to produce stuff, but I was just wondering if there are any tracks of yours that come to mind that at least stemmed from somewhere besides the studio? I know I often find myself braindead in my studio space with so many options surrounding me - I need a change of scenery to influence the creative headspace now and then. Is this something either of you can attest to? | Rob | yeah it was a while ago we said that, partly due to preferring our studio to anywhere else to work. a friend in miami once gave us a Roland PMA5 - maphive6.1 was all this. Then the travelling to shows after oversteps tour i used Sunvox a lot on iPhone. so anywhere i could get headphones on was good. the thing is with being out of the studio, if u hear something amazing u want to use, its usually too elusive cos mics aren't getting it down like our ears/brain, so it won't transfer imo. so reduce it to something u can capture 'as is' that works. | ||
616 | Redruth | name the children's book that had a particularly large effect on u as a child | Sean | alice in wonderland | ||
617 | did u know that we eat an average of 1 kilo of bugs each year, ground in prepared foods, hiding in salad or whatever? | yeah, nutritious bugs, yum | ||||
618 | have u ever held yr hand up, wiggled yr fingers and asked yrselves, wtf is going on? who am i really? | yeah | ||||
619 | i love the future sound of london from the archives series - can u name several tracs u consider highlights? | march of the money men, linear block 5, mouth muse, skinny ribbed fu__er, rotation, yashica, outer heaven | ||||
620 | have u listened to the jack dangers peristaltic wave trac? | no | ||||
621 | do u have a secret place were u like to go, that no one else knows about? | how would i know for sure? but yeah, i think so | ||||
622 | would u name something u consider to be of interest within yr immediate vicinity, where u r right now? | only weird anon buildings i can't figure out, there are loads round here | ||||
623 | if u could eat anything at this particular moment, what would it be? | these prawns i had once in this japanese/italian fusion place in tokyo. i got no idea how he did it but he was using soy, tomato and garlic with some other weird as fuck flavours i couldn't identify. the chef was super secretive, just kept laughing at me for asking. | ||||
624 | in the motor vehicles, who is the speedracer between the two of u? | rob, but i don't drive. if i did it would prob be me | ||||
625 | when flying on the airplanes, have u gotten into any noteworthy conversations with the passengers? | yeah once i say next to ken russell but he never told me who he was, i only realised later. he just said he made films. we watched speed together, he kept pointing out shit bits, he was pretty funny. | ||||
626 | name one thing u would change about the educational system in the uk | if there was some way to allow kids to study things they were actually interested in that would be cool | ||||
627 | did the both of u choose to remix the falling trac or did mick choose it for u? | can't rem. i think mick chose it | ||||
628 | do u believe in electro magnetic fields? if so, do u believe they have a negative effect on the human body? | well they def exist, they have negative effects if you stick your finger in a plug socket | ||||
629 | what's for breakfast tomorrow? | i got some wild mushrooms i need to eat so I'm gonna have them in a bit, dunno what with yet, maybe an egg | ||||
630 | will u name one thing u have found near yr home which u consider interesting? | u asked me that already | ||||
631 | would u plees name one ambient music recording which u fancy? | god that word ambient is such a loaded term (thanks brian) - i'm gonna say phaedra | ||||
632 | Ivan Ooze | Sean aren't you worried it might be some funny shrooms you are having for breakfast? or are you a professional wild shroom hunter | nah i'm just a professional wild shroom buyer i can sue if it goes wrong | |||
633 | zleep | do you guys read magazines or website related to science or math the like to see the new or current technology maybe applicable to your music? | Sean | yeah a fair bit but not loads there's so much happening out there tho, esp in the computer/tech domain and the politics/pseudoskepticism in the science press gets a bit much sometimes | ||
634 | Ivan Ooze | do you turn up the volume when they play in the air tonight on the radio in the car is the matrix the third member of autechre? how many kickdrum rushes are there in Phylopn? | Sean | in the air tonight is a brilliant track why does it get so much shit, everything about it's ace, even the weird as fuck lyrics and shit man it was made in 1980 that's pretty amazing to me from a production/style point of view yeah 1 | ||
635 | amni | What do you think of Ricardo Villalobos? To me he is up there with Autechre in being one of the most out there "dance" artists. You guys def push the boundary of what we consider composition more than him due to his 4/4 beats anchoring his tracks but I do like the fact is is quite abstract. I always thought 808 State were the Weather Report of the dance scene. Comments? | Sean | not heard much villalobos i'm sure graham would be chuffed to read that haha i reckon 808 state are tons better but what do i know | ||
636 | mcbpete | How was this possible in the 1960s, is Delia Derbyshire a time traveller ? | Rob | yeah its sick really, ppl have always been knocking out stuff that gets redone again and again without knowledge of prior attempts, in this case Delia was from a time when recorders were suddenly on hand for proof | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szE5D-dPs_Y | |
637 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6pTdzt7BiI | |||||
638 | 21B | could you gently prod at mat steel to release a solo album? | Sean | yeah i'd love this, maybe he would use more than one chord | ||
639 | amni | I was thinking about the popularity of the DJ and that the future clubs could well not have DJs but computers with a distict style of music and you woud go to the club that played the style you liked. How far away is this going to happen? I watched this doco about Automaton and it blew my mind that this 240 year old creation had 6000 parts and could mimic hand writing and draw. Have you seen this before? | Sean | yeah it's pretty cool but it's nothing compared to the antikythera mechanism | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUa7oBsSDk8 | |
640 | biffleboff | What darts game did you sample on Pro Radii? | Sean | aw u registered just to post that how cute | ||
641 | I am citizen insane | considering your experience, what would be your advice for a (beginner) musician to avoid getting stuck in making a track and find a productive workflow? | Sean | no idea tbh, we started out with hardly any gear at all, and workflow is a kind of boring thing to me tbh, once i have a workflow sorted i can't help fucking it up | ||
642 | MadameChaos | if you could have been alive in any other time in history, which would you pick and why? | Rob | not easy to dive in to these kinds of questions, but most of history appears to be more treacherous to survive than now so i'd rather choose a place than a time. stood next to a creaking glacier, to see if i can tell its moving | ||
643 | coax | Sean nice description of draft earlier - I'm curious, do any of you have any similar views on Untilted? To me it's like very far future or even alternative world, very gray blue and yellow, exactly like the cover. the cover fits it perfectly really. I had this weird vision of a lot of metallic and concrete, and weird streets that didn't look like streets of our time, but still had the shape of a street and people walking. And fermium was playing out loud from some place around the corner. I love how your music allows this kind of strange association because of how unique the sound is. | Sean | yeah like dutch motorways or something, but the scenery changes abruptly like playing out run or something neat as fuck but scary and fast | ||
644 | k h o v | Whenever i plays Perlence Sun it reminds me of that 1985 Vangelis track, from the Invisible connections LP, is it kinda related ? Inspiration or something ? A shame he didnt go further in that minimal abstract style instead of his poly philarmonic orchestral/choir hollywood madness. | Rob | yeah Vangelis had the perfect touch at times. i don't think we ever get directly influenced to ape something but i fully share these aesthetics. growing up with bladerunner on one hand, yet chariots of fire, both major mainstream, but only really blown away by the former. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RrzRVO9S8I | |
645 | Uzohvezxfn | Do the hard sciences, specifically physics/mathematics, play a large role in the structures and moods of your guys' sound? Also for Sean, or rob: have you guys studied at university or autodidact certain subjects? E.g. physics, maths, philosophy, etc. What track of yours would be the most appropriate to play in a daycare center? Thanks. | Sean | not really a big role but i'm interested in how stuff works i dunno os veix 3 or something | ||
646 | jules | do you guys have an idea of where you are going next after exai or does that generally come together in jamming? or actually, do you define where you are not going? | Rob | i'd say its a bit early to tell, i wouldn't say anyway - whats the point, but in the past we've been quite 'over' the prev lp, partly cos it was 2-3 years of making pieces that at the time have no collective power in a way that then gets sort of configured as one whole move. once its handed to warp, another 3-6 months to get it out. so by then we're already moving on. | ||
647 | triachus | Exai was announced almost half a year in advance before the release date in a facebook post by tdr, saying they were working on the new album art. WATMM nearly exploded after that. A smiliar thing happened with a tweet about the L-event artwork. How did that happen? Are they allowed to do that? Was it your decision or the label's decision to let those bits of info leak out of the blue? Was it a promotional thing? Will future Autechre releases first be vaguely announced via the artwork designers from now on? | Sean | nah we never asked him to do that he just gets chuffed sometimes and has to post something it's no big deal really, altho it can make it tricky to surprise people with something so it does affect announcement/strategy sometimes ian's a bit naughty tho, you can't control him really | ||
648 | ExtraLife | What advice would you give a class of 5th graders in regards to pushing creativity in an ever-more regimented public school environment? (This is a constant struggle of mine.) | Sean | ok so i'm from the uk and we don't have graders here, how old is that? also i assume by public school you mean a school for the public (cos that's not what that means here) | ||
649 | tbh i kind of lost faith in school around that age, i rem my science teacher saying that atoms were the smallest thing and i was going what about protons neutrons and electrons and he said 'ah i don't need to teach you about them' and i said 'well i could do your job then' that's the same age when i really got into music, it kind of filled the void for me having mates asking me for mixtapes so i just kind of went with that | |||||
650 | jasondonervan | When I saw you guys at the Rainbow in Birmingham on the Oversteps tour, once the lights went off and you fired up, the whole place went a bit mental, mainly thanks to a small rabble of stella-fuelled lads down the front head-banging away and screaming at the top of their lungs as if they were at a punk gig (I think everyone needed to cut loose after Russell Haswell had blinded everyone with his lasers first). Does crowd reception play much of a part in your live sets? Are you driven by how the crowd reacts (if you can even hear them!), and do you modify any of the parameters of your performance accordingly? | Sean | yeah absolutely, it's one of the perks of being able to change things on the fly it's almost the point tbh which is partly why a crowd of non-dancing americans holding phones in the air can be a bit boring for us | ||
651 | lumpenprol | my wife is 2 mos pregnant with our second kid (yeah, only 7 months after the last popped out). Any ideas for a name (girl and boy options)? (at first this seemed more than a bit tacky but come to think of it, if you propose one that gets the approval of the missus, it'd be an awesome backstory). for ref, my daughter's name (in my av) is Haley. | Sean | wait you're genuinely asking? not sure if i should even answer | ||
652 | haha, yeah, I'm really asking. If it's too weird, no worries, I'll just do it myself. "Come here, little Acroyear..." | Rob | hahah insane, i named our #2 hal just to get the job done, but many ppl don't like it for the simple reason they don't like it as a trad name, and as a futuristic one. although the downside of a real name is that if someones' met a 'XXXXXX' before, they're immediately basing things on that prev character. so yeah. lets see what gives, u nutter. | |||
653 | Jev | when composing do you find it easier and more spot-on to do it live by pressing pads and keys and turning knobs or you prefer editing in DAW by mouse? I know you jam a lot but when you need to get some part of a track right after it was already put in sequence what would you do? I mean, for example when I do some ambient pads composition I am often completely unable to do the tempo and dynamics to feel right. But when I play it live it turns out mostly in what I wanted it to be (which is not the case when trying to do those things with mouse). Also when dealing with the whole track structure (here is a "chorus/climax", here gradation here it stops and so on) I also find it much more intuitive and natural to do it live than sequencing it step by step. Editing is of course inevitable after that most of the time but you know what I mean. | Sean | yeah i think the screen gets in the way the sequencers that we build ourselves don't have much visual feedback at all, fwiw | ||
654 | So you have made your sequencers and mapped it to midi controllers and control it hands on? I mean I don't mind screen that much, the mouse is the problem most of the time when composing. I mind screen when mixing, so I turn it off often when making judgement but can't do completely without it - and closing my eyes does not work for me because I feel like I am concentrating too much and lot of other thoughts comes almost instantly :-) | well kind of yeah, our own seqs have varying degrees of control, and we sometimes use midi input to alter params (the seq is doing the actual pattern gen but might have some variables) the mixing aspect is entirely controllable usually, altho it can be automated only time i use a screen really is to check things like position or whether a param is on that i'm not on the right page for with my interface, or when i'm editing, which is later and obv requires a screen | ||||
655 | I see. So you use something similar like Mackie Control Universal Pro for mixing? I am thinking about such interface for mixing but I can't really imagine controlling EQ and compression with it if resolution of knobs (or steps) isn't good and flexible enough. And neither I want to use hardware processors for this as I see them as a pain to use with 40 + tracks | nah i'm using a kenton killamix mini atm i only have 8 channels running usually but i also have a bcr2000 here for bigger tasks | ||||
656 | Hm, that leads me to a possibility I am not very economic with my projects' housekeeping (track count, number of FX etc.). So you are completely able to do EQ and compression stuff with killamix? Is it sending midi or something with better resolution? Or are you doing just rough adjustments to processors and then do more polishing with mouse? | yeah the killamix is just for setting things quickly, we have finer control on screen - and internally (there's a fair degree of self-management going on using conditionals) | ||||
657 | AdieuErsatzEnnui | Sean, I like your avatar. I never got a chance to play Flashback, but Out of this World/Another World was one of the my early games that left a lasting impact on me. Do you think you could do me the favor of choosing my new Avatar for WATMM? I would very much appreciate it. Also, what games, if any, do you have very fond memories of playing? | Rob | isn't there a Mac MAME of it somewhere no? another world was ace too, flashback's incredible tho. defender was sonic as fuck at the time and the way everything would glide around zaxxon and some of the other weird titles for coleco-vision! obv many atarii (sic) enjoyed playing 'time splitters' (1) w/Sean in his custom arenas. | ||
658 | Sean | tempest oh and centipede which they used to have at middleton baths and i used to absolutely cane | ||||
659 | soma | Re: Tempest Have you ever played Tempest 2000 for the Atari jaguar I believe it was? | Sean | no good? | ||
660 | Grim on Mbient | I always wanted to know if the Criminal Justice Bill eventually changed your style in a way? It seems like you can divide your catalog from before that era and after that era or is it just a coincidence? | Rob | hahha we do get hit by reviews bashing us for being deliberately awkward (not true), but in the case of Flutter mbe they were right. | ||
661 | skyking | Any recollections of this early 90's gig in Moscow? Heard it was a total fuck up on all fronts. Is this the reason you avoid touring in Russia? Any memories you can share are greatly appreciated. You both are fans of original Alien. Your opinion on Prometheus? | Sean | nah that gig went p well, it was the night before that went totally weird yeah i mean i'm not dying to go back there, we had a bit of a rough time, rich and mark p both got brutal food poisoning and bruce had a gun pointed at him and we don't have any distribution there or anything i thought prometheus was alright really even tho there were some well stupid bits | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6uM93pJ0UI | |
662 | k h o v | Pan Sonic, just like Autechre, is one of my favorite band, They kinda started at the same time as you, with roots in the rave scene, then going more experimental, just like you. But Pan sonic were mostly recording in real time, improvising, with few edits (as far as i understood). They splited up a few years ago. Do you think having separated studios, not seeing each others every single day, might be helpful for your longevity ? I mean many bands releases records after 20 years but really few bands still releases KILLER records (oversteps, exai) after 20 years. As a fan those recent records were the biggest surprise. | Sean | i dunno i mean panasonic [sic] are really diff people to us, and they had a bit more distance to contend with than we do plus the internet wasn't as fast back then | ||
663 | xox | Have you come across any praiseworthy modern 'academic' computer music? Any recommendations? | Sean | not for ages think the last thing i really liked that could really be described as academic was a horacio vaggionne thing in like 2003 but i can't even rem the name of it was on GRM anyway | ||
664 | Ah ok...i can't find any myself either... i thought it was me. Thnx! IMO the biggest mistake of the academic world in what they do is degrading music to the level of scientific thought (as 'knowledge' in the narrow sense - just what’s measurable is valid, being method or cognition). I understand that they are pushing some ideas and methods but also refuse to understand how human beings and music work on non-intellectual levels. I don't think things gonna change any time soon regarding this. | yeah it's ironic that most of the best composers in that area were actually blagging it a fair bit (parmegiani comes to mind) and were really doing their own thing, but had to present it as though it were a lot more conceptually simple in order to get it listened to or funded i mean these places are basically ruled by stuffy old men with huge egos, it's not so much about the academia itself more about the way people inhabit these kinds of institutions imo | ||||
665 | soundwave | You guys say your mainly software based now when creating (max/msp), does any tactile interface come into play with sound sculpting or are you just as happy tapping a mousepad with a brew? What's your opinion on the direction of new electronic hardware from the 5yrs? | Sean | i like all methods tbh, but pads and max are two fave opposite approaches i also like using trackers, when u get into a groove with them it's dead fast i like the fact that there are tons of tiny companies making modules but i wonder how much of the trend is fuelled by lazy thinkers who would rather go shopping than actually have to make anything | ||
666 | feltcher | I went to see Underworld at Brixton academy in 2008, they recorded (professionally) the whole gig then released it straight afterwards as a limited edition 2CD set. In fact they did this for every gig of the whole tour A fantastic memento of the gig, and you could probably do it in such a way that only ticket holders could get a copy of the CD (initially...) Thoughts on this process? Shirley you could do this or something similar for your next tour? pls? | Sean | this has been discussed a few times if we can get it so the mix sounds decent enough in both contexts then yeah i reckon we might give it a go sometime the last tour we recorded everything as a kind of feasibility test and we liked the results | http://underworldlive.spinshop.com/CDs/details/109397?parent_url=http%3A%2F%2Funderworldlive.spinshop.com%2F | |
667 | Obel | Sorry to be a pain guys, but I made a tune back in 2006 which another user on here recently made a video for (Triachus) and I was wondering if you guys would mind providing a critique, maybe a short review that I can use on the EP cover when it inevitably gets a vinyl release? | Rob | "better than EBN for all the wrong reasons" just to be clear - I'm trying to be humorous. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11GbnPHWf5s | |
668 | Phew, ok. Now that rob's out of the way, I can't hurt his feelings. He named my acoustic guitar Rifdent Stroakes. It's not bad, but it's too obvious a reference to Diff'rent Strokes. Not dissociative enough. I was thinking what name you would give my dusty old acoustic guitar that I haven't touched in years? Maybe I'll mash those names together. Don't tell rob, he might think I'm a jerk :'( Also rob gave a great review for this. Would you mind? | Sean | this work is a tour-de-force of modern filmmaking. haunting abstract symbolism. puts me in mind of "winter of my despondency" by olof svensson your guitar is now called 'squarepusher' | |||
669 | John Ehrlichman | is this Autechre song used in the onedotzero advertisement part of a much longer song? is it sampling bits of old autechre tracks? I feel like I hear a pieces of tri repetae tracks in there. Awesome track though, wish it was longer. | Rob | no, this was tailored to fit to his short film, it has some salvage in there, but nothing from that far back. | https://vimeo.com/3953671 | |
670 | feltcher | If you recorded your Peel sessions at home, did you ever get to meet John? I still miss his unique radio voice and music content, the BBC (imo) has not been the same since his departure. I like to think that if he were still with us, he would be owning 6music these days. Do you have any stories of JP that you can share with us? A true legend. | Sean | i only met him once, really briefly on the south bank the day after we played at his meltdown (that's the name of a festival, he didn't actually have some kind of meltdown) | ||
671 | jasondonervan | Along with JJOS, did you trick out your MPC1000 with the improved pads modification? Seeing how the original pads are supposed to go dead pretty quickly, just wondering how much of a consideration accurate velocity interaction via the MPC hardware is to you.. if at all :wink: | Rob | for the most part i would fit single replacements in, i have the very 1st model, not pad grid mod. but i like the full level to get timed events into the system so velocity isn't my main concern at those times. | ||
672 | 21B | are you at all interested in sound installation work? given your heavy max backgrounds, have you ever tried your hand at doing this sort of thing? | Sean | not really i know that's how a lot of people use max but it's not why we got into it max has a pretty diverse userbase, a lot of people with very specific requirements | ||
673 | k h o v | sorry for asking it again, but you are the 2 single person on earth i can ask this : we r are why, 33 or 45 ? | Rob | do we tell him? her? | ||
674 | Sean | i think our original intention to not write it on the record should be honoured | ||||
675 | pattern recognition | i've just purchased eps 1991-2002 off itunes, mainly because of this thread. you both seem like great dudes, and i love your reverence for all things depeche mode, particularly the alan wilder years. they were pretty much my life mid to late '80s. i figured i'd start at the beginning with ae. with such a varied catalog, is this the recommended way to proceed into it? what are your favorite DM remixes/12" singles, from that alan wilder period? also, it seems you were well into hip hop in the '80s, any thoughts on the native tongues collective? | Sean | breathing in fumes leave in silence longer the end of the 12" of love in itself see you extended mix now this is fun extended mix in your memory slick mix every mix of fly on the windscreen i mean shit, there are so many things native tongues was slightly after my time in a way, there was a brief spell where i wasn't listening to much hip hop cos the emphasis and audience had moved to a place i didn't recognise i got back into it when wu showed up | ||
676 | soundwave | I'm terrible for getting lost with spending too much time tweaking and not finishing anything. How do you guys balance sound exploration with getting things finished or knowing when to move on if your overdoing things or being counter productive? | Sean | i think partly cos we don't work in the same stages that a lot of other producers seem to ie, writing, recording mixing it's all jumbled up for us | ||
677 | Melissa | To be fair.... I'd be dead happy if you just said Hello to me? I've got no smart or relevant questions or input.... | Sean | hello | ||
678 | xox | I apologize for my English in advance. Before I come to my question I have to explain some things that you know where I coming from, please bear with me...what I'm actually asking... Avoiding fancy philosophical terms (just cause I’m ignorant actually), lets assume that Reality is something that really exists outside our minds and that is the reality that we discover and upgrade (for example, through science, art, dreams and daily contemplation), and that our personal truth is only our personal interpretation of the Reality. Therefore people would differentiate in levels of objectivity and genius in art is nothing but the highest level of objectivity in the interpretation of the reality with an ability to convert it in consumable form of art. What helps this artist to achieve that highest level is comprehension/ cognition/ of the reality as parts of things and ideas separate from himself in every sense, and as such they can be viewed objectively, and then he can cognize them freely by unconscious reasoning and conscious recognition as ‘true’ .... He feels/knows that there is something worthwhile and follows it to see where it will lead him. It is desire for knowledge and thirst for the truth that push him, and he would not have required motivation if he doesn’t believe that the reality is ‘pretty’ and interesting, like a fractal. Furthermore he/they can name a project Autechre which is also seen as something separate from him/them or at least as an intersection halfway between Reality and his/their own personality/subjectivity. When the artist comes to this intersection he brings to the table things like: psychological openness to knowledge, intellectual ability, lateral horizon of ideas (the main requirement of creativity) , taste / aesthetic preferences, morality (yes, I do think so) , perseverance, diligence , precision, technical skills, time, money, etc…but gains more of the objectivity as an award so he can enjoy the reality even more. It’s a feedback loop actually IMO. That's why genius has the most benefit from his ingenuity... He knows it when he sees it. Today, all call for relativism and subjectivity like it’s the holly grail of in cognition. Less and less ppl believe in One Objective Reality. Everyone just wants to selfishly ‘‘Express themselves’’ but have not much to show ... if they have they wouldn’t want it. This is also a feedback loop. Someone upstairs have a great sense of humor I guess… I know that not everybody has all the ability but I'm actually talking about morality in art. One can only resonate with what he is. The only artist i could compare you to is Beethoven, lots of reasons (the only artist i love more than you guys [sorry, sorry]). Non could beat him in morality. Interestingly, Beethoven was the first romantic, one could ask how romanticism can be 'objective', especially him? It's not music that has to be objective at first IMO but the composer behind it and you'll see objectivity in the music eventually. Big subject, could wright for days. Sorry for this... i feel like a total dush ... Question: Do you think that tilting in favor of the objectivity in oppose to focusing on self- expression stripped of Reality is possible to be the norm again (as it was in time of classicism) and should it? I don't assume it should be black or white but still in general… what are your thoughts about it? | Sean | i don't think about it too much tbh it seems like both of these states (objective/subjective) are impossible to achieve, and really we are all some combination of the two | ||
679 | mcbpete | Did you ever go to Jive Turkey ? | Sean | nah we were in manchester then and i was only 16 in 88 and looked even younger, i couldn't even get into a lot of places | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmVxxH6tnh4 | |
680 | Rob | ah no we got there too late for that, nice to see the faces though, winston, nightmares, very much a more easy going than manchester vibe. but pretty much same music scene for hip hop, soul and house. | ||||
681 | jules | a lot of the art in my office has a typography theme. would you say this wall fits right in? | Sean | oh that's nice | http://i42.tinypic.com/20t1p41.jpg | |
682 | ha thanks. i have thought about getting another set so i could do the backsides of all them but the idea of lining 8 up exactly on the wall sets my ocd off. i was thinking exai art was a typography exercise. amirite? | yeah | ||||
683 | rd1994 | have you heard of atmogen? It is for PC (I don't know if also for mac) its a bit like metasynth? ever heard/ worked with it? (okay maybe its sort of two questions meshed into one) there is autechre tracktiles wiki that tries to figure out what lies behind the naming of autechre tracks? Are that father from the truth than they think and why don't you give us some insight into that what way do you prefer your music to be heard (vinyl, CD or mp3?) what made you decide to split Dial/CapIV into two tracks? also is CapIV comparable to a version titling similar to draft 7.30? | Sean | no some of them are accurate, some are way off. no clues, sorry oh there is no 3 wav, cd or vinyl they were always two tracks, we didn't split anything no, it means something specific (refers to a vocal sample in the track) | ||
684 | to 5 ..well I just thought that because 2 and three seem to go together its like 1 track split in two parts? or were they created seperately and they just seemed to fit? btw I can really recommend atmogen ...again it works from the spectrogram side of the music...you can draw the sounds so to speak...if done right it sounds wicked and you get some VERY nice sounds (I use it quite often just for that) | yeah they just seemed to fit ok i'll check it sometime. cheers | ||||
685 | olo | Disco Volante or California? | Sean | yeah i know i'm meant to say disco volante but nah, california | ||
686 | Breaking Bad: Last 10min of "Crawl Space" or "Ozymandias" for series best? | i only started watching it 3 nights ago, i avoided it cos loads of idiots kept telling me how great it was and when i watched a bit of it years ago it seemed totally shit compared to the wire (which those same idiots didn't seem to get) | ||||
687 | Coke or Pepsi? | coke | ||||
688 | Kool Moe Dee or Busy Bee? | busy bee | ||||
689 | Spoonie Gee Love Rap best drum sample in Hip Hop history? I said it amen break. | nah, mountain long red | ||||
690 | Boxers, briefs, thong or commando? | boxer briefs | ||||
691 | Decker - Replicant or human? | replicant | ||||
692 | Are we being trolled like a motherfucker with this thread? | you seem to be implying something | ||||
693 | Money, can you guys bum me some? I had to ask. ;) | no | ||||
694 | digit | some of the synth modulations i've heard on recordings of the oversteps tour are insane. i'm pretty surprised to hear that it's all nord because i've heard textures that i thought were only achievable with something like an fs1r, really complex envelopes & rapid timbre changes. i'm wondering - do you ever have problems choking the midi bandwidth sending out so many parameters in realtime? does stuff ever drop-out live and you just sort of roll with it, or do you do extensive stress testing first to make sure all the params are making it to the synth? sorry for the super technical question. have had problems with my g2 not catching everything when i'm sending it a lot of midi | Sean | yeah the way i got round the (frankly laughable) baud rate was to quantise the continuous param changes to note starts | ||
695 | Rob | yeah all Nord sounds, G2 and rack. the only downside was the delay as it switches voices after PChanges. most of the movements on the G2 were either built in curves ctrls in modules or manual cuts as opposed to sending cc's there were quite a few cc's but not enough to jam anything. it would die onstage from time to time. | ||||
696 | KunoMerit | Were you using both the g2 and the lead rack on the same tours. Previously, I thought it was one or the other. What role does the g2 play? I only have the g1 and rack but they are both so special. Even now after many years I cannot get enough of them. You seem to share the same love. General thoughts on the nords? You seem to stay focussed on a certain set of gear for each project/tour/lp - but do you also keep a room full of gear around for general fun? Being into early hip-hop, do you find it hard to not fetish the eps, s900/950, sp1200, etc. - you both seem to do a good job of staying on focus and not getting too nostalgic - or does that happen behind the scenes? speaking of the eps, did you use the asr much - seems most of the use was the eps. i have the eps classic and oh how i longed for a 16+ back in the day! | Rob | we had the eps16+ kbd then the asr10s rack. rinsed them both. we didn't really want any akai samplers for some reason american samplers like EMU seemed better architecture/OS, no money and owning an ensoniq was better. never got hold of a SP12/00. by the time they were more available, we had the EPS, and because they were so much deeper, with hardly any gear it was a functional choice. Sean used the nord rack on his side, i used the modular on my side, for a few tours starting with the first models around 2001 then the second models later on. | ||
697 | Woozz | Correct me if I'm wrong, but Flutter from Anti EP was made in protest against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, right? A few questions about it : how did you have this idea to "inverse the codes" by making this non-repetitive beat? Also, you said that Flutter is playable at 45 or 33 rpm. How did you manage to create the track? It sound amazing at both speeds and I was wondering if you used a special technic to program it. | Sean | it was an obvious loophole, what can i say they had shit lawyers working on it it was all programmed on an r8 using pads (incl the melodies) | ||
698 | azatoth | When did your parents stop asking when you were going to get real jobs? | Sean | they never did, my folks were amazing, even when i dropped out of college to get a job (to buy gear) they were really supportive and just let me get on with it | ||
699 | MadameChaos | what's going on in this photograph? | Sean | i'm really photosensitive in fact tbh i should be wearing shades all the time, i just really don't wanna look like bono edit: inb4 all the shoops of me looking like bono roll in | http://www.phuturelabs.com/word/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/autechre-1.jpg | |
700 | YELLOW | What did you guys think of the new boards of canada promotion/record? | Sean | i enjoyed the ride, it was nice to see them getting so much attention i reckon the album is pretty good but i prefer it when mike gets more busy on the keyboards, just cos he's so unbelievably good at it also not sure i understand the politics really but w/e | ||
701 | DorkingtonPugsly | Could you expand on this? I am intrigued. | nah i'm not getting dragged into some long boc critique i like TH a lot but i do miss the little keyboard runs, i hope they return after the harvest | |||
702 | ishishiba | You guys played at an open-air music festival in nagano, japan during the oversteps tour. How does this environment suit your live stuff seeing as you're very interested in the acoustics of the venue. | Sean | i really like it cos it's not often we get to wet everything so much we did one in a massive courtyard in rome once with these little nexo speakers everywhere and it sounded so fucking good, totally plasticky | ||
703 | Rob | the free phaser module that an outdoor show brings with it is one of the highlights of outdoor (large) events, usually its a pain because there might seem like less control as opposed to a static structure, but it def adds some shifts that are really deep. | ||||
704 | Polymershapes | do either of you read fiction, aside from aforementioned pkd? anything strong enough to rearrange the way you thought about the world from that point on? | Rob | after pkd, i was pointed to kurt vonnegut, and tried to catch up on some called classic sf writers like alfred bester and james blish. | ||
705 | MastaN8 | So are you guys enjoying your interaction with your fans so far? Btw I agree that a good majority of 'mericans do not dance at the shows and just wave cellphones in your face, but come on give us another chance! Haven't seen you guys since quaristice tour!!! | Sean | its good i wish journos had questions this good tbh, it would make that side of the biz a lot less tiresome yeah we will be back of course why don't people dance there? like, as far as i can tell, in order to dance there people have to get totally shitfaced first and it becomes this whole other thing | ||
706 | olo | Saw you mentioned some drummer tastes a few pages back. Tony Royster Jr. is one of the bright up & comers imo right now. This kid can kill it. For your consumption. He has better cuts, but this one is brief & 2 the point. edit: Thoughts on JoJo Mayer? | Sean | not bad the first one - i mean i prefer stuff with more subtle timing tbh, and not really into the sound of it much. its kind of impressive but some of them triplets were a bit unnecessary. i'm more into clyde stubblefield if that makes any sense the second one i dunno its all a bit noodly for me really, I'm not really into jazz much | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nC6-__vlUM | |
707 | Sean | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKve3TyC0Sk | ||||
708 | mcbpete | How many of these are true about Draft7.30, or has some internetter gone nuts - Xylin Room: Originally titled "Benk Chin" IV VV IV VV VIII: Originally titled "nwnw8" 6IE.CR: Originally named "606.ie" TAPR: Originally named "reppat" Theme of Sudden Roundabout: Originally titled "Prince Moth Mothy Moth Moth" VL AL 5: Originally titled "Vlimpton Alpha 5" P.:NTIL: Originally titled "Foam Conduit". v-proc: Originally titled "uprock" reniform puls: Originally titled "kidney bean" 'Prince Moth Mothy Moth Moth' is a flipping incredible name for a track ! | Rob | iirc it was actually 'Prince Moth Mothy Moth Mother' not as in yr mum, but as someone who does moths | ||
709 | Bread | what do you guys think of bochum welt's music? have you checked out his latest release (good programs)? also - are you guys making plans to play live soon? perhaps gigs in 2014? would you consider playing in the East of England on your next tour? For example, the Norwich Arts Centre (where Plaid have done several gigs - nice intimate space with decent sound system) would be an excellent place for you guys. Don't forget about your fans in the East! | Sean | bochum welt is alright but he's a bit like a happy shopper version of afx, i mean i like it quite a lot but i keep thinking 'is this richard? nah' which gets in the way a bit we have fans in the east? i lived there like 5 years and i didn't meet one | ||
710 | Rob | feelings on a screen and asteroids over berlin are the finest of tunes. not heard newest stuff | ||||
711 | ||||||
712 | lush (new stuff): | Sean | i like that | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUSoZonYQn0 | ||
713 | Credo | I am part of a musical collective that have met monthly for five+ years. Each time dinner is shared and each participants musical (well, more or less) contribution is presented and scrutinised according to a 'dogm'. The dogm could be like... Make music for this one minute mov clip or use 1 sec sampled voices only or FM synthesis. Often constraints. My question: since we have passed dogma no 55 we now sometimes have problems finding a new and inspiring dogm. What would you find to be an interesting dogm to force you out of your comfort zone? | Rob | have you tried 'only ceramics' , thats a material I've always liked for many reasons | ||
714 | Might have been discussed, but not tried. :) How would you approach it? Sean, you have another idea? | Sean | place a unique event on every 16th note, and nothing else | |||
715 | joshuatx | What is your favorite/most memorable "happy accident" moment in the studio? It's been said Sean recorded numbers stations samples, specifically the samples heard in Gyroscope by Boards of Canada. Do you often record radio transmissions or participate in shortwave radio as a hobby, or was that just a small part of your general interest in field recording? As producers who have used notably incorporated field recording into their productions, any recommendations of gear or general methods when it comes to field recording? Especially for someone starting off with a smaller budget? | Rob | tbh we don't have much gear specific to recording outside. nothing fancy or expensive either. mbe try using really small scale stuff like micro setups and use cheap mics very close. change scale (perception of size) of it back in the studio. | ||
716 | Sean | yeah this don't get bogged down getting the right mics or anything, just get stuck in with whatever you have to hand. use headphones while you record | In response to rob | |||
717 | DorkingtonPugsly | Last night the washing machine was making the overhead vent in the kitchen rattle and it was laying out this really cool randomly generated beat. Do you guys ever get ideas for beats or whatever from stupid random things like that? Any of them make it into tracks? | Rob | probably would just try to record it as it is, sometimes things like that can be so arbitrary timing wise to remember discrete patterns | ||
718 | Friendly Foil | Would you rather be a blue whale or an eagle similar in size? | Sean | blue whale | ||
719 | niversal | I’m not asking you to name my stuff or any future children (ffs) but I’d like to know how you guys feel about the relationship between your work and space/architecture/ infrastructure. I’m an artist making sculptural installations and work with the environment of gallery spaces all the time, I find your work extremely sculptural and each album seems to compliment a specific environment or space in a unique way, its like each album is a kind of exhibition in my mind, very weighty, very visual. Not sure how to make this sound clear or how to ask a direct question but simply I wonder if it’s something you consider an important element of your work? Either through the construction of an individual track or when compiling tracks for an album. | Sean | yeah we're both quite visual people i think at least, when we met and we didn't really have much knowledge of how music was made we'd use a lot of visual metaphor to communicate about music that and tactile things - which occur to me really frequently when i'm listening to stuff altho i rarely have actual words i can translate it into other than basic long-range words like rough/smooth which i hear everyone else using not sure if other people hear all the detail or not cos text is probably limiting what people can actually say about it and yeah it totally translates for us, i think brains have so much shared modal processing that it would make sense that it does for most people, but i might be wrong, maybe my brain didn't develop properly, or i listened too hard as a teenager or something - but i reckon we're prob not that unique really, given that rob shares a lot of this | ||
720 | mcbpete | Over the last year I've bought waay to much stuff (Max6 with Jitter & Gen, Ableton 9 Studio with ~£300 worth of plugins/packs, Chromaphone (percussive modelling synth), Corona (virtual analog and wave synth) and Ableton Push) and have now got myself a little overwhelmed with far too many options (and not sure what the hell to learn first). Have you ever gone on a software/hardware spree, and how do you get yourself out of possibility overload ? | Sean | i learned really early on not to do this the first time i thought it was while in college, and then it happened agin when we were using daz fitton's studio in 1990 just shelve a ton of it and learn one thing at once try making whole tracks with just one thing. it will push you into figuring out novel ways to use it rinse and repeat, then swap to using something else when you feel comfy with it learn one thing at a time | ||
721 | Redruth | Rob | fukk overload | |||
722 | while eating the prawns in tokyo, did u imagine the bladerunner. was it raining? | i was tucking into my Tuna Cheek actually | ||||
723 | can u name one detail that comes to mind, that u might not have otherwise noticed if u had not been walking? | the sound of veins inside my ear on a cold day | ||||
724 | have u ever mashed yr finger or something into the plug socket? maybe as a child? | I've done that a few times | ||||
725 | could either of u plees name a noteworthy experience u had as a child? good or bad | invisible BMXing | ||||
726 | could u plees name a piece of music that is nostalgic for u, maybe a nursery rhyme or anything really that has lodged itself in yr memory more dominantly then others? u could name several if u prefer. | tales of the unexpected theme tune | ||||
727 | while mining for vinyl plates tapes and digital discs in the shops, what r several great finds u can think of which gave u the warm fuzzy feelings and the big grinny face? | i found cassette of 'doris norton - personal computer' amongst some porn tapes at a dusty service station on tour in italy | ||||
728 | plees name some of yr favourite insects? | giant scutigera | ||||
729 | do either of u have any tremendous phobias that ud care to mention or u feel comfortable in describing? | no | ||||
730 | did u gather up the wild mushrooms john cage style? | kind of | ||||
731 | what is something u enjoy more then other things when walking along the sea coast? | gradients per grain size | ||||
732 | would u name the piece of clothing that u have kept the longest. is it showing extreme wear? | my warp AI tshirt from 92 | ||||
733 | what is the longest uv ever been away traveling from home for adventure or tours or whichever? | few weeks | ||||
734 | what's for lunch today? | i burned it while trying to read this - would've been a really nice spicy bean burger with jack daniels sauce u twat ;) | ||||
735 | what music r u listening to at this exact moment? | ippondemo ninjin 10" | ||||
736 | if u could play live shows with hip-hop producers, who would u most like to play alongside, past or present? | hard to choose, but would get them round the studio instead | ||||
737 | strangest music u have heard in passing? like u just walked into a room or came upon it in the street or whatever. describe it? | cake music | ||||
738 | strange thing u have eaten? | zest bar (deodorized soap) | ||||
739 | azatoth | Was it good? I haven't taken the plunge yet, but some of these scented/deodorized non-edible items smell so good I am tempted to take a bite thinking it would taste as good. Which it probably doesn't. :( | no it doesn't but you'll never forget it ! | |||
740 | coax | Are you interested in artificial intelligence in the realistic sense? Do you think machines can become conscious, if not very intelligent? It seems to me we are well on the way to machines learning pattern recognition and becoming smart. Check out "Qualcomm Zeroth", a neural processor. It actually doesn't have a von neumann architecture. It learns by feeding it info and it did image recognition without being programmed to do so. I wonder if in a few decades we'll have convincing robots etc. | Sean | ai is a funny thing, i mean, if i was to use the average game programmer's definition then we're already using ai in our work, but i would never make that claim outright cos i think describing a series of if statements as ai is a bit reaching and self-congratulatory but i'm pretty interested in it from some angles, but most of them to do with analysis and mining tbh, and that's not really the way i like to make things it would be fun tho if one day we just turned a machine on and it wouldn't make us a track cos we had ignored it for a fortnight, and just started spitting out really bad trance tracks out of spite | ||
741 | sweepstakes | I'm struggling to phrase this in a non-stupid way but I'm just kind of in this nice mood this morning and this thread is running nicely parallel to it I guess... here goes. I'm sure you guys have had tracks that really resonated with feelings you've had in dreams. I don't have a lot of experience with hallucinogens, etc. and I would guess that there's a bunch of them (i.e. DMT) that a quality similar to dreams. But I think (naively?) that dreams have this very direct connection with the subconscious, this really direct resonance with thoughts that basically nothing else really does, but tunes can really reflect this. Not looking for specific examples per se but could you describe an experience where you made a track and you really recognized the ideas or sensations from a dream? For example (and I could be WAY off here) irlite (get 0) really seems to have this quality for me although it doesn't remind me of any of my own dreams. Thanks again for doing this, this thread rules. Sorry if this is a shit question or if it's already been asked, I feel like I have a good one in me but I'm struggling to squeeze it out. | Rob | not really, not a shit q, but i haven't ever had a flash of a dream while making a track for example. | ||
742 | 21B | in your experience should you meet your heroes? is anyone you ever really wanted to cross paths with? you spoke years ago about wanting to do a kraftwerk remix/collab, might this ever occur? | Sean | argh loaded as fuck (not that u know that - but ppl who i met know i met them) anyway, nah is it fuck a good idea, you're bound to get some bubbles burst if you do i would say one time out of ten they prove to be as cool as u imagined | ||
743 | phudoshin | The hembsy pontins set sounds like the Glasgow arts-chool set (2007) but put through an "autechreizor"........I mean its more twisted and glitchier. Was this a sound system thing. hardware thing or both? ..............and do you listen to your past live shows like "we do"? I drive an hour to work each way every day and your sets are bloody perfect especially on a cold winters evening! | Sean | i think we just advanced it a bit between gigs iirc we prob don't listen to them as much as some people but we do check them when they appear, out of curiosity. things always sound really different when you're not interacting with it/each other | ||
744 | Rob | hardware was essentially the same - slightly newer incarnations, and the set rewritten to some extent. also i remember the hems by being one of the first few of that later kind - more unknown quantity vs tests, whereas the glasgow was deeper within the earlier tour - more experience vs more recklessness mbe | ||||
745 | bronchuseven | RE:Valis, what Wilson & Dick experienced actually happened to me as well. I've told the story on here before, years ago, but when I was in the hospital receiving chemotherapy I used to practise self-hypnosis as a way of dealing with the crippling nausea. This would usually result in me falling asleep, but one time I left my body & found myself in what appeared to be a spaceship. There were 2 people there who conversed with me & explained what they were doing to me. Unfortunately I can't recall our entire conversation but I do remember them making me feel very welcome. After introductions they asked me if I wanted to meet their "pilot" - a sentient computer housed in a basketball-sized sphere. They told me to look into a laser aperture, which is how the computer would communicate with me. Once I did so, I got the image of a woman with the head of an eagle, which I believe was the computer's image of herself. She "downloaded" all of my thoughts instantaneously; I'm not sure if any information was sent my way, as all I remember of the experience is a blistering rush of imagery. I didn't see the people on the ship after that - I returned to my body & woke up shortly thereafter, feeling very convinced that it was not a dream. I didn't tell anyone about the experience for years (except for one online friend) until I read The Cosmic Trigger by robert Anton Wilson, where he mentions a spaceship piloted by a hawk-headed man (I still think it's a woman) who beams people with a red laser & calls itself SPECTRA. There's also mention of a robotic voice that called kids in the 50's and convinced them to become scientists. Naturally, I was excited to learn that other people have "met" the computer & started telling people what had happened to me. So, my questions are: have you ever heard of this happening to anyone, besides reading about it in Valis & The Cosmic Trigger? Also, do you think the ship's passengers are humans from the future, or from another star system (I've heard people say they're from the Pleiades). | Rob | i don't know anyone in person who's experienced this, sounds brilliant. i've had friends experience UFOs thats about it really. | ||
746 | YELLOW | I stated in another thread spl9 was the hardest track you've done since gantz graf, would you agree or is there unreleased Ae that would prove me wrong? What question from interviewers really gets under your skin? What is your opinion on SAW 85-92? Last video game you played? | Sean | yeah there are way harder tracks we didn't release just been talking about one today funnily enough i like most of 85-92 a lot last game i played was tempest on atari anthology on iphone still not sure about the controls but i wasn't near a computer so it'll do edit: i wasn't avoiding that q2 my brain stopped me from reading it, hmm well - i'm past the point where it actually bothers me but the whole 'how do you usually make a track?' thing got old pretty fast | ||
747 | Root5 | How do you rate Die Antwoord? They had a video interview, in which Ninja made a big deal about buying Oversteps which was at the time your latest album (he also made a big deal about buying every single Aphex Twin CD). What do you make of that? Do you think he's just a fan? Do you like any Christmas music? If so, name a few tunes? The development in os veix at around 1:41 is really nice, and sounds a bit more classical than your tracks are usually. Any memories about how that happened? It kinda reminds me of Amber, specifically Further. st epreo kind of sounds like when you're chewing a really chewy piece of meat and it just don't break apart (someone on here mentioned that and I cannot unhear it). Did you intend st epreo to call forward any particular experiences or emotions? | Sean | i dunno i like watching their videos but i don't think i'd ever sit there and play a track by them i thought it was the producer guy who bought oversteps, maybe i just remembered it wrong that mcartney one with the synths on, i mean it's fucking terrible but it's kind of sonically pleasing somehow was just an accident not really, altho it was slightly inspired by some of daim's stuff (i dunno what they're called but they look like explosions or like the sea) | ||
748 | mcbpete | Favourite keyboard demo? (mine is this) - | Sean | i really want george michael to do a gig with this i don't have any faves the only casios we had were an sk1 and an sk5 and i can only rem the demo on the sk1 it was shit | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAnhtxXUu1o | |
749 | Though the drums on the SK-1 were wild: The Gasman ( Christopher Reeves ) seems to use them lots back in his early stuff... | Sean | yeah have u ever heard that track 'energy' by robot and the dj? theres a drexciya track with them on as well (disco pattern, both tracks) | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDQdAvmcZfs | ||
750 | MarinaStewart | a little request for rob: I have a SK-1 casio, using it oldstyle for rhythms and weird sounds, would you please name it? | Rob | Bezel | ||
751 | soma | What's the oldest thing you own? | Sean | ooh good question but I'm not telling edit: actually i can tell u cos i just realised it's not what i thought it was a first edition of 'the power of sound' by edmund gurney | ||
752 | What is the thing you were thinking of? :D | Sean | ah you'll never know | |||
753 | 21B | what comedians do you rate? | Sean | stew lee, louis ck daniel kitson sometimes | ||
754 | caught stew last month for some comedy animal action. he's head and shoulders above everyone else and just gets better, interested to see how much of the tour material will make it to tv. kevin eldon live is also terrific but i thought his series was disappointing despite serious good will. difficult transition it seems. | i can't get past thinking eldon is a real nasty fucker underneath i used to like simon munnery as well but not seen him in years | ||||
755 | didn't pick up that vibe, usually reserve that sentiment for boyle or carr. perhaps you've conditioned yourself by falling asleep to jam;) but I'll stop before this place turns into cook'd+bomb'd. | dunno i just always get some hint of spite from his stuff he's alright comedian tho, pretty funny sometimes | ||||
756 | MastaN8 | Today is my birthday. What should I do? | Sean | get wasted with all your mates | ||
757 | Rob | ask Autechre. | ||||
758 | joshuatx | t's pretty clear that compact cassettes played an essential part in your early work. I was wondering how you felt about the slow but steady revival of cassette tapes recently, both as a release format and as a recording aesthetic...do you find it interesting or intriguing or perhaps just a bit gimmicky? Has digital technology completely superseded your interest in tape as a recording format...is it a "good riddance" sort of perspective for either of you? I ask because many producers have used magnetic tape to very deliberately shape the sound of their work recently, or completely gone with lo-fi and cheap analog equipment to make their music: Couple examples: [SEE VIDEO LINKS] Do either of you return to analog or obsolete digital formats (DAT, old sequencers) very often anymore? Or is something you've moved on from? Finally, any particularly beloved mixtapes or prerecorded cassettes in your collection, particularly from the 1980s when you both started making music? | Rob | yeah i love VHS and tape, always will, it has remarkable tolerance towards clipping or other misuses. but as far as using it as a crutch or to wave a flag or pose in a fashionable type stance, mbe if i wasn't there first time. as for DAT as obsolete digital format, it kills master tapes as it fails so badly that we won't go near it, no real need as the anomalies aren't as tasty as analog formats. old sequencers, yeah but problem is most don't work anymore, literally perishing as we speak most of them. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kzbmPqvqqk | |
759 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nihyhd9r5mc | |||||
760 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6mq_FJYfEk | |||||
761 | Sean | it's slightly gimmicky cos the thing with tapes wasn't buying originals it was they they let you make your own, either compilations, taping stuff off mates, off the radio (v important) or doing your own edits if you had a decent (non servo) pause button the radio thing is what no one seems to get when they do retro music. things just didn't sound anything like they do nowadays. everything was really brutally compressed and out of tune. you can't learn a thing about how music sounded in the 80s by listening to digi re-releases nah i love tape, it allows you to make things louder (peak normalisation) and it actually sounds nice to my ears anyway, i like hiss sometimes (it was like our generation's version of dither) i still use tape sometimes but not for a while last thing we did that used it heavily was 'all tomorrow's linoleum' mostly old radio tapes tbh, lee browne and stu allan are the ones i have the most of | ||||
762 | sweepstakes | When you work with FM with a sine carrier, at lower modulator levels there's some juicy stuff going on but the carrier sine is very audible, which can be annoying. I've tried adding an inverted sine to this and it doesn't seem to work, probably something to do with the relative amplitude chaning. Of course you could use a skinny/steep (e.g. Butterworth) notch filter and just carve it out, but that can remove some nice harmonics close to the carrier frequency. It seems like there's a more elegant solution. Any ideas you're willing to share? | Sean | have u looked at a spectrogram of it? u sure the freq is where u think it is? | ||
763 | rekosn | are you liking aleksi perala's new music? apparently its all based on explorations on some scales/microscales: "the colundi sequence" really good music. the theory seems real, but I just can't believe anything grant w-c says no more | Sean | not heard it | ||
764 | soma | What do y'all think of current Graf scenes? Y'all keep up any? | Sean | nah i'm brutally out of touch these days i still think case 2 is cutting edge | ||
765 | SUPiERo | Hello, rob and Sean! Thank you so much, that the answer to the questions of fans here :beer: Excuse my bad english, I'm from Russia Please answer my questions: 1. 2 weeks ago I got married. The best gift for me and my wife would be if you wrote a few words on my photos. :emb: Certainly no need to print and scan photo. Just draw something in Paint, if not difficult. Received an unusual electronic signature. Here's a link to the photo: 2. Which track Autechre us to include? He will always be associated with our Honeymoon :music: 3. We fall in love with photography. Please give the name of my camera :wink: 4. What are your favorite wine and cheese? 5. FC Barcelona or Real Madrid? Cristiano Ronaldo or Messi? 6. Porsche or Ferrari? 7. What is the most surrealistic place in the world where you've been? 8. What are 5 albums Autechre would you take to a desert island? P/S/: My wife and I will be perfectly happy if you follow our small request and answer our questions. P/P/S: You - the most brilliant artists in the world! Thank you for what you are! We wish you good health, great shape and good mood! In addition to new albums waiting for your boxes with rarities, remixes and live performances! Come to Moscow! In advance many great big thank you! :smile: :smile: :smile: | Rob | this can't be real, can it? | http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/5/o9s3.jpg/ | |
766 | cult fiction | Are you interested in exploring mechanical instruments, Pierre Bastien style? I think it'd be fun to have some good general purpose mechanical instruments, like a percussion system with a handful of surfaces and mallet types that could be combined easily, or a box with a few different tunable strings and various plucking and bowing attachments. | Sean | nah every cunt's doing that leave it to the aspirational types | ||
767 | mcbpete | Richard Devine seems to have got himself well and truly absorbed on the world of modular synthesis, with every machine he's purchasing looking like it's twice as large as the last one. Have you got a big modular network going on somewhere in the Ae cave, or do you find these huge beasts impracticable ? i.e. these sized monsters - | Sean | lol all that gear and then a logic piano roll says it all really | http://talfred.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/r_devine_studio_2.jpg | |
768 | grue | earlier you mentioned how, when working in certain ways, it's "just nature telling us who's boss" and that sometimes you find after tweaking a track that it "was just totally meant to be that way and it couldn't tell us." do you think there is an interesting distinction beween discovering and creating when producing music, or art more generally? if so, how do you think of your own work, is it more uncovering something already there, or building something from scratch (or is ths a false dichotomy)? do you think of autechre's music as somehow autonomous or indepedent of you? | Sean | not really but i reckon what we call 'us' as in, 'conscious us', is just a little part of what makes autechre | ||
769 | cult fiction | Speaking of Richard Devine, rob do your kids ever mess around with your equipment? | Rob | they like the look of the modulars or controllers switches/knobs, they'll want to play spaceships n shit, i'll let em all over pads n keys. anything not wired up for tracks at the time of Ae sessions. otherwise we end up with more gescom. | https://v.cdn.vine.co/r/videos/C0B5578416983462219889205248_1c33f282686.3.1_QO_sSUyaUZTmcqDEyjj5Ota8cPOeoNrjJnzKaW8naW_bTmjJ8gE9q2M0q_hIzMWI.mp4?versionId=bWGYeVLTlLGZbDY7wBuIEHEO2pFPAbhE | |
770 | rekosn | mouse it baby! | Sean | lel drag that note length baby | ||
771 | Salvatorin | can you name my left foot? | Rob | sprane 3 | http://imageshack.com/a/img33/5167/1tp4.jpg | |
772 | Moktor | You said that rob "still" uses a G2. So I do have some G2 questions for rob: Do you use the G2 mainly as a synthesizer and control it via MIDI or do you also do sequencing on it? Or even the occasional track / "noodle"? Are you creating your G2 patches from scratch or do you sometimes use parts from the great patches from users on electro-music.com (such as e.g. the awesome stuff Tim created)? Sean said you'd use reverbs on the G2: I assume they're home-cooked... Any nice tips/tricks on working with reverb on the G2? | Rob | yeah the engine, not the kbd. not in use much recently, really more as a synth. there was some sequencing, sometimes whole tracks. all from scratch. its quite patch/voice intensive making home made verbs in there even with the voice double card, esp as the module sounds so good and metallic. | ||
773 | Obel | Do you guys do any DJ sets? Under your own names or a pseudonym or something? Either live or on radio | Sean | not for a bit now | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO9ZY5V461c | |
774 | jasondonervan | Have you seen this alternate take on Alex Rutterford's video for Gantz before? | Sean | yeah it's wicked | ||
775 | Obel | Can I name one of your pieces of equipment? Please name one piece of equipment "Hotdog Cheerleader" | Rob | that could probably work for our Lego Feet 4track | ||
776 | Sean | the 244 is now called hotdog cheerleader | ||||
777 | mcbpete | The first track on the Autechre/Hafler Trio DVD (ah3eo I think, though it might be the first track on the 2nd disk - I've mixed the two up in the case) which ends with the recording of what sounds like egg timer ticking and ringing makes me jump every single time. Was that McKenzie's doing - I know he likes to keep listeners on their toes ! | Sean | i'm not at liberty to say | ||
778 | soma | What vocalists do y'all enjoy? Vocalist in a broad sense... | Sean | yeah loads, long as fuck list. you've almost def heard of them all tho | ||
779 | Rob | donna summer, stina nordenstam, GZA, david sylvian, beefheart | ||||
780 | jules | Sean, rob do you know/enjoy Tool? | Sean | i never heard them once i think at a glastonbury years ago but it was so far off my radar then i think i totally ignored it | ||
781 | Bertolt Brechtakt | You mentioned that you are exclusively at Warp and that you can't release anywhere else even under different aliases or solo (except for Gescom). This sounds like a pretty tough record deal. This raises a few questions for me. Are you happy with it and do you sometimes wish you had signed a different deal (less secure maybe but more freedom of exposure)? When did you sign that deal & why was it the deal of choice at that time? Would you do it differently nowadays? | Rob | warp are super amenable despite this contractual situation, we signed that like 94 or something. don't worry we're cool. | ||
782 | Sean | yeah i mean it only ever was a problem a cpl times but its easy enough to write a diff name on things, considering what you can get for exclusivity it's worth it credit's not a big deal is it, loyalty goes a lot further in my experience | ||||
783 | soma | What kind/model bicycles do y'all ride these days? | Sean | ah i sold mine when i moved about a year ago was a marin nail trail, hard tail thing, p good, light but a bit stiff might get something more roady soon tho | ||
784 | Rob | Haro | ||||
785 | Yeah I recommend you go one of two extremes, super leet (read Elite) £1000 carbon fiber road warrior like maybe rob your Haro is fashioned, or look for something from the 60's-70's, road, and spend the money on components like dérailleur, the latter being one of my favorite things to do...Raleigh in particular is a tank of a machine and surprisingly light sometimes even being made of steel from the 60's... | Sean | cheers yeah i was thinking steel again, the frame i had before was steel and i dunno why i even switched, i just assumed i would be able to hop higher but wasn't really true | |||
786 | mcbpete | Given the BBC Micro shenanigans, how did Warp take to this 'solo' collaboration (mmm, that's quite the oxymoron) - | Sean | don't care, genuine fuckup, all good not like its gonna hit sales of autechre is it | http://images.junostatic.com/full/CS1612737-02A-BIG.jpg | |
787 | vincentvc | ever get offended by particular sounds and/or musics? (if so, by which?) | Sean | not that i can think of | ||
788 | cult fiction | Can you guys post a snippet of something you've worked on in the last 3 months? worth a shot | Rob | haha | ||
789 | Herr Jan | I was so stoked when you played Mirror Man by Beefheart a few years ago on a marathon radio show (I think it was around Quaristice), my fave Beefheart track. I wonder, you dig Zappa as well? Any specific albums/periods? Lastly, I'd really like to know what happened to this track (any backstory, is it a Keynell remix actually, why wasn't it released?) | Sean | i never got into zappa when i got into beef heart it was that mirror man period stuff i first heard and the funk on it blew me away tbh i never heard any zappa that's really got that. john french is just a stupidly good drummer when he's doing that rolling blues style, totally sick yeah i dunno why that never came out, maybe just didn't feel very finished, but now it's one of my fave mixes of it | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGKHqOouHyM | |
790 | Rob | yeah thats us sort of during down time, back then we might have the DAT or CDR on all afternoon while jamming. when they were pretty long, we'd keep them for ourselves, but the radio mix gave us the opportunity to run otherwise overly long ideas, without the attention span issues associated with so called actual tracks. i'd like to have these around to listen to all the time. in between doing tracks | ||||
791 | Indicator | After legs and gears now it's time to give a name to untitled tracks! Could you please give a title to those two brilliant tracks?! 10:18 - 12:11 17:35 - 21:46 | Rob | legotwo#13 wide angle | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaYuXMtWl04 | |
792 | ShammenDelly | What is the earliest memory of listening to music when it gave you a sheer dose of Goosebumps so overwhelming that still to this day give's you the same feeling? and will there ever be a Rakim collaboration? | Sean | it's not the only track and there are way less emotional things that also do this but the host of seraphim by dead can dance is pretty fucking effective at this ha i dunno man, i love rakim tho | ||
793 | pizza | were your latest lps mixed on a desk, or was it all software? | Sean | bit of both but mostly internal/digi | ||
794 | John Ehrlichman | was your unreleased Panic remix suppose to appear on anything official? I heard there was a Coil remix album that was officially being planned but never release that also included a Surgeon remix of Teenage Lightning (which he has since taken down off his soundcloud page) | Sean | yeah it was meant to come out on a box set of records i think i dunno why they never did it, it was planned and then i didn't hear from them for ages yeah i got an offer off a guy around the same time that record was being planned - to release ours, but i thought if jeff and sleazy didn't want it out then i shouldn't release it, i dunno if i did the right thing really tbh it was a tough call. i like that mix but i still don't know why it never came out, they might not have wanted it out there or something | ||
795 | Stickfigger | I tried to listen to your music for years when i was about 20 and was into dance music but it always just sounded like robots talking a language i didn't understand. I bought a copy of Confield years later and was driving home and had to pull over when Parhelic Triangle was playing as i finally got it. My brain could not handle driving and understanding the music at the same time. When releasing your albums, do you see much variability in accessibility at the time? I always hear that Confield is the most unaccessible but thats what fully got me into you guys! | Sean | yeah i mean you can try to make predictions about it but they're usually way off we didn't expect people to react to confield as though it was a great leap, we just felt like it was another album same with chiastic | ||
796 | olo | I assume you guys are probably fans of Syd Mead. Do you guys own any of his artwork? Are there any past/contemporary visual artists/architects that inspire your creative juices? Besides graf artists that is. (ie: Jeremy Geddes, Ray Caesar, Saul Bass, Frank Gehry, Egon Schiele etc.) | Rob | i have a copy of century II, but i 'd like to get more. its been mentioned quite a bit in the past about architects, candela, calatrava, the usual lot probably | ||
797 | Sean | nah, not besides getting kronolog and a few other bits i fucking wish tho i really like john berkey and superstudio | ||||
798 | John Ehrlichman | When you found out that the Skinny Puppy remix album you were going to be on would feature 50% nu-metal is that when you guys decided to make a very abstract/noisy skinny puppy remix? | Sean | nah we had no idea what the rest was gonna be like it was just weird, we didn't get any parts we just had this cd sent to us, and the track wasn't our thing at all, and we had been messing with soundedit a lot so we thought it would be fun to chuck it into soundedit and see what came out the other end is prob the weirdest mix we've ever done tho | ||
799 | nice, macromedia soundedit for old mac? You guys ever use Hyperprism around that time too? | yeah good old sound edit 16 yeah we had hyperprism but i dunno if we ever used it on a release i think by the time i got it fatboy slim was already hammering it so it was like, straight in the bin | ||||
800 | I remember soundedit16 was out before my computer was able to do multitracking (too slow) and you could open up like 20 instances of it and have them all playing at once. Do you remember anything you might have used hyperprism in.. gescom minidsic perhaps? I think the skinny puppy remix is what made me think you guys might have dabbled with it before. | honestly can't remember i don't think so anyway there are some bits of granulab on the minidisc maybe | ||||
801 | John Ehrlichman | would you guys be willing to give out BPM values for some of the tracks on Oversteps? | Sean | no problem in principle but i don't have the files on here but yeah later sometime, bug me about it | ||
802 | telefunken | how do you get rid of a hangover? | Rob | fresh air, or games | ||
803 | th555 | this is aeriffic - | Rob | yeah dope, i like the HF usage | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPG-VhU6Kiw | |
804 | Sean | really brilliant this | ||||
805 | o00o | What where you thinking about when making SURRIPERE? Is there a main topic in Oversteps like space or deep sea? Do you play the releases to close friends to see if they like them before you release them? | Sean | for me oversteps is about memory but i'm not gonna say much more than that | ||
806 | xox | nostalgia ? | nah, memory | |||
807 | mcbpete | You seem to enjoy playing with the CD medium - the hidden squelches at the end of Drane2, track '0' on EP7 (of which, does it have a name ?), the near silence for the first 20 secs of Draft7.30. Is there any other 'tricks' you'd like to do or has the popularity of this sort of thing gone now ? | Sean | ah yes, that popular trick silence you have to watch those silent people, always trying to trick you with their silence | ||
808 | psn | I wonder about your approach to playing live. It would be cool if you could say something about your practical experiences regarding these issues: - prepared material vs on the spot inspiration - long buildups of layered dynamics vs abrupt cuts into something new - playing together, surprising each other, leading, following - letting the gear/prepared materials surprise you - repeating "rehearsed" stuff vs going into unknown territory - fear of failure - how "modular" are the different prepared parts, with regards to allowing new combinations (rhythms, harmonies, mixing wise) - other aspects? | Rob | - prep a system, partly material partly conditions with room for on the spot adaptation , appropriate control - both really - yeah - finding things, not really surprises - unknown territory, but i will try to nail a previous nights near miss the next time - wouldn't turn up if so - hahah - - | ||
809 | psn | What's the worst thing that ever happened while playing live? | Sean | once my r8 caught on fire, and my hands were covered in vodka so they also caught on fire, and to put them out i starting clapping my hands together, and all the audience started clapping as well, and some of them started setting their hands on fire as well, as a kind of tribute | ||
810 | Rob | god, loads. | ||||
811 | Wurstwasser | At what speed do you like Weissensee against im Glück - 33 or 45? I always played it at 45 and can only enjoy it this way. Was surprised CD releases came up with 33. Some goes with RDJ/On remix. | Sean | yeah on is one of the few i guessed wrong first time round prefer it fast now though neu remix is 33 to me | ||
812 | dumplings | As hip hop is one of the genre's you guys dig, do you have a favourite producer(s)? Also; Growing up with early era/'golden age' hip hop, did you ever feel inspired to make music like like the producers of those times; samples, dusty drums et al. Have you ever messed around with a Roland SP202/303 Have you heard of Madlib? | Sean | tbh most of the hip hop i grew up with was drum machines. the first stuff i listened to was electro but i like some late 80s sampler stuff too - mostly marley marl, ced gee, bomb squad, tuff crew, epmd never used an sp-anything yeah i rate madlib but he's hard to keep up with, so many things | ||
813 | jasondonervan | Either of you seen The Man With The Iron Fists, if so what did you think of it? Should RZA stop wasting his time with movies and get back to his MV8000 instead? | Sean | yeah rza pls | http://sosickwithit.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Man-With-The-Iron-Fist.jpg | |
814 | Frank Poole | I'd like to know if there's any truth to this quote about an ep someone tried to pass off as one of your own. Quote "What does tie this EP to Autechre themselves (other that it sorta does sound like them) is that some of the sounds where recycled from programed beats that were left on Roland R8 drum machine after a Warp event. Sean Booth & rob Brown actually borrowed equipment from Derek Marin for the live show Autechre performed at a Blech party in NYC & in the process left beats on the machine. The beats were later used to create some of this recording." | Rob | yeah we borrowed gear all the time R8 EPS/ASR10/desk/FX/cables, so we could just travel with memory cards n floppy's - the gear would have not tracks in after we left as i don't recall ever having to write stuff into the units, so its not possible imo, these tracks don't suggest otherwise, at least from what i can hear. nice story, cos i often wondered if anyone would ever try. | http://www.beatport.com/release/sil-taper-sto-lend-ep/286401 | |
815 | Sean | nah it's sort of legit actually cos the r8 keeps the patterns from the last track loaded, so like, 1/4 of the set i think the problem is tho, i wasn't using any r8 sounds that night. the patterns were triggering the nord and the r8 audio wasn't hooked up. so all the sounds would be wrong, not even the right type of sound cos they would be whatever sounds happened to be on the pads, and the note numbers on the nord would have nothing to do with the r8, so you'd have like, a cymbal where a nord kick would be or something, it doesn't really translate unless u also have a nord there with our memory card in it | ||||
816 | Rob | ah i was thinking this R8 stuff was earlier set material pre nord etc, as u were | ||||
817 | KunoMerit | This hints at a classification that you have in your head for your material. Can you expand? In my mind it was always something like: early studio/gear - 202, r8, juno(?), etc. nord, eps max elektrons max | well at some point the R8 would be used not for sequencing its own sounds and juno 106 sounds in earliest sets, then used for seq its own sounds and eps samples later sets, then nord sounds later later. so i guess the later year the set was, the less likely the r8 sounds were used. so more likely a mismatch of the r8 seq to sound like i hear in these 'autodesk' trax. autopilot | |||
818 | Goiter Sanchez | Would either of you consider setting up and/or teaching a University course or lecture in any context if approached to do so? Were Autechre directly involved with the acapella cover version of 'Gnit' found on this Luaka Bop compilation? - Have any artists or labels you produced a remix for been like "WTF?!" upon receiving it? I'd be especially interested to know what Skinny Puppy thought of the remix you produced for them. Have either of you heard any of the experimental music of Canadian inventor Hugh Le Caine? For whatever reason he seems rarely mentioned in early electronic music circles. He made this track in the 1950's from a recording of a single drop of water - | Sean | i dunno i would probably fall asleep if i had to listen to myself giving a lecture no yeah them, good guess. the band were into it but the label thought we were taking the piss. only time it's ever happened not heard of him, this sounds very good and musical, thanks | http://www.discogs.com/Various-The-Only-Blip-Hop-Record-You-Will-Ever-Need-Vol-1/release/2138139 | |
819 | Sean | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvHSvSBwFYM | ||||
820 | cebec | are you guys running your custom software during your .ws shows to manipulate the audio or is it all traditional mixing, etc.? | Sean | it's fairly trad really, no homebrew | ||
821 | Ascdi | Any further thoughts on Brian Eno? I'm sure everyone knows the classics, but what I am finding is that even his more obscure stuff is amazing (90s stuff in particular). Just curious if you are `aware` of his stuff (as most people probably are) or actually `follow` it more closely. Any thoughts on all the super-hand-holding audio software coming out these days? I'm thinking maybe the weird "automatic drummer" feature in Logic X or things like that. On one hand, I can see you guys laughing and then forgetting about it, but on the other hand, maybe it's exciting to see how far you can abuse something that is clearly intended as a toy/for novices only. I haven't used that plugin myself, I just find it frustrating that all the tech that goes into making the lamest fucking software lately. Like, just open that up a little more and beginners AND experts could really have some fun with it. | Sean | aware more than follow, but i like fractal zoom and what actually happened a kind of insane amount i don't mind really, i mean it's totally stupid but i guess some people will find a way to make something mental with it. i hope. please. yeah i mean it's totally shit man of course it is, what a fucking waste of resources, it's not even decent algorithms. imagine how good that could actually be if they got really into it | ||
822 | jules | when working with tdr, do they give you formal presentations on their thoughts about the art they produced according to your guidelines or is it more of a PDF back and forth collab of sorts? | Rob | yeah Ian's big on the epic deluge of concepts and ideas - before hearing the work sometimes, while also being capable of trashing it all for a hunch, pdf/response tennis tends to occur towards the very end, say when its all about specific tones or something like that. id has differed over the years though | ||
823 | Letryps | When you where unknown, did you ever feel like you don`t exactly know where the whole thing is heading and ask yourself how much time you would invest in making music (which you need to take out of your "real" life) if no one was listening? Asking cause sometimes i feel bad if i don`t make-practice music-making all the time even if not many people are listening to my things. | Sean | i guess i never had that dilemma cos it's what i prefer doing, it's a real privilege to be able to do it all the time. i know that's prob not normal nowadays but w/e back when we had jobs, in the early days, i would get so little sleep cos i loved doing tracks, it def never felt like a chore i mean this is my real life | ||
824 | John Ehrlichman | how did you get max/msp to sound so slamming on the live tours? do you run the audio channels out to anything outboard or beef it up with something outside of max/msp? With something like Max4live this would easier now adays to mix and eq/compress individual max/msp instruments in an organized way but I assume you were doing this all the way back during the confield tour. | Sean | on that tour we didn't even have a sound man iirc, so they'd just have to deal with it we started taking jamie out in 2005 and things got a lot easier | ||
825 | did you guys break out individual channels for things like kick drums and the other layers then in max/msp? | no it was just 2 channels out of each laptop, and we had a nord each as well for a couple of tracks, 2 chans out of mine and maybe 4 chans out of rob's i can't rem now | ||||
826 | mcbpete | When you read something like this do you laugh for a very long time NME: "Autechre records are purchased solely by bald men in expensive anoraks who would masturbate to a car alarm if it was re-mixed by a German. This impenetrable curtain of misanthropic noise - released with an accompanying three-track DVD that features a squabble of hopelessly pretentious video "interpretations" - is typical of the menopausal electro-manglers' dogged refusal to bow to convention and produce anything of interest to anyone not either a) bald or b) German. It bleeps. It skronks. It krrraaaanks. But mainly, it blows like a ruddy awful hurricane. Remember, kids; if it sounds like a festering hillock of tune-shy bum-wank, it's because it IS a festering hillock of tune-shy bum-wank. Avoid as you would a bald German." | Sean | its not that bad really i mean u can tell they kind of like it on some level :D | http://www.nme.com/reviews/autechre/6602 | |
827 | Rob | yeah seemingly northern humour. | ||||
828 | SPAG | do you guys still do any remix's of other artist? would you guys ever think of doing bootleg versions of Incunabula-esque productions with the technology you use now a days? | Rob | yes we do, probably not, i mean we still are to some extent. | ||
829 | Sean | lel | In response to rob | |||
830 | Sean | why? | ||||
831 | lamourfou | What is this track? You played it during the second half of the Mixlr webcast - Thanks for those mixes by the way. Do you remember the one you did many years past that ended with you playing a ton of older hits/pop in rapid succession? It was like you were trying to kill popular music, it was amazing. | Sean | sam tiba - 420 ah that was plunderphonics - plexure. amazing album | https://soundcloud.com/soothsayer-1/autechre-webcast-oh | |
832 | skyking | Could you imagine yourselves making a soundtrack to Cunningham's 'Neuromancer' (which is cancelled, sadly)? Also, Quake or Unreal Tournament (this is important)? | Sean | yeah would love to soundtrack neuromancer well out of them two, quake | ||
833 | nizzleone | Have you guys ever started a track and abandoned it because it didn't sound "autechreish" even though some might consider it good? When using something open ended like a Nord Modular or MAX, do you ever tweak presets in the interest of time, or do you most often start from the ground up. | Sean | in my case i have to make special effort to make it not sound like autechre, so if it happens it's not by mistake it's cos i decided 'today i will make a hip hop track' or something, and ruled out a load of stuff i'd naturally do i dunno i mean there are no such thing as presets in max well - there are but preset means something different in max, it's not something someone else made but i'm not against it in principle, whatever makes a good track innit | ||
834 | triachus | Me and my fellow watmmer Hello Spiral are doing a music collaboration project, we send eachother bits and pieces and work on tracks together. Here is a track that's a work in progress. I made a video for it. What do you think? | Sean | top 40 material | http://forum.watmm.com/user/5888-hello-spiral/ | |
835 | Sean | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlIUuuZeXOg | ||||
836 | cebec | Earlier in the thread you said something to the effect that your DSP programming has paid off with regard to people finding some of the sound palette on the new album and EP to sound really 'deep' and analog-like -- Has gen~ made this 'easier'? or is it a refinement of your ongoing MSP development, improvements to MSP sound quality, or all of the above? | Sean | all of the above altho max 6 came out after we'd done all the exai stuff so like, it's sounding different again, being 64 bit | ||
837 | Wurstwasser | you made massive use sounds that we summarize as glitch nowadays. After that you started to liberalise the tempi and beats, I mean when I heard that pitch fall down starting in the center (and also on 5.06) of Stop Look Listen I was really stunned. Do you feel there's something similar weird or groundbreaking, - but later commonly used - visible at the horizon? That NME article: "Autechre records are purchased solely by bald men in expensive anoraks who would masturbate to a car alarm if it was re-mixed by a German" quote: Old story happening ever and ever again. Some people who don't like or understand specific art start bashing about it. Shostakovich received a Pravda article "Chaos instead of music" and got into real trouble. Fortunately this is not the case nowadays anymore :-) | Sean | yeah well, at least we don't have to keep all our 'private' compositions in a special drawer i dunno i mean i can't predict things we might do, and def not things we might find | http://www.nme.com/reviews/autechre/6602 | |
838 | Bread | do you guys still feel highly respected by warp? it isn't like they've forgotten about you guys, afx, boc and other big players who have made them into what they are today? do you get concerned about change of management at warp in the future and how this could impact your relations with them? i heard that plaid are unhappy with warp (read that in an interview) because as a label, they take such a big cut of the sales of records, that it is kind of grating on them now. i guess it might be different for your guys as you probably have a larger fan base than ed and andy? | Sean | i got no idea what kind of deal they got, ours is p good u got a source for that quote? | ||
839 | Sean - here you go - "Have you thought of releasing material on your own?" "Yes, more so of late since Warp now distribute mostly through Bleep, which is an autonomous company. At present we are exclusively signed to Warp but there isn't really any point in this exclusivity now. Our advances aren't big enough to justify it and we could deal direct with Bleep and therefore not lose 50% of our income. It's a shame it has worked out this way though and I hope we can continue to have a relationship with Warp in some form in the future as we have a long and generally happy history working with them. We will shortly deliver a new album to them and come to a decision about our future output after that has run its course." | oh of course, they were one of rob's bands yeah - the real reason's prob a bit more complex than this | http://www.relevantbcn.com/index.php/egg-box-radio/djs-bands-producers/item/3899-plaid-interview | |||
840 | John Ehrlichman | on this tip I'll just quietly put this here | ah i see where you're going but tbh they always had weird things like coco steel and lovebomb or whatever there's always been some things on warp we weren't hugely into, that's what labels are like we approached them cos they seemed to be up for taking chances with artists, and we really liked lfo's and nightmares on wax's first albums | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9QYW2Su6b0 | ||
841 | true, i was too vague, specifically what do you think about the shorts? Is this evidence that Warp is trying to go into some strange unsettling psycho sexual territory ? I only say this because of the recent Jackson and 0pn videos (have you seen?) so it made me think of the shorts. | weird i can't connect them but ok, i guess he is wearing shorts i dunno i'm not disturbed at all by this. just seems a bit like, 'ooh look he's wearing shorts on stage he's being edgy, in a kind of prescribed 'new york musician' way'. and the 0pn vid is deliberately unsettling and highlights all these issues and stuff. at least it feels deliberate are you expecting them to try to sneak some porn into one of our videos? i'll keep a lookout | ||||
842 | definitely not what I was suggesting, It's just curious to me that Warp is creating controversial videos again. Or i shouldn't really say 'again' since the only ones that might be considered controversial are rubber johnny and maybe windowlicker. the !!! shorts thing was kind of a joke but the other half of my question was serious about the 0pn and new Jackson video (with all the penis hands being chopped off and lush forests made of pubic hair) My earlier question probably was skipped over because it was silly but does autechre's music convey any sexuality whatsoever ..ever either unintentionally or not? Even in an obscured way like sampling from pornography (matmos has stated they are fond of sex slapping sounds from gay porn). edit: I've noticed at least here in America people seem afraid to dance to your sets, at least the last time you've played here. Since that time, there has been a much higher ratio of female attendees at weird electronic music shows. How often do you see females gyrating in a passionate fashion to your music ? Are Americans just chin strokers or is it typical audiences of yours won't feel comfortable going wild on the dancefloor? That old video (from like 92?) posted recently of you guys playing was the most people I've ever seen dancing to Autechre music. | partly that we were being marketed in the usa by an industrial label, and then a kind of clueless well-meaning vanity label, for like 10 years there were traces of dance music culture in the usa in the mid 90s but not like the uk and europe really, and our audience there were like, the wax trax audience, all introverts and weirdos | ||||
843 | pixelives | It's assumptive to think that Warp has some agenda with the video content. Mostly we're talking about artist/director concepts that they simply approve. Also you're sounding vaguely puritanical. Btw the !!! guys are some of the nicest people I have ever met. It may not be your cup of tea. But people do like it. Also: Nik is a awesome dancer and doesn't take himself too seriously. Always a good thing. BTW wasn't referring to you SB, but the other commenter. :) | yeah they're top guys they gave us sausages on our last tour - they were really cool, hospitable as fuck yeah i got that, i just didn't wanna sound like some kind of nutter haha, i really like em, but like, I'm not wearing shorts like that on stage :D | |||
844 | olo | I know nothing of your personal lives, but, like, you guys sitting in your respective homes, answering a bunch of questions from fanboys & girls for most of the day, the past several days. Aren't your wives/girlfriends like "awwright, can you like fix the damn running toilet, get the kids to school, go pick up some milk & cream, take out the trash, for christ sake, do something besides tappity, tap, tapping on your laptops!!!"??? or "Oh, you're on watmm dear, let me top off your tea & fluff that pillow...carry on love."? Don't get me wrong, you guys are f'ing champs for doing what your doing, but aren't you like bored yet? | Rob | lol "...carry on love" i fluff my own pillows thnx | ||
845 | nizzleone | There aren't too many examples of people remixing your music, is there a reason for this? Would you consider releasing stems of tracks (new or old) so that fans could take a crack, or is that mostly tied up in the whole Warp thing? | Rob | more like we don't really 'do' stems | ||
846 | Sean | we never have stems for things, not how we work at all but anyway nah not really interested in remixes that much tbh | ||||
847 | Ifeelspace | Do you think women are under-represented in the world of the idmz? | Sean | early on they weren't at all, in the uk you'd see tons of women at club nights we'd play at all the way thru the 90s, all across europe actually but it changed a bit when the art scene started getting in on it, that's when it became less sexy that and americans thinking idm is a thing, labels there selling it as brain music for white males | ||
848 | Sam | One story i heard involved you guys getting all your gear fleeced on the way to play a gig in the Red Box here in Dublin during the 90s, you ended up having to play a DJ set instead.... True? | Rob | that was hired gear that didn't turn up in time, but yeah Dj set borrowing tunes. TRUE ish | ||
849 | nizzleone | Proportionally how much or your time in the studio is spent mixing? How much do you worry on stuff like EQing to reduce clashing frequencies or compression? | Sean | not a huge amount, we mix as we go along there's no 'mixing stage' as such | ||
850 | wabby | Do you consider the design of one sound in relation to another to be a sort-of mixing process? | Rob | pretty much i do. | ||
851 | pizza | how was it like doing the squarepusher remix? did he like it? | Sean | think so i mean tbh i reckon it could have been better i'd do it really differently now fucking love the original | ||
852 | zleep | Hi, Sean, can you please name my home made sequencer? thx! | Sean | your homemade sequencer is now called kiki | ||
853 | triachus | The strangest thing I have ever encountered during one of your pitch-dark shows was that I bumped into a guy wearing a hotdog costume. Are there any strange/weird/interesting/fun events/encounters that happened during one of your shows that you are willing to share, or was my encounter as crazy as it ever got? | Rob | weeellll, there was this one time during a inexplicable smart bar trend at a show by warp/mushroom records in AU (early 90s). i was being handed caffeine heavy smart drinks all day, and as we got up to the gear and just started at the end of the night, it all kicked off and knowing whats next i scanned for some water bottles. emptied one all over the floor then tried to puke into it really discreetly, but it just flew into the bottle and right back out vertically and hit the roof cos the bottle was only like 25cl. lucky the velocity was so high that none stuck to my face and i carried on. | ||
854 | gl0tch | who are some of your favorite visual artists, living or deceased, digital or traditional? | Rob | moebius, druillet, steina & woody vasulka, gary larson | ||
855 | Dematchou | Something I always found intriguing was the way you talk about the use of space. For ages I associated that with the use of like timbre and dynamics to create like imagery of external spaces, but I always got a weird vibe from Quaristice, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I think what it represents to me is more of an internal or perceptive space, almost with like dissociative or solipistic feeling, like the way when you're having an internal dialogue with yourself and it almost exists in its own sort of space. 90101-5l-l is probably the track I get that feeling from the most, IO is another. "bladelores" from Exai gives me almost the opposite feeling, where it feels very much like an external space (I always imagine like Antarctica for some reason). Not saying that it's like an intentional part of your design or anything, but do you ever pay any thought to that kind of thing when you're listening to music yourselves? Sorry if that came across as vague or abstract, it's kind of hard to translate into words. | Rob | yeah i think i get u , i guess if yr going to be using reverb, and if we use our hearing to help us perceive space IRL then u obviously get these situations worth playing with. | ||
856 | InSpectr | which way do you recommend to young musicians: create your own label upload your tracks on Bandcamp or send a demo on Warp, etc. ? | Sean | nah warp only signed like 2 or 3 bands off demos, ever don't go to bandcamp unless you're already working it, only start your own label if you really want to run a label cos it eats your time do live shows, make them memorable (and good obviously) | ||
857 | patternoverlap | Your process seems to be very organic and of-the-moment. Will you guys continue putting out Autechre material until you can't anymore or do you foresee an end to this at some point? (not implying that you should, I was merely curious. the thought of another 10-20 Autechre albums is a welcome one) | Sean | can't foresee an end the music might change, i'm sure it will, but i don't reckon i'd ever stop. or at the very least - i'd never stop making things | ||
858 | mcbpete | Can you identify either (both ?) of these two lovely tracks that you've played in your previous autechre.ws shows - | Rob | rodelius can't remember the other one, could it be paul lansky? | http://www.ilovecubus.co.uk/pete/ae_unknown1.mp3 | |
859 | http://www.ilovecubus.co.uk/pete/ae_unknown2.mp3 | |||||
860 | oh my gosh thank you - It's from Paul Lansky's Alphabet Book (The track being - 'As Things Were') | did u find the rodelius one yet? not at my lib so can't scan for it soz | ||||
861 | Adam | it's my birthday so could you name my old shitty laptop. the screen aint working and it has no keyboard if it helps to think of anything. | Sean | your laptop is now called stephen | ||
862 | Rob | whats it used as a USB warmer? | ||||
863 | as an USB touchpad cus the touchpad is still working | hah dope, carnage | ||||
864 | Ascdi | After the mention of the PMA-5 (trying to find the reference again in this massive thread—it drove an EP7 track, I think?), one popped up here on my local craigslist for cheap money. Do you recommend that I buy it? Seems like a pretty fun piece of gear, and somewhat elegant looking in a throwback way. I commute a lot so it may be valuable for the "wowwing passers-by on the bus by caning it in my seat" factor alone. I have previously owned a QY-10 (similar digi-junk `pocket` sequencer from Yamaha) and enjoyed it, if that helps to know. | Rob | no don't get one, unless u srsly want to fly through batteries, its a monster for consumption, and general midi sounds only - but has fx - and moderate recording of cc's. it is weirdly 80s looking for a 90s bit of kit, so it may do it for yr commute image! cos chrome stylus. yeah the qy10 is a little tough nut. claude young used to do techno gigs with one of these iirc | ||
865 | Phoenix | I was wondering what book you are currently reading? | Rob | well, I'm gonna read the valis trilogy again next. | ||
866 | Dematchou | Something I always found intriguing was the way you talk about the use of space. For ages I associated that with the use of like timbre and dynamics to create like imagery of external spaces, but I always got a weird vibe from Quaristice, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I think what it represents to me is more of an internal or perceptive space, almost with like dissociative or solipistic feeling, like the way when you're having an internal dialogue with yourself and it almost exists in its own sort of space. 90101-5l-l is probably the track I get that feeling from the most, IO is another. "bladelores" from Exai gives me almost the opposite feeling, where it feels very much like an external space (I always imagine like Antarctica for some reason). Not saying that it's like an intentional part of your design or anything, but do you ever pay any thought to that kind of thing when you're listening to music yourselves? Sorry if that came across as vague or abstract, it's kind of hard to translate into words. | Sean | yeah i would agree with both of those, i know what you mean i had a similar thought quaristice is meant to flow like a long dream, you know how doors lead to different chapters and worlds before you realise oops im revealing things now | ||
867 | Jev | Amon Tobin remixed Doctrine live: What do you think about it guys? | Sean | yeah i dunno sort of sounds like he's treating like he imagines we would if we were remixing it now or something | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZP6CiL66v3Y | |
868 | 30equals | I was wondering how the Tortoise collab came about ? Tbh that's not an obvious combination. | we knew tortoise already, mutual fans | |||
869 | Did you turn down collabs in the past ? I can image certain artists like Björk or Radiohead who have done collabs in the past/are fans would be lining up for such a thing. | nah never had a collab offer from either of them | ||||
870 | On what base do you choose artists to come along on tour with you ? I mean,i can image that Russell Hasswell's set was too much for a lot of people :) Totally different than SND or something | er partly based on us wanting their music on the bill and partly on whether we can live in a tiny bus with them for a month without doing each other's heads in | ||||
871 | Do you get endorsed by soft/hard ware companies ? Did you get offers from companies to work together on hard/soft ware before ? | we had a few offers to make presets in return for free shit, not really interested | ||||
872 | can't talk about anything else sorry | |||||
873 | th555 | Any technical developments you guys are looking forward to? | Sean | yeah i want one of those million-year-lasting hard drives they say they can now make | ||
874 | Hexahedral | What is your favourite piece by Tangerine Dream? | Sean | as an album phaedra but as a track probably kiew mission - that ppg vocal stuff does my head in, and even tho the track's slightly cheesy it's really evocative for me of some other time/place | ||
875 | Rob | thats hard to answer, like exit loads, phaedra loads, rocky mountain hawk, supernatural accomplice. plenty more really tho | ||||
876 | John Ehrlichman | have you guys ever experienced a hard drive crash where you've lost an impactful amount of music in progress/or sounds? It seems like everybody i know has experienced a massive crash at least once while forgetting to back things up. | Sean | yeah i lost a lot of stuff over the years, no huge volumes tho thank god | ||
877 | skyking | rale @ 2:40 mark there's a two note sound similar to windows "usb device disconnected" chime. This little 'tuh-duh' fucker always catches me off guard. Is it a deliberate attempt to piss off windows users? | Sean | ha no it's pure coincidence there's a sound in one of SND's tracks that's the same as one of my custom IM sounds, still gets me after years | ||
878 | InSpectr | How need to do,in order for you to come to Russia? whether you want to Russia? If you have already scheduled visit , when? I'm serious. have investors who are interested in your arrival and they ask what your requirements (fees, visa, accommodation, city) sorry for my english. can write to me personally.) | Rob | wait a minute, HOW MUCH lol | ||
879 | Wurstwasser | ONE DOES NOT SIMPLY BUY OUR AE AFTER ONLY THREE POSTINGS | ||||
880 | InSpectr | 25 254 | are we really booking shows through watmm now? this is surreal. was kidding. that'll teach me. | |||
881 | ZombieLincoln666 | I've always really enjoyed your hip-hoppy stuff (recently, recks on, and the beat in deco Loc @ 2:00 is sick). Have you ever considered working with an emcee or doing a more focused hip-hop instrumental album? Are there any hardware mods that you're particularly proud and/or fond of? Have you ever messed around with renoise's API scripting feature? In the past you expressed discomfort with not being in total control with regards to generative music. Have you changed your mind or have your methods/algorithms for making generative music changed? | Sean | cheers. yeah maybe sometime i'm sure steve @ warp would love it if we did yeah my 606 randomly swaps envs from sound to sound. i dunno how i did it either, some voodoo no never nah we never said that. iirc i said that there were always details we'd want to edit the way we were working then was like, make an algorithm for each track, whereas since 2006 we worked on a more general system that we can expand as we go, and those kind of problems are solvable in the long term with that strategy | ||
882 | k h o v, | what is your favorite piece of music by New Order ? for some reasons, i always considered Autechre, the ultimate manchester "thing", starting from Joy division, to New order, to 808 state to Ae.. Have you met them by the way ? | Sean | nah to be fair tho i reckon we prob started listening to electro the same time they did, except we were 11 we know 808 but not new order | ||
883 | Wurstwasser | So if I get it right you are more on the rap/hiphop side - did you enjoy Acid House back in those days? What about the big tunes, like Peter Ford? Did you like LFO (the ones from Warp obviously)? Thank you. | Sean | yeah baby ford is top yeah we liked acid a lot, in my case i liked it a lot more than other/prev house | ||
884 | Stickfigger | Do you find you make different amounts/types of music in Winter / Summer ? | Rob | tbh i havent noticed a difference in productivity levels, but mbe something about seasons with types. but i reckon its so marginal it would be noticeable. | ||
885 | Sean | yeah completely exai is a winter album really, it came out way later than we'd hoped i find it easier to work in winter but i still work all the time anyway | ||||
886 | Obel | Which album in the ae catalogue would you say is a summer album? | yeah good point oversteps maybe, but nah none of them | |||
887 | feltcher | Can you name my avatar? I've had him on here for about a year now, I glitch him up differently every now and then and I think he needs a name.... | Rob | looks like he's being told off. it should be a happy name…. Sean u have good happy names today. | http://forum.watmm.com/uploads/profile/photo-7829.jpg | |
888 | Sean | Ben Nevis | ||||
889 | feltcher | What did you guys make of the whole dubstep thing? Did you like the "originators" or any particular producers or was it just all horrible? Personally, I love (and still do) Shackleton, Appleblim, Gatekeeper (all the skull disco / applepips stuff), but thats about it. ital tek made amazingly deep tunes but I never realy considered his music dubstep and he has moved on greatly the past couple of years. | Sean | i started liking it when bass music happened and it got more subtle/refined (to me anyway), but dubstep was already done by then really | ||
890 | KunoMerit | song mode on the elektrons - did you ever use it? or all patterns. it's quite fun but it took me a long time to get around to using it. | Sean | yeah - on LCC, that bit where the pattern starts repeating bits and then it snaps into being slower - the only time we ever used song mode | ||
891 | k h o v | what is your favorite piece of music by New Order ? for some reasons, i always considered Autechre, the ultimate manchester "thing", starting from Joy division, to New order, to 808 state to Ae.. Have you met them by the way ? | Rob | who 808s, yeah gerald briefly , graham toured the US and Japan with us 2008. not really met the spinmasters. | ||
892 | kroe | How does the weather and the city influenced you guys? Sometimes feels like living in a "big city" ( london / ny / etcs ) is kinda of a problem if you want to concentrate in your personal work since there's "noise" ( in all meanings not only sound-wise ) everywhere/all the time and seems to be harder to be immerse in your "own world". | Sean | yeah i channel the psychic energy or something like a funnel of brainsound no that's worse OH NEVER MIND | ||
893 | phudoshin | Bootlegs: Squarepusher Alive in Japan/Liquid Room, Aphex Twin DJ sets Props or nots? | Sean | i'd rather be there | ||
894 | Sam | Basic Channel question - got massively in to them after you mentioned them in an interview a few years back, Phylyps "Trak" remains probably remains my favourite techno track as result - thanks a million! Would you count their output from 93/94 as a big influence? Possibly on the Anti EP? | Rob | not so much influence as more just perfect listening material, and stuff to get fully mashed to at house partys we did with our friends. | ||
895 | Sean | yeah i don't think consciously but that was the time i was getting into them, when we did lost and flutter yeah hood, i think the last thing i got by him was in 2009 or something, but yeah i have a scout now and then see if there's anything like minimal nation out there not for a while tho, thanks for reminding me | ||||
896 | Wurstwasser | My last question for today: You guys are not into classical music at all? Whatever era, I'm generalizing. Just curious. Because there's a whole world to offer in that department and you can believe me, the enthusiast classical listeners go crazy/insane/however:emotional while listening to their beloved pieces like other music listeners do. Because many people think its just boring, but its a similar statement like saying Ae is random sounds - utterly wrong. | Sean | i just dunno anything about it recc me some | ||
897 | like some new classical stuff, one or two john adams pieces. yeah cmon, tell us something | |||||
898 | Joseph | I asked what particular Shostakovich he liked, no response | i got tons of files but i hate the stupid naming conventions its all like, 'op 1576, movement 51, allegro con delicatessen' and shit how are you meant to remember anything | Joseph responding to Wurstwasser | ||
899 | Wurstwasser | Just an excerpt: That frightening ending of Shostakovich Symphony No. 4. - | Rob | really nice, tbh i was braced for some madness, but i was surprised at the reservedness | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF9pt6Zs_F0 | |
900 | Joseph | I get what you're saying about the grey tones from Shostakovich. It's so deep, powerful, emotional, honestly after getting into that a certain amount of other crap dropped off my radar :) Not you guys of course. Have you heard String quartet 8? If not you should listen. | Sean | the only one i've got is the emerson one, is that a good version? i dig it tho, with my limited knowledge. I'm sure some big parts of it have been copied on something cos i knew some phrases straight away | ||
901 | gabrielconroy | If we're asking about classical stuff, do either of you know/like Scriabin? I think you might like the intensity of it, the out of place phrases fighting against each other into some strange cloud. And further back, Bach's cello suites are ridiculously good. | Rob | ok, duly noted ta. | ||
902 | ZombieLincoln666 | Has your reliance on max/msp been exaggerated by people in the past? It seems like people tend to assume everything you do is max/msp Will you ever play in Detroit again? please? I promise people will dance! Also what are some of your favorite Detroit techno/electro tracks? | Rob | its fairly balanced , we've been through epic phases of things over the years, but max has been there since really early. so its not really an exaggeration, they just mbe don't know which tracks or whatever - like journo's who mbe don't use it, and are more likely to use as buzz words yeah detroit, i can't imagine not ever being back there. | ||
903 | Joseph | Have you guys ever listened to Terry Riley or Steve Reich? | Rob | yeah different trains and a few others, more reich than riley for me | ||
904 | Different trains is good but not near his best, my favorites are music for 18 musicians and eight lines. Electric counterpoint is great too Best Riley stuff is In C and the poppy nogood stuff, eg this- | yeah but different trains is more bluesy more rugged like city music - must be the voices, i do like 18 musicians though, really smooth. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRwPPIoAgqY | |||
905 | Friendly Foil | Would you ever do a Boiler Room gig? Or do you think it'd be as awkward as it looks in nearly all the vids? | Sean | nah we can't i would end up fully dan ashcroft preacherman | ||
906 | YELLOW | Favorite Kubrick film? Opinion on the Artificial Intelligence comp? Did you enjoy being a part of it? Any stories relating to Oval Moon? It's a personal favorite. Where do you see yourself in 5 or 10 years? Opinion on pizza? | Sean | ah 2001 yeah the comp put me in a spin, cos partly it was afx and hawtin and black dog alexp, yeah it was a headfuck, lots happened really quickly too quickly to fully parse. thanks, yeah was a period between Legofeet and AI, vintage but cleaner. don't want to stop or anything, more of something. yeah def with tuna. lol thought u said onion | ||
907 | John Ehrlichman | spliff, blunt, joint, pipe, bong, or vaporizer? | Rob | yes please, eh? wot no buckets? | ||
908 | StephenG | Do either of you have any input on this? | Rob | friggin A | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mY9DWLJccrc | |
909 | feltcher | Which track got you signed to warp? Or did they come to one of your gigs to feel the lushness first hand? | Rob | we sent them a tape, and crystel and the egg nailed the AI comp, but we didn't actually sign till during/after amber. during the AI zone we invited them, steve n rob to a show we held at Band on The Wall (mcr). we dj'd all night and did a set in the middle. | ||
910 | RandySicko | Any personal influence regarding the fallingwater design on envane or was it just something TDR came up with that you thought looked somewhat fitting? | Rob | thats was sort of a combination of things, we'd been hitting him with some ideas, some conditions, for a few things that we had on our minds, while i think at the same time he was about to show us that falling water pic, so iirc he went away then came back with the situation via the conditions. | ||
911 | John Ehrlichman | do either of you like sketch comedy? How big of Monty Python fans are you? If big fans, favorite sketch? any favorite comedians or comedy shows british or otherwise? | Rob | aw yeah definitely, grew up with it loads. theres so many tho' at the mo the one that springs to mind is the french film rubbish dump sketch. not sure if it has a real-er name | ||
912 | kero | are u guys still messing around with Kyma language, (since pacarana has been released) ? ps loving ilanders all day. | Rob | hi, no, we let Bola use it, have it, its at his place. thank u | ||
913 | pigster | what sort of obstacles have you encountered since working on tracks/albums in two separate studios and locations? i recall that you have worked from two studios from quaristice onwards or so, but am totally a bit foggy on how you work on songs/jams together. do you ever receive a track or session from the other autechre person, and just get sort of baffled and confused as to what the other person was doing. like, it 's too abstract or confusing for you to work on or contribute to and you have no choice but to back away and say 'i'm out!' | Rob | hahah nah - no bailing we try to blow each other away with mixes, we stream or sync up to stream or loopback streaming to jam simult etc… or i go up there, or send files, or patches. obv. we talk a lot, about trax, things that aren't trax but keep each other on page so to speak. | ||
914 | Restart | I've noticed that some tracks on Exai, like "vekoS", "Flep" and "tuinorizn", have synth sounds that seem to mimic speech patterns, almost like babbling. Also, on other tracks like "1 1 is", "nodezsh", and "runrepik", the synths feel like they are replicating how instruments create sound physically (i.e. strings being plucked, horns being blown). Is any of this intentional? If not, have you noticed these similarities between the sounds while generating them? | Rob | well, i suppose its easy to get an artificial oboe or flute just from messing with simple square waves and so on, so even dealing with simple shit, there can be resemblances of these real sounds, but not really a pursuit to 'model' stuff. the grey area between familiarity and not, is more interesting , more unsettling, wakes you up. and sometimes gives u nice sense of familiarity in an unusual context. to me this acts like a cognitive glue in music. a binding agent. same with speech patterns and all that. | ||
915 | mcbpete | I'm guessing you're talking about formant synthesis and physical modelling | http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar01/articles/synthsec.asp | |||
916 | http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/1997_articles/jun97/physicalmodel.html | |||||
917 | gnarlybog | are you ruthless editors? have you cut your best work because it didn't fit with the track listing of an album or ep? do you think part of autechre's longevity is partly due to the fact that you are always finding new methods of working? writers block q: i lately over analyze my compositions because my criteria is that it has to surprise me by its originality (which is why i love your music). it is slightly crippling. any advice? | Rob | with us, the idea of best work is better described as that which works best in the context, if a tune is awesome, it still might not get put there. if they unlock each others' best effect overall they make it in. thats ok for LPs say, one off tracks , mbe have more room to just , be. don't seize up… just do another one, you'll have more to reflect afterwards if thats any help, if not, you have more tracks done at least. | ||
918 | Compvig | Are you guys still using asr-10 or quadraverb effects on your recent albums? Is it possible for you guys to name my roland mks-80 (it has purple lcd display)? On Exai's "1 1 is" track did you use fm synthesis for those bubbly sounds? | Rob | not using asr10 or verb at the mo. we keep them warm though. naming the mis-80 'withy' can't rem | ||
919 | marf | so, it sounds like you made your last couple releases in your computer. your synths have a real sizzle to them, too. from listening today im going to guess that you layered that sizzle in there with clicky/ blippy sounds on top of the filter to give it extra sizzle. i thought it was an analogue synth but really listening and knowing you did it in the box, i think its layered sounds as opposed to one max object, am i rite? | Rob | not many layers as such here, its usually right inside there. sizzle is a nice word tho'. there are plenty of objects actually, so mbe thats what you're hearing. | ||
920 | gabrielconroy | I remembered what I meant to ask ages ago - is the synth line that comes in towards the background at around 3:48 in YJY UX you quoting/paraphrasing yourselves from known(1)? I swear the synth itself and the phrase is very similar. Would be really interesting to know how much you take bits of your own older stuff and pull it apart/reassemble again. | Rob | ah yeah i think know what u mean - theres that high up staccato-ey bit that appears at 1'09''? , but no not a lift from one to the other at all, just tastes cropping up. in older stuff we would reuse bits all the time, but more like getting a favourite sound and re-apropriating it over and over, esp, with live sets, i remember a sound we had that kept coming back 'Peng' . cannibalising tunes/sounds and reusing. don't really do that now though. | ||
921 | pigster | how about D-Sho Qub & nth Dafuseder.b? can you shed any information as to where these songs came from, which came form which? ( i rememeber the first time i 'got' D-Sho Qub. it sort of sounds like this massive wave of insanity (ala the nothing from neverending story) coming and destroy this city-like infrastructure of someone's mind. i don't quite understand Sean's earlier comment re: oversteps being about memories. but for me, this song was always an audio representation a degrading mental state^^ ) | Rob | nth D started earlier but lay incomplete for ages, D-Sho came during & after that, but finished first. i see D-sho as more regular than that, but the references u have there remind me of turbulence which D-sho has for me. | ||
922 | Zephyr_Nova | Are you avid coffee/caffeine drinkers? I tend to drink a lot of coffee when I'm working on creative projects as it tends to make the ideas flow faster, helps bring out the madness. Also, I'm still curious if you guys ever deconstruct bits from old tracks and reintegrate into new tracks. I'll often hear something in a new ae track that reminds me of a sound/part of an older one, and I'm never sure if it's a coincidence due to similar methods being used, or if it's deliberately self-referential (which I think is cool, in case this is coming off as a criticism --it's not intended that way. I just find this sort of thing interesting). Sorry if you answered and I missed it. | Rob | i go a bit insane on coffee, so it gets deployed strategically with me, i think Sean's def easier coping with it. just answered similar q, but yeah we used to more and i liked ppl like baby ford for self impersonating, but at arms length thats ok as a fan, but as a producer, nowadays it feels more like lazy brand reinforcement. now if theres any similarities, its more likely habit by accident with me, or Sean honing periodically. | ||
923 | phaelam | is it just my ears or do i hear samples that continue to reappear thoughout your years of production? are the sounds used on each release generated during the production of the release. or do you guys have a sample set you like to werk with? just trying to find out if my ears are tuned in or if im just hearing things. when you guys 'cane' something....what on EARTH are you talking about. im a simple canadian, and am not up on your guys slang. | Rob | we do have loads and loads of lib folders with loads of minute variants lying around samples etc… and its building all the time, so they may form a tiny basis for something at any time, but never really a go - to kit. hahha 'caning it' i would say is (mbe from a cane / stick that's used to whack ppl with as old school punishment etc) but the idea that u thrash something till it breaks, like a cane would if u hit someone enough times with it. brutal sorry, i didn't invent it, just gets used lots round here. "caning it last night" - doing something till u can't do it no more! | ||
924 | poblequadrat | What do you think about things that barely exist? Like the short bits in films where nothing happens and you only see rain and people passing by, or some detail from a TV ident, or the corridors in tube stations, or elevators, or very short moments in everyday life where there's something that's actually very different from everything you experience usually but which is somehow kept in a way in which you can't make much out of them (i.e. nothing much ever happens in corridors, idents just show you the logo and then end... but at the same time there's something else in these things, and they're definitely different from the spaces you usually inhabit, or the programmes you usually watch...)? I mean, when you walk along a corridor it's a bit as if you were aslees. To me sometimes Quaristice feels a bit as if these things were extended and you were allowed to see what's in them, if that makes any sense, also because all tracks seem to lead into each other and have a definite room-like feeling with movement at the same time (for example the end of Simmm, or Tankakern... I love the rhythms in Simmm by the way), but maybe that's just because I remember when it came out and that was a strange period of my life. | Rob | i get these feelings from good documentaries, the bits where the subjects aren't necessarily being involved. its a nice descriptive - behind the scenes way at observing life. | ||
925 | xox | Do you ever 'humanize' your tracks making them more acceptable? Do you do that on the album level? | Rob | dunno if I've ever thought they need it tbqh. on a track level. not to be too one thing about it, but they should be 'as they are' in a way. on an album level, flow is all important, humans are listening after all, so it figures yeah. dunno why i see a distinction tho'. by that time we don't have to humanise any tracks as they're finished. if anything. don't even know how much sense that makes sorry | ||
926 | extherium | Any favourite comments you've heard on crowd recordings of your own gigs? Also, my daugher's teddy bear needs a name. Can you please give him a name? | Rob | farmers manual had an awesome nonheckling once in Sheffield from a pissed up guy, bumping into their shit wobbly table really too close, slurring all through a really quiet bit, he wasn't shouting, more a monologue at them speaking as if he wasn't aware of anyone else anymore but Ozzy and his 3400 powerbook, "have u got a 'bass button' wheres the bass button?" fibre | ||
927 | MadameChaos | i noticed you missed my question about Beamz. here's a helpful video to introduce you to the gear. your thoughts. | Rob | whah! ok, we just for the rekkd, most gestural gear gives me serious creeps. is it over yet, can i unhide now. he looks contently bored. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8w-Sfa5HzK0 | |
928 | priangle | I wanted to ask you about your thoughts on arts and about creative capabilities of a human being from religious perspective Do you think that one's output is fully his own creation, or it have something to do with transmitting some information/energy from somewhere/something beyond? i mean, from one of the religious point of views, creative capabilities and talents is not something you build yourself, but it's something that is given to you, a Gift. (for example, you didn't do anything to be born as Sean Booth or rob Brown and as a result grew up in circumstances that made you the Autechre) And that this gift can be used either for transmitting the light of God (as a source of good, order and love) through the prism of your person and character, either for transmitting "energies" of God's enemy, wich perverts your gifts into opposite to God's forces I am asking you this because for me it's quite interesting to listen your music from this perspective - i feel a lot of dialogues of good and evil in it, especially in your early works - the most bright album from this point is Chiastic Slide, and the most dark is Confield. And a good example track is Second Peng - i hear something like evil insectoid alien swarms there! so, the question is - have you ever felt that by your music you are transmitting some minds, messages, creatures that are out-of-this-world? And if yes, in the light of mentioning psychedelic drugs, did it felt more distinctly under the unfluences? Do you feel that these forces you bring are more good than evil? cuz some of your music makes me feel "good" (examples - Cipater, Pule, Cichli, Yulquen, C/Pach, 444, Theswere), but some of it, despite the fact that it's very interesting to listen, makes me feel more distant from God (Confield is a great example - for me it's the most complex and deep album of yours, but so deep it's "bad for your soul") | Rob | in a nutshell i have quite a bit of trouble discussing theology, 'need to be in the room so to speak, this isn't it, so not being bluntly dismissive and ignoring here. more later mbe | ||
929 | Jev | 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. | yeah we get ya, this kind of evil fun - he can see the insects clearly.. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VJK5YpMLZY | ||
930 | priangle | 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. | ||||
931 | telefunken | [SEE LINK TO THE RIGHT] | choice! i like how his eyes dart across as that bug flicks past him. | http://coub.com/view/3j7oz8db | ||
932 | k h o v | please do not post pic of your studio. i was disapointed/amused that Fennesz's studio is in his garage (i thought he was making tracks at the top of some epic mountains, face to the wind). i always have the feeling your music was composed in some death star environnement. :-) | Rob | ooh not far off. | ||
933 | soundwave | Sorry for more tech questions chaps but I love the 2001 Toronto set, what was your live setup based around during this tour? I've read that a Nord Lead and Modular G1 was used along with with some military spec laptops?? (I use an old Itronix II with mine) Please could you tell us with what you carried on tour back then and perhaps elaborate a little on the workflow used for this minimal setup especially with the Nords? | Rob | thats the Vienna show w/fennesz and roedelius - NMG1 w/NM patches self sequencing, here i had IBM Thinkpad/ Wavelab, audio slabs & FX to the NM audio ins. hahah yeah wacom for the NM editor. forgot that bit. MD for crash fill oh and fx/cmp units. this was a collab, so not usual setup compared to Tronno. Toronto 2001 - two powerbooks max/msp patches, audio & sequencing w/MIDI to nords w/NM patches self sequencing. except Sean used Nord Lead Rack. | http://autechre.net.ua/pics/phonotactic4.jpg | |
934 | Ivan Ooze | you've been working with each other for more than 20 years, does it happen that you disagree or get in an arguement with each other over a track? | Rob | more like we usually want the same track, but we are different, we might go about things slightly differently. early on we might've needed longer to sort things out. | ||
935 | John Ehrlichman | I've noticed a lot of people listen to Quaristice as a kind of custom playlist including a lot of the extras and replacing the short songs with the longer counterparts. Have you tried listening to Quaristice in a similar way? how do you feel about people making their own versions of say a track like perlence based on all the different ones that exist? Are you ok with people sharing these custom edits? what about on this forum specifically (example: members posting custom perlence megamixes)? and lastly how do you feel that Quaristice ranks or stands symbolically in terms of the rest of your catalog? | Rob | i'd be into hearing the custom edits. as far as the re-compiling goes, the versions totally should lend themselves to this, not done an actual 'sit down listen to this that and the other way round' since they got released. but yeah all through the compiling of the LP and EPs process was like why we did so many versions. the limited version was that too, it was all that. stands symbolically? dunno. | ||
936 | usagi | btw have you heard this? I didn't make it lol - | Rob | first time actually, that cat looks weirdly familiar. feelin the strings at 4'20''- 38''. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gd2hlRP_5g | |
937 | Jev | Do you already have a plan which countries to visit with the Exai tour (if there is the Exai tour)? More specifically, anywhere in central Europe? Even more specifically the Czech Republic? I know you were in Brno during the Oversteps tour but I don't know how successful it was for you and so if there's a possibility you would visit us again. I missed the show so I would love to have at least one more chance to experience your sonic-battering. | Rob | Brno was very successful imo. the place almost got trashed because we'd finished, wasn't acceptable. | ||
938 | So you are basically saying "yeah, we will definitely come this tour again, we will maybe even tour three to four Czech cities". Cool! Seriously, how satisfied with the Czech Republic you were here? No problems with people and services compared to UK? | srsly. the ppl were great, welcome was warm, taxi prompt, laundry fine, but yeah they got really really pissed at us for stopping after 1.5 hrs. | ||||
939 | Sean | comparing it to the uk might not tell you anything it's not like the uk is perfect in any way or even that good at all tbh | ||||
940 | You mean like really pissed? Wow, I thought you mean it like "very sad it's over, want more" but in a good way. I hope there was no booing. So 1.5 hour just Ae or the whole show? | Rob | no actually annoyed, they'd been getting pissed all day i expect, the set we played was about that , 50% longer than usual. the night was early evening to early morning | |||
941 | Polymershapes | Sean, on Andrew Mckenzie's podcast you mentioned using phone apps like SunVox and Jasuto. Have you used these on any tracks you've released? Would you? Jasuto can do some mad things. Which Tarkovsky films have you seen and which do you like best? I love them all but Mirror is a favorite, only slightly above Solaris/Stalker/Sacrifice. What do you think of Artemyev's soundtrack work? Do you like Popol Vuh? Which albums? What's up with Xektes Sql - how was it made? I love it and it seems to be unique in your discog soundwise - more aquatic or submerged sounding. | Rob | Sunvox yeah, i used it on a few tracks, one heavily, one thats out. jasuto i played with it, but not to recording ends. yeah haven't seen mirror, love solaris and stalker, artemyevs got that vibe i like with zoviet france, like an unfathomable compound effect from really simple elements. dirty but pure like good noise. stalker themes really TD ish tho', more direct worldly references. yeah haven't got much, love the werener herzog soundtracks. fully sheer breath hold while being gentle too. sort of some vapours from a track we were doing, turning out better than the track. | ||
942 | OneSixSeven | While working on an album, or when it finally comes out, do you regard one or several tracks as standout ones or they are all equal to you? | Rob | the stand outs change over the short term, and are settling over long term. sometimes a scenario will reshuffle it all now and then. | ||
943 | salvaKPO | How tall are you both? | Rob | like combined? | ||
944 | Sean | i'm like 1.5 inches shorter than him about 5'7" | ||||
945 | YELLOW | How do you feel the term 'incomplete without surface noise' holds up today? Any stories or insight with Inhake 2? It's a personal fave and one of the few joyful sounding Ae tracks. rob what is the true number of North Face jackets? Why wasn't 'We R Are Why' included with the EP box? Why wasn't 'Skull Snap' given a digital release? Or am I missing the point of it? | Rob | yeah totally, wax sounds amazing. although theres a unpredictable side to it i.e. the fingerprint each persons' deck, stylus, weight combination has a very personal effect on their memory of the music as its heard. not necessarily just limited to 'physical' formats, radio too. saying that, we've been close to giving up on physicals sometimes just cos the manufacturers can get it so fkin wrong these days without being scrutinised at every single step. - including the wife's?, ermm... cos it was mail order only iirc cos they're total gibbers mostly. | rob doesn't answer the North Face question :-) | |
946 | sergeantk | What is your favorite remix you have done? (mine is HIA - Conoid Tone) | Rob | that was our first ever proper remix job. | ||
947 | Sean | the first would have been one of the d'breez ones i think but the conoid tone was the first to be released | In response to rob | |||
948 | lumpenprol | Crystal Method are now doing an AMA on Reddit. Coincidence? | Rob | are they as realtime as us? | ||
949 | naawRaybarn | 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? | Rob | 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. | ||
950 | wabby | 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? | Rob | 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. | ||
951 | Obel | What's your favourite Gescom track and why is it Slow Acid? | Sean | errr probably five today anyway | ||
952 | salvaKPO | What where you doing there, rob? | Rob | on my imaginary phone, yeah sand in my eyes, no crying | http://www.kalporz.com/immagini/artisti/autechre/autechre-1.jpg | |
953 | are you sure no crying coz in this next one it really looks like you are. | Sean | she was like, sit here lads (in the windiest sandiest part of the british isles) | |||
954 | phling | 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?) | Sean | 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 | ||
955 | haha! speeding up or slowing down? also, actual bpm or computationally guesstimated? | speeding up, but its happening really slowly, takes like 2 hours to get thru each whole bpm computationally. but i like that cos some come out half speed or it sometimes plays one with the kicks doing a hemiola thing or whatever, it breaks things up nicely | ||||
956 | this is indeed excellent.. running this analyzer over my lib now, intermediate results are already quite good: [1] reminds me of another thing, not really a question tho... you mentioned earlier that working with data mining on your own music is not really a thing you're into if i understood right.. however, have you ever? there's e.g. this online API: [2] it has a thing where you can get detailed analysis of an audio file, down to a "perceptive" description of each individual detected "played note" or hit in a piece.. more info about this here: [3] basically you upload a track and get back some JSON/XML with lots of number/timestamp pairs relating to timbre/tonality and such. interesting stuff imo... so far have only used it for visualization myself, but could be interesting for generating synth automation etc., especially related to how a BPM analyzer gets things wrong with interesting results nonetheless... | yeah i sometimes sort large folders of one-shots by crest factor (p useful) - u can do that in sample manager i did a load of tracks that are made of 1000s of drum machine presets all sorted by crest factor and then appended, so it keeps getting more intense over time just for sport i might add edit: this looks cool btw, thanks | http://www.beatunes.com/itunes-automatic-bpm-detection.html | [1] | ||
957 | http://developer.echonest.com/docs/v4/ | [2] | ||||
958 | http://developer.echonest.com/docs/v4/_static/AnalyzeDocumentation.pdf | [3] | ||||
959 | jules | 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? | Rob | really dunno jules. i think papers were saying we had been putting too much stuff out. | ||
960 | Refund | 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? | Sean | 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 | ||
961 | 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? | Rob | i think its fair to say we have always fetishised sounds, the right ones. i have a PT-7, really fly bit of portable. | ||
962 | Sean | circuit bending happens a lot by mistake tbh, we were doing it years before anyone was using that term just by being curious but nah i'm not one for collecting things that are 'good to bend' and then bending them, seems to be less fun than randomly finding things really i dunno, we just like a variety of things i guess | ||||
963 | wabby | 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? | Sean | yeah waveforms sometimes look like they sound but not when they get more complex, at least to me slower waveforms tho yeah def, and things like envelopes def have a tangible thing going on for me and my taste in visual shapes is similar to my taste in sound shapes, if that makes sense your rs7000 is now called bartholemu | ||
964 | Rob | re graff, its less so much the shapes compared to sound in wave forms, more for me how graff shapes move at angles across spaces as do sounds over time. cortina | ||||
965 | jules | What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? | Rob | horizontally or vertically? | Ref: Monty Python and the Search for The Holy Grail (1975) | |
966 | could be african or european. diagonally. | |||||
967 | What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? | Sean | what do you mean, african or european swallow? | |||
968 | well played | there are so many ace things they did, it scares me a bit how imaginative they were one of my faves is that one with the lifeboat men who keep arriving in that woman's kitchen, and the thing with the door | ||||
969 | daed | It's pretty well-known that you guys use MAX. I was wondering what some of the other languages you guys use are. I'm a Linux head and tend to fiddle around with PD when I'm not using Renoise. | Sean | just c, used to use lisp a bit (kyma and symbolic composer), and as a kid i was all about bbc basic and dabbled with pascal i don't even use c much since gen arrived tho | ||
970 | chaproy | 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. | Rob | [wear farah's] [poplock without smiling] [make TIE Fighter sounds] | ||
971 | wabby | 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? | Sean | tons i would say loads of my beat programming has a similar push/pull thing going on even tho i might be doing it with kicks and snares or whatever that and tape editing - i.e. often not having 2 sounds on the same hit (apart from light/hat sounds), a bit like the beat is like a ball bouncing off different surfaces | ||
972 | joshuatx | No question, just remembered I made this stupid .gif a year ago and I feel it's the ideal time to post it. | Rob | such young smooth fella's. bit sleepy though | http://i.imgur.com/fFRnZ.gif | |
973 | rd1994 | are you planning to release quaristice.quadrange and We R Are Why as CDs anytime time soon? | Rob | hasn't really really come up. | ||
974 | any memories of making gantz graf? anything you can tell us about making that track? | yeah loads. not much. one of those favourite comfy thoughts just for ourselves. no offence :) | ||||
975 | whats the deal with the near silence on most of your albums intro? something like a climax build up in a weird way? | just to make sure everyones in, and ready on time. | ||||
976 | are the hidden tracks on EP7 and LP5 titled? mind sharing the titles? if they don't have any care to make up someß | i don't have any titles to hand. | ||||
977 | is oval moon (IBC mix) titlewise related to your pirate radio days? would you say it is from that era? sounds like it? | yeah | ||||
978 | are you planning to do some more double albums in the near future? I really would like it | ok | ||||
979 | the scratching in Goz Quarter "live" recording or software emulation? | real | ||||
980 | also I noticed that the main beat of Cipater reminds me of "godfather runnin the joint" by the good ol' james brown...coincidence? | hah ace | ||||
981 | purlieu | In the past few years, I've come across quite a few artists who've said they're going to give up 'albums' and just focus on songs or EPs (then two years later they announce a new album and it all gets forgotten), and there are a lot of artists, particularly in the tape scene, who seem to put out a tape with a couple of long jams on every couple of months rather than compiling for a new album. Obviously there will be certain contractual and budgetry limits working with a label like Warp, but does the idea of moving away from albums into something less rigid/structured appeal to you? Like the way earlier in the thread you described Exai as effectively being four EPs in a box as much as an actual album (this also means I am now going to have to follow Exai with L-Event every time). (For the record, I've tried it and went back to albums again myself. There's definitely a conservative side to my musical mind) Ever hear a track for the first time and it seems instantly familiar? For me, the second half of Piezo seems to have been in my head since I was a kid, despite only first hearing it about ten years ago. Makes me think of being on a motorway in the middle of the night, distant city lights on the horizon - vaguely in the future. Sean, you said you keep up with FSOL's latest releases. Do you get news from my (badly designed) website? :D - Be sad to see this thread end, any chance of giving up the music and doing this as a living instead? As everyone's doing it, can you name my Stylophone? | Sean | i think warp would let us do anything tbh, if we wanted to just release individual tracks they'd go along with that we do albums cos we like making albums, it's prob cos we spent so much time as kids compiling things into long mixes and so on, still do yeah happens a fair bit, esp with DM for some reason (like if i find an old track by them that i missed, it still reminds me of the time it came out, like i'm time travelling or something). another band that really did this to me is dif juz not seen your site but i will be check it now, cheers nah i like doing tracks too much your stylopone is now called dondi | http://secondthought.co.uk/fsol | |
982 | SUPiERo | What hath made you most proud of? (track, album, or something other than music). And they would like to forget? What is your favorite place on the planet? Please give a name for my new home audio system | Rob | dunno what makes me proud really. probably just actually getting a record out, and being out and watching people i didn't know hear it . that was a significant point i think. deep water below clear skies sunshine/moonlight/stars vanishing point | ||
983 | Obel | Do you have track titles for the live tracks you do? | Sean | not usually but like, when we get handed a PRS form to fill in we make up a ton on the spot so there are a lot of PRS listings for weird tracks that are only parts of live sets and that we subsequently forgot the names of | ||
984 | Rob | i need them as a sort of memory aid, i mean, i have done. not sure if i always will do tho'. | ||||
985 | triachus | Do you still have such list? Can you show it to us? Sounds it would be good for a laugh. | Sean | not to hand but if any surface i will chuck them somewhere later | ||
986 | Rob | i have oversteps list here, but not sure if you'll like them lol plus its not fair on Sean cos he doesn't use words. | ||||
987 | Even if I don't like it, my curiosity will at least be satisfied, so don't worry about that. And screw Sean, he named my guitar Squarepusher. That's not fair. And it's not even a bass. :'( | aw crying with laughter at you….. if Sean PM's me i'll do it. Edit : kerching…. my 303 rd post on watmm. ? | ||||
988 | salvaKPO | What do you think about this? | Sean | proof that confidence is generally considered to be a reasonable substitute for ideas on american television | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZL11vUWlNk | |
989 | Bambi | In your opinion why and how do you think music (making and appreciation) evolved in humans? | Sean | communication | ||
990 | YELLOW | Garbagemx36 runs the gambit for me, sinister in the beginning, hectic and chaotic throughout, a breath of fresh air at one point, and then beautiful calm at the end, any memories or stories about this track pls? | Rob | i remember being quite stoked that we'd pulled off a 14 min+ track hahah. it was good riding the EPS+ FX units live, knowing that the R8 programming was dope. wanted to get it really John Barry'ed. something along those lines. | ||
991 | ishishiba | What do you think of banksy? Could you please name my waldorf blofeld? | Sean | utter shit i was deeply saddened when i heard that munnery was writing jokes for him your waldorf blofeld is now called simon | ||
992 | triachus | Can you elaborate? I'm curious to hear your opinion, seeing as you have had a history in graffiti. | Sean | yeah his style is shit and his shit cynical jokes are unfunny and risk free cos stencils, so fails at graff | ||
993 | skibby | This is sort of in response to the Banksy thing; What are a couple qualities that make a work (be it music or visual) good or valuable? or if it's easier, what pisses you off when it comes to shit music or art or whatever? | Sean | no idea nothing pisses me off about it | ||
994 | fizzkinz | When people say Envane is all reworkings of Nuane, are they talking out their ass or is there truth to this? | Sean | it's like, slightly true | ||
995 | Rob | they were done super close periods same studio/gear/tastes, not a reworking of the same one track no. but its really the naming characteristic they have most in common. | ||||
996 | Salvatorin | autechre, I loved the formatting destroyer thing that came with the l event announcement. Also I loved the bizarre and wonderful fucked up myspace of yesteryear. Are you fans of browser art / net art ? Do you dabble yourselves in a little of it? Might we see more fascinating autechrian remixes of the internet? | Sean | possibly something slightly related, i dunno wouldn't be the same thing again tho, conceptually | ||
997 | KunoMerit | Any track that people think is "complicated" which is actually quite simple? I'm thinking of gear-people speculating on the sequencing, etc. If so, which one? | Sean | i always thought that about gantz graf tbh but yeah loads, i think cos there's a lot of ambiguity about how things are done, ppl sometimes think things that are formally weird are somehow hard to do, or very technical or whatever i see it more as people getting concepts like bravery and risk mixed up with ability and intention it's all part of the fun tho innit | ||
998 | gmanyo | What do you think about the rise of electronic music in the popular realm, both in Top40 pop songs and with electronic-exclusive artists like Skrillex or Avicii? Do you like any of this music? edit: especially knowing that Skrillex and I assume some of these other artists consider you to be one of their major influences. How does it feel to have your thread now be longer than the Skrillex thread? | Rob | reptile's theme is good. avicii is nothing like skrillex | ||
999 | nizzleone | Do you guys give input about the mastering process, or do you stay pretty hands off? For instance, certain releases, like Untilted, seem to be more compressed and louder than others. | Sean | ironically enough noel leaves things pretty much as we deliver them and frank and kev were absolute demons and would really change things | Noel = Noel Summerville (Mastering Engineer) | |
1000 | Wurstwasser | We gave this cat, which came last year to us and now permanently lives in our garden/gardens house, the name "Knut", it's a german males name. Now I found out a week ago, Knut is a girl. Do you have a girls name for Knut meeeoooow please? | Sean | frida | http://abload.de/img/knutmcq3i.jpg | |
1001 | daed | Not being bothered to sift through 103 pages of random questions and name requests to see if this has already been asked: Could you name a track for me? | Sean | your track is now called bottoms | ||
1002 | salvaKPO | Do you like the sound of a particular old computer or game console? Is so, Have a favorite? | Sean | i know it's boring but the fm in sega megadrive was really beautiful esp on games like Taz | ||
1003 | nizzleone | One of my early favorites of yours is Dropp. I've always kinda seen it as that synth part, the drums, and then swirling stuff. The swirling stuff kinda seems triggered or generated by the drums, is that the case? Do you remember what synth you used for that first synth line, and how did you sequence it? | Sean | its a nord, sequenced in logic iirc the swirling stuff is autechre® trade secret | ||
1004 | Root5 | Oh I have one more track specific question. I forgot to ask about Outh9x. It's my favourite autechre track, and I could ask leading questions based on my interpretation of it as a polytonal masterpiece. But maybe I should ask about it in a more general way. What was it like writing Outh9x? How did you come up with matching that bass melody with those pads? What gear is playing what part? | Rob | a lot of that is NMG2, and simmonsSDE. trying to get the tunes to peel off upwards all the time, most of it quick instinctive off the cuff reactions, but we were just quite careful not to rush it i think cos we had to get thebleakerthemorebeautiful bits to really work in the second half. | ||
1005 | hoggy | Do you often set out with a specific brief before making music? (Such as 'make a beat which inverts the position of the up and down beat over time' or something like that) | Rob | fold4wrap5 was a bit of an exercise. these things to toy around for a time, yeah it happens. not always | ||
1006 | Sean | not really might try it out as a sketch, if i have an idea that basic a sketch would be a good test, but in terms of implementing that i would more likely then shelve the idea so that it can come to me as a flash later when i'm in the middle of something else | ||||
1007 | KunoMerit | your picks: r8 vs machinedrum dx100 vs tx81z (don't know if these were ever used by you in particular but nice question. little dx100 with buttons vs tx81z multitimbral - you ever spend time on dumb questions like this? I do and I know it is such a waste - esp. when i own both and are so cheap). nord g1 vs g2 did you use the machinedrum to trigger the nords like with the r8? maybe this was already answered as i know you had the g2 around on tours with the elektrons? | Sean | r8 cos it was there first dx cos it pushes you more (but that's a tough one) g2 nah but not thru choice or anything, just never did that | ||
1008 | phudoshin | I absolutely love kruton: smallfish pa track 2 (autechre remix) - Can you tell me a bit about it and have you listened to it recently? Any source for the original track online? Its so filthy! | Rob | not sure i can find it online. could be out there somewhere. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R_oJ-6NuEU | |
1009 | cult fiction | So you might have seen those suicide machines: How stable are your max tunes usually? Are there some whose parameters descend into chaos after awhile and you edit them down before chaos strikes? | Sean | usually theres some control built in or some self regulation or whatever (pure chaos can be a bit silly ultimately) i mean chaos in the trad sense there not the maths sense | https://vimeo.com/56871178 | |
1010 | barbara planar | do you rate any british "free" improvisors, like keith rowe (prepared guitar) and john tilbury (piano) ? these two make a lot of unusual, atonal sounds (AMM, as a group) in realtime. their recordings, such as "newfoundland" are similarly odd and alien-sounding as autechre. the approach being different of course. curious if there's any interest there.. | Sean | i like fred frith a lot but i dunno the others u mentioned, its not a 'scene' i dig into much, just cos it seems to vary so much | ||
1011 | sergeantk | do you enjoy Nutella spread? do you enjoy listening to your tracks over anyone else's? | Sean | yeah too much, that stuff's deadly nah i wouldn't say that, but they sometimes fill a void that seems to present itself | ||
1012 | hoggy | Don't suppose you know why the AM doesn't work properly on VGM Music Maker? (I noticed you love Megadrive sounds) Is there any kind of fix anywhere? | never used that, is it a sega tracker thing? i only ever played the console i never tried to make tracks with one | |||
1013 | cebec | Have you tried Speculoos (aka Biscoff) spread? Perhaps even deadlier... | no but i will where do i get that from? | |||
1014 | nth | There is a chance on releasing this in good quality without people? start in 4: 37 but also full would be cool ;) If there are other versions of songs from the Exai I mean Quaristice (Versions) only, that for the Exai 3. may in the future I will let your album or ep, I'd like the names for them;) I would like to issue the album or ep . . . and I'm looking for a name for them, could you please name them | Sean | iirc jamie did record this set but he did a mix of soundboard and room mics, so no basically there are but no plans to release any yet i'd rather not, sorry if this is disappointing - it just takes time to listen to things and think of names | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpFwCN3TTEE&list=PLC37AC9E52F3C505F&index=4 | |
1015 | Retosik | i heard that Sean has polish roots, is this true? // (+come to poland lol) | Sean | mostly scottish, with a few irish, a few less welsh, and a tiny number of poles who told u that? p sure i only told like 3 people ever | ||
1016 | i found it accidentally on a polish site by googling autechre [...] Rochdale. To właśnie tutaj w połowie lat 80. ubiegłego wieku poznali się rob Brown i potomek polskich emigrantów Sean Booth [...] (if you are too lazy to use google translate:) ~[...] Rochdale. Here in the mid 80s of the last century rob Brown and descendant of Polish immigrants Sean Booth met each other [...] strange | wow chinese whispers there i reckon i might have got drunk somewhere and said something, who knows it's like 2% true if that | http://www.muno.pl/dj-art/autechre/ | |||
1017 | Wurstwasser | Can you still hear the hf noise (a sine at maybe 18 khz) in Piezo clocking in at 00:13? For me, it got lost rather suddenly. I remember it well, but now I'm 40+ and once I got back to Amber, it was gone. | Rob | Nooooooooo! | ||
1018 | jules | do you guys implore a lot/any numerology in your tracks/programming. i.e.: golden ratio or anything like that? | Sean | not nitpicking - but golden ratio isn't really numerology | ||
1019 | true, how about number theories, ratios, etc. funny that came out at 11:11 which i love. | yeah i mean, maths tricks are cool. ratios really seem to come more into play with 2d things tho i always notice things like proportions of windows as feeling right or wrong but i haven't done any proper research into it if i was a designer i'd probably be all over it | ||||
1020 | heh, i am! i was just asking because tool has a song where they applied the fibonacci to the timing of the song, syllables of the lyrics flow 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 5, 3, 2, 1, 1, etc and it had fascinating results. was curious if you guys ever experimented with stuff like that too. thanks! | fibonacci is kind of hard to work with cos the vals scale up so fast but it def looks pretty i did some fm with it once, tuning each freq that way, came out pretty natural sounding actually | ||||
1021 | seen this? it's fun | oh jesus primes ow my brain | http://whitneymusicbox.org/index.php?var=v12 | |||
1022 | cebec | Sean (another Max/MSP question, sorry!) -- you mentioned on another forum years ago that SuperCollider has, what rob said is a 'deluxe' sound 'out of the box' and that over time you've worked out what MSP objects have that sound. | Sean | tbh since they went 64 bit this is a moot point, i get better sounding stuff out of max these days might just be my programming chops, i've been using max a lot longer | ||
1023 | Moon | The Stereolab remix is awesome, how did it come about? Are you fans of theirs or did they approach you or what? | Sean | they approached us, are/were fans i used to like their energy, the way there would just be people on a stage all staring at the floor just concentrating on the sound, i really get that | ||
1024 | Rob | they asked us, i think they liked our tracks and wanted a version, was good fun to make, and we managed to bang a few offcuts from their real drummer and her singing which i still really rate. | ||||
1025 | Jev | I feel embarrassed but can you (or anyone) please re-write this sentence to standard english so I can understand it better? I am not a native and idioms and slang are problem. Thank you. "and we managed to bang a few offcuts from their real drummer and her singing which i still really rate" | Sean | and we managed to include some of the drumming outtakes they included on the DAT they supplied us with; and her singing, of which i am a huge fan | ||
1026 | Rob | ahem, yeah we're not butchers or anything. | ||||
1027 | thehauntingsoul | What's a day in the life of Ae? Any interesting stuff you can say about any of these tracks? Theme of sudden roundabout, iera, cfern, nuane, latent quarter, 777, netlon sentinel, perlence, they're a few of my faves. Can you name my oxygen 49? Space, deep sea or Antarctic? Android or iOS? | Rob | 1x cupasoup fukin all them tracks? i want to but i won't. thanks for the props, oh yeah always felt like Cfern was written by us as a conduit for Ron Grainer's spirit. Ice Cube deep sea iOS atm | ||
1028 | KunoMerit | you ever see this video? really turned me on to the nord lead. really still holds up as a va. | Sean | tbh the best thing about the lead/rack 1 was the drum maps, having 8 diff sounds per channel is enough to do whole tracks like, the first half of vose in is all one of those things running realtime. having the limited poly means you get the notes stealing a bit so things overlap weirdly | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwidT13MNBA | |
1029 | Jev | Interesting. So, have you tried Blofeld? I mean, it's a really cheap VA (and bugged sometimes) but I think the routing (and programming) possibilities are very good. | never used one but i did like the look of them when they came out, i heard they were buggy tho | |||
1030 | marf | ever use numerology under osx? | Sean | nah, i've seen it tho, someone i know uses it | ||
1031 | Alcofribas | given your maxmsp setup is capable of such a wealth of variation, do you ever feel the urge to release a lot more than you do? it seems like you would have tons of wicked alternate takes a la quaristice ready to go. then again, exai + l-event is 10 sides of vinyl... | Sean | yeah we can't release everything, even 2.5 hours is too much for busy people | ||
1032 | phaelam | there are loads of people that would defo listen to a 10 hour release, let alone a 2.5er. helps, me personally, focus on my werk. could be themed into chunks for those with shorter attention spans. [thank you internet] long and short of it is....seems like the crowd here can't get enough Ae ;) sine, square, saw or random? | Sean | oh wow that's actually quite tough prob square | ||
1033 | Kcinsu | Have you guys checked out the Logic Pro X Scripter MIDI plugin? You can use JavaScript to build MIDI processors... You can do some wild stuff with it. I assume you guys are all set with Max though. | Sean | i never heard of that actually, i'll look into it cheers | ||
1034 | jasondonervan | Do either of you have any thoughts on Wiliiam Basinski's 'Disintegration Loops'? Specifically surrounding the notion that appropriated emotions from a catastrophic event (9/11) negatively pushed the music beyond whatever the listener could hope to independently perceive for themselves - due to the heavy burden of sentimentality laid on by Basinski (stills from the smoke emitting from the two towers adorning the sleeve art, bringing up the mythology of how the music came to be at that time during interviews, etc)? Was being in the 'right' place/time (I use that in the loosest possible sense) justification enough for Basinski to legitimately apply such a tragedy to his creative work? Favourite William Gibson book, if any? | Rob | don't know about the Basinski thing. Gibson, just THAT one book… sorry i must've been wasting lots of time as a kid, not to read so much stuff. | ||
1035 | Sean | keepin it 300 | In response to rob | |||
1036 | disoriental express | First off, M39 Diffain is fuckin dope. The dynamic interplay between the background sounds and foreground....It has this effect of inducing very strong psychedelic sensations... Most of your songs are capable of doing this but, for me, M39 is the pinnacle of your efforts toward this end. So props for that, your service to humanity has not gone unnoticed. The level of detail and sheer exploratory listening that Exai and L-Event provide is exceptional. There are so many sounds opening up and revealing themselves in cascades but they're each given the proper space to be appreciated. Was there a point where you came across a general aesthetic direction for Exai and ran with it? The tracks seem to exude a cohesive otherworldly style and dominance like interacting with a superior intelligence in a huge space. '1 1 is' and 'nodezsh' being prime examples. Basically, i'm asking to hear your thoughts on the overall sound you achieved with Exai and L-Event and how you perceive it? What excites you about these records in particular? Also, what excited you most about your live oversteppers stuff? It was so fuckin mind melting and almost primordial. Dope as fuck. | Sean | yeah i think so, i mean we kind of arrived there cos we had been building this thing for ages and trying to get it to sound deeper all the time, but it wasn't something we had to work to maintain cos by that point we'd set a template more or less, in terms of tech anyway. we could just quickly set up a track and record it and go by feels. hopefully the depth come across, i mean from your questions i assume it does, which tbh is the most exciting thing. prob seems weird that - cos we don't ostensibly do our stuff to get reactions from random audience members, but it does mean something when what we think we were doing is being noticed. even if it's just like 5 people who get it. ha wicked cheers, yeah we're working on the next set right now, it might not be the same as the last one but hopefully the depth will be noticeable | ||
1037 | Rob | quite early on things were kind of heading in towards something yeah, usually LPs don't do that until quite a while into writing new material. i think this time though, must have caught us early enough to intensify what we could see developing as we were doing them. thanks, (sounds cheesy i bet) but it looks like u hear it he way i do too, fwiw. | ||||
1038 | salvaKPO | What did you use in LP5 apart from Nord synths? Is that final part of Vose in Supercollider? | Sean | tons of nord, bits of asr10, bits of dx100, few other things end of vose in was sound edit 16 | ||
1039 | cult fiction | Say, Sean and rob, do you guys have any questions for WATMM? | Rob | at last, 106 pages BEFORE ANYONE ASKED | ||
1040 | pigster | oh hey not true !! i totally asked on page 26 (( altho it was sort of tucked between my main question and a thank you*u* message )). autechre pls, feel free to ask watmm a question. | ah yes pigster - u were quick to offer. i remember seeing that now. duly noted | |||
1041 | logakght | What do you think of Wolfgang Voigt's GAS project? | Sean | really like it tbh i'm a huge fan of his anyway | ||
1042 | Awesome, do you have a favorite GAS album? Also, do you like his recent stuff? (last 3 years or so) | pop, cos nostalgia yeah i love SOG, daring, perverse, annoying the minimal techno crowd. full marks | ||||
1043 | Rob | favourite gas LP, pop - for PO6 & POP7 quite specifically | ||||
1044 | purlieu | Amber is your only sleeve with seemingly untreated photography, is this something you would consider going back to, or do you think abstract/generated art is the bet visual interpretation of your music? Any thoughts on the midlands? North and south England seem to have strong identities, but us midlanders seem to get forgotten about. Also, been stuck in a creative rut lately, but all yr talk of enjoying jamming tracks has really inspired me into doing stuff like that and I'm pretty happy with all, definitely needed to stop thinking about the result and just get lost in the moment. So thanks for that! | Sean | yeah, i mean if anything pertinent came up we would i love bham we did some of our best gigs there over the years oscillate was legendary wicked | ||
1045 | Rob | nah brumes get the love from above and below, whereas top and bottom hate each other no? | ||||
1046 | nizzleone | If there were to be a Nord Modular G3, what changes would you like to see? | Sean | yeah this | ||
1047 | Kcinsu | A commitment to support their editor software even after the unit goes out of production? | ||||
1048 | skyking | Are you guys pumped for ISON sungrazer? Could be a great show akin to this: | Rob | unfortunate little cometty | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5vsThfG0Kk | |
1049 | Alcofribas | on lp5 was there any conscious reference to bucephalus bouncing ball? the end of vose in always sounded slightly reminiscent of the end of bbb and drane2 obv has a "bouncing ball" effect. it's possible I'm making the connection nostalgically since I got lp5 and come to daddy around the same time but still wonder if there was anything deliberate there. | Sean | yeah we did the track drane, which had that exponential speeding-up delay thing happening, and then rich did that bouncing ball track, and we answered it with drane2 which was the same delay trick but feeding percussion into it instead, as a kind of tease he said he made a bouncing ball revenge track to it once but i guess he didn't release it, prob cos we all got better things to do than get into a tricks war :gamer: | ||
1050 | Wurstwasser | Talking about singing - never thought about a Björk collab? After all her stuff especially with Plaid I guess she's some sort of heroine for us... Or is a singing voice in your tracks - impossible? | Sean | dunno i mean she has to be the boss from what i understand might work, but in practice i dunno how deferential we would be, it's not in our collective nature | ||
1051 | triachus | This page on whosampled.com: - Is it accurate? If not, where? Any other things that should be added? hah, you can't blame me for trying | Sean | that recury one's wrong | http://www.whosampled.com/search/?q=autechre | |
1052 | Rob | yeah this all looks in order. theres much debate as to the original Gangstarr part tho' | ||||
1053 | Sean | did u even check that recury one? | In response to rob | |||
1054 | olo | Do you think of the many influx of new members due to this thread, one of these new members is Cylob? | Sean | that would be nice, and it's certainly possible | ||
1055 | kero | ok cant find my old question on here but was wondering if u guys ever upgraded to a pacarana or still messing with kyma language ??> :) | Sean | nah i gave my capybara to bola | ||
1056 | Rob | answered this earlier but no, our Capybara is with Daz Fitton, Bola | ||||
1057 | ahh cool couldn't find earlier. was wondering about your guys kyma usage, i thought i saw u using during a show in detroit festival a few years back , some black boxes sitting beside laptops. could have been harddrives though. im just 2 years into kyma language thanks to the butthole surfers :) | nah we didn't take kyma outside. | ||||
1058 | pyramidpanes | my juno 6 & korg delta are sittin by a bath contemplating life or not wrkin.. | Sean | lol sorry mate, i keep half expecting SB to have named this already as I'm still 3 pages from the edge….. your juno6 is called robert Mcall your korg is called Freddie Laker | ||
1059 | lumpenprol | when making Oversteps, was there even a small element of it being a reaction against those folks who had been saying "they forgot how to make nice melodies"? Or were you just following your muse as per usual? | Sean | oversteps - basically we were making algorithms with a view to using them repeatedly, and seeing how flexible we could make them in terms of being able to reuse them in lots of different contexts (making diff styles of music) and it kind of grew out of that i dunno if we were really successful in achieving our aims (not really, we got very sidetracked and went with it into a different zone) but we liked the result and ended up shaping it further into that kind of oversteps territory i think we were concentrating on melody, harmony counterpoint and all that cos the rhythm stuff has been second nature for a while, in terms of programming and algos and such, and we thought we might learn more if we came at it from the opposite angle | ||
1060 | Ando | How did you guys get set up spinning for IBC? | Sean | originally, in 87 or 88, our mate ged met someone on a bus i think, and somehow rob b got asked to go and spin some tunes, but they got raided so then in like 89 i think or 90 we got another call off them just asking if we were still djing and we said we were doing tracks and they invited us onto andy's show to do an interview as a band (i guess to fill some time) then after the interview we got chatting and they came back a few weeks later and offered us a show and we thought it would be a good way to get our tracks out there so we said yeah | ||
1061 | daed | I always find it difficult to fathom constantly working with another person. Are there any "solo" tracks that either of you have put out? What are some tips for collaborating with other musicians and not being completely selfish/dominant? | Sean | yeah tons of our tracks are solo tracks, usually trying to one up each other about 1/3 of it is non-solo, as a really approximate guess i dunno we just compete a lot, that seems to work for us, ymmv of course | ymmv = your mileage may vary | |
1062 | Alcofribas | do you mean 1/3 of released tracks? or do you mean just overall tracks that you've ever done? | nah released stuff for overall it's a lot lower i reckon | |||
1063 | marf | have you guys noticed how little music seems to come out of these synth forum enthusiasts? like a guy with 30 grand in serge modules doesn't seem to make any music. do you find there is a danger in making the gear center stage? do you think it gets in the way of making tracks? | Sean | i think its more that there are shitton of people who see music as a lifestyle choice, and buying gear is easy for people who aren't really very motivated | ||
1064 | Wurstwasser | Any thoughts on that in 50 years maybe nobody listens to your music and in 500 years all your stuff is forgotten and lost forever? Do you care? | Sean | yeah this seems about right, but who knows i mean i have trouble predicting what's gonna happen next week tbh | ||
1065 | Rob | figured it was a certainty | ||||
1066 | jules | when you guys are getting your live sets together, do you usually start with a base of the record you are touring on or have a whole new thing going on? with stuff like flex 96, it seems all fresh but the untilted tour had obvious stuff from the album which then morphed into stuff for quari. i havent heard any of the oversteps tour (hint hint) im excited over what exai material could morph into live with all those huge grooves. | Sean | it really depends, with quaristice etc it kind of happened 'organically' cos we didn't have a full studio for a few months and we were jamming with sequences from the live set and sometimes we take sequences from album tracks and throw them into whatever live set we're doing but yeah for the most part we start from scratch | ||
1067 | Sam | Always been curious about this myself..... This particular live segment - is probably my all-time favourite Autechre moment. Is this an evolution of a previous live section or album track? If not, did it ever morph in to something which appeared on a later release? It's mind blowing. Beatwise are we hearing a good bit of the EFM bass drum in there? | Rob | this part was new - made just for the live set. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmxqSfMVWn8 | |
1068 | marf | are you guys enjoying this? it looks tiring. You are very cool to do this. | Sean | yeah its good keeping track of it all is a bit kind of totally impossible due to navigation slowness so if i'm skipping anything just repost it some stuff i'm skipping cos i already answered ITT somewhere and obv I'm trying to do other things like eat as well | ||
1069 | Rob | yeah. even if its making my eyes sink inwards on a daily basis. but its ok, i'll make it. | ||||
1070 | Alcofribas | Sean eats? another myth horribly destroyed imo | Sean | i know i should have said i need to perform osmosis or something | ||
1071 | soma | I'm about to record a remix of my friend's track onto cassette tape, first feeding a few live tracks into a fostex x-18h 4-trk, then straight recording it using a technics rs-t911 double cassette deck....have y'all any words of wisdom that would be some things to consider? | Sean | yeah do a few runs at diff levels make sure the azimuth's sensible, if not then def run off copies to digi like as soon as you do it other than that nah, i mean there's no rules | ||
1072 | triachus | You are influenced by a lot of hip-hop, mainly 80's. Do hip-hop artist that listen to your music hear that influence? How do most hip-hop artist or fans react to your music? Outkast praising Squarepusher, Kanye West sampling Aphex Twin... Were there ever any big rap/hip-hop names that approached you for collaborations/productions, or wanted to sample you (or have?)? Any well-known rapper that you want to be approached by? | Sean | lel kanye sampled afx, which track? didn't know about that no clue i dunno how many hip hop ppl check our stuff i know el-p likes some of it, he approached for collab once, might still happen i was busy as fuck at the time i dunno there are so many i like, like asking me what's my favourite cheese or something | ||
1073 | afx is sampled in this shameless thing: - | Rob | yeah course, heard that. not bad for a bit lame - but they just had the catchy bit and should've ran with more of the rest imo | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt0Diud2z0w | ||
1074 | Jev | Oh my god, I am scrolling through Bull Wallet Versions and am out of breath how much laugh I have really :biggrin: Have you guys seen them? Some of them are really stupidly genius.. | Rob | yeah me n Sean were crying laughing on a daily basis. | http://bullwalletversions.tumblr.com/ | |
1075 | Wurstwasser | Not sure if it has been asked. Any plans to come to Germany, preferably Dortmund area? | Rob | yeah we're on our way right now heheh | ||
1076 | zaphod | i sometimes play ep7 when i want a girl to understand me. this invariably ends with her jumping from my car, screaming, rolling down a hill and hiding for hours until a passing trucker finds her. every girl i've let listen to your music ends up psychologically shattered. why is this? what do you consider your sexiest song? for me, it is definitely "autumn acid (aphex twin remix)". | Sean | 1/10 come ooon | ||
1077 | salvaKPO | Do you have stuff like tanks or submarines? In which countries would you like to live in? What are you eating? | Rob | no toys i'm ok right here atm feta | ||
1078 | k h o v | could you please id this track (from old dissengage show around 95..) i'd been trying to found out for 10 years.. Gescom ?? sorry its so short but i cannot add more.. | Sean | beaumont hannant - anokhi | http://forum.watmm.com/index.php?app=core&module=attach§ion=attach&attach_id=27386 | |
1079 | Rob | beaumont hannant , mines still on vinyl copy so i'll id the actual track asap Edit - sym-phon5 if theres one unsung hero in all this talk of UK electronica scene cMid 90s its Beamont Hannant, i want all to go get some. | ||||
1080 | November | Fans of the shows Nighty Night or Human Remains? | Rob | yeah i am. can't help it, Nighty Nights a bit more normal - i prefer Human Remains, its more crushing. | ||
1081 | hertsdonut | Is this the best fan photo of you guys on the web? | Sean | le rob aphex face | https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BVrZMuGCIAE829v.jpg | |
1082 | Rob | yeah well no one can see my Rhand [Right Hand] | ||||
1083 | RichardDevine | Hello Sean, rob just wanted to say hello, been a while, hope you guys are well. :happy: | Sean | ooh hi rich are you still in roswell? do you attract UFOs with your special electronic apparatus? | ||
1084 | hey Rich just thinking about first time we met…. hope alls well at u 2 | |||||
1085 | Rhombix | I've noticed some of your tracks have this intense, paranoid kind of mood (e.g. Ipacial Section, Pencha, Dial). Are there any particular kinds of moods/atmospheres that make you feel accomplished by having woven them into a track? Or is there something else about the act of putting emotion into sound that you tend to aim for? Basically, what is your ideal victory when finishing a track? | Sean | i dunno they're all different we don't really aim for anything we just see what reveals itself over time a bit like having a conversation with reality | ||
1086 | through zero | my questions are: how do you go about your collaboration? does one of you start a patch and send to the other to build off of or is it more of a situation where you are working things out together? do you approach the collaboration the same way on each project? i.e: one of you handles sound design and the other handles sequencing etc? | Sean | bit of everything really, we pass stuff back and forth a lot, in various states of disassemblage | ||
1087 | Sam | Minimal Nation or Internal Empire? "Happy Cycling" or "You Could Feel the Sky"? Selected Ambient 1 or 2? | Rob | internal empire (cos of the title track), 'and' minimal nation, (cos its longer) both for sure 1 | ||
1088 | phling | how are your backs holding up? (eh sorry if this sounds weird) i mean i do notice a lot of strain from standing, head down looking at gear, or just sitting at a desk a lot.... | Sean | mine was a bit fucked about 10 years ago but i got a new bed and new chairs and it seemed to sort itself out just don't sit in one pos for too long, keep moving round few ppl i know use exercise balls to achieve this but i got a dead mobile chair and it works for me had a standing desk type scenario briefly for a bit but reverted | ||
1089 | nizzleone | That track on Across Uneven Terrain is uncharacteristically straight up techno (and some fine fine techno imho), how did that come about? Do you guys listen to an current techno producers? | Sean | yeah bits, i like rrose, kyle hall, cygnus, AnD, bits of perc, and other things who's names escape that mix of VA was like a tribute to basic channel and mills really. what he sent to us reminded us of that, we kind of did an ae version of the idiom we thought it was in rather than of the track, while sampling his track, and making it all digital for sport | ||
1090 | November | How important is isolation in the creative process? Do you guys mostly follow routine and habits or do you have to deliberarely get comfortable to start really focusing? | Sean | nah the zone hides everywhere, in all different activities and settings there are people who think they need certain conditions to be satisfied before they can enter but they just locked themselves out of going there in certain contexts, usually cos going there caused some external problem for them once in that context | ||
1091 | Rhombix | Some of you might have come across the "original track titles" going around when Draft 7.30 was released: Benk Chin nwnw8 606.ie Reppat Theft Prince Moth Mothy Moth Moth Vlimpton Alpha 5 Foam Conduit Uprock Kidney Bean So, are these real? Can you tell us a little more about how you come up with your track titles? | Sean | yeah real, the actual file titles i threw them on cddb before the release for a laugh to see if anyone would notice | ||
1092 | th555 | I don't remember seeing an answer to the piano question(s?), but I'm sure you have heard this: - Quite fitting IMO. You should do a piano-only track one day. Worked out great for Clark and afx and whonot. | Sean | yeah i really like this | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0ugIKKkJKw | |
1093 | Rob | :o 3'52'' - 3'55'' yeahhhs | ||||
1094 | amni | Do you like doing the Sound On Sound and Future Music interviews where you talk more about your gear? Its always a great insight to see the studio and read about the gear, kind of like what you are doing now. | Sean | not really its kind of hard to get into details with anyone cos there are too many details and just knowing 1% is a bit weird cos it slants everything brutally but we do em from time to time, not as often now but i think they get that we're not offering tips on what compressor to use to get that kick drum sound | ||
1095 | Rob | i'm not averse to nosing at some others' features, and from reading things about say 808state in mags like MT way back in the day for us, then newer mags SOS and FM approaching us was both weird cos it was me and my mate, but totally normal because it was inevitable eventually, but still am a bit freaked out by it. sometimes a chance to be sort of warmer and open about things…. and then 'no way, no ones coming in ere' this approach feels way more 2sided right now. | ||||
1096 | barbara planar | do you guys ever get out in the desert, like in southern Utah? Experience the park areas? Camp? Do you prefer to remain in the mostly temperate, overcast, humid zones? | Sean | never been there, not really a huge fan of warm and dry places but i guess it prob looks ace i like oregon, when we go there i like that drive from sf to portland, and up to seattle | ||
1097 | amni | Oh yeah I keep meaing to ask and I know you touched on it at the start but why not just put your live stuff out on DVD like Farmers Manual did? Or maybe just the better recordings if you are worried about quality control? I am sure us fans would eat it up. | Sean | its just tons to go thru and we don't have decent copies of most of it but thats not a bad idea in itself, cheers | ||
1098 | 21B | what's the most common mistake you see younger upcoming artists make? what's turned out to be your most fortunate mistake? | Rob | nothing unusual, experience just shows u a few more cycles further back. plugging CV gate cables in my mouth, to taste the voltages, turned out to enhance my skills. | ||
1099 | Wurstwasser | As consumers: Are you also infected by that vinyl records nostalgia? It seems like many people want vinyl releases. I don't... Or maybe do you prefer lossless/highest available quality downloads plus maybe booklet pdf's? Bleep btw is IMO not perfect in that department.Best labels offer direct PDF conversions from Quark/AI booklet sources... | Sean | really depends on the stuff like for someone like UR the vinyl cut is totally different to the digi version, i prefer the sound of the records personally but i think for someone like luc ferrari the clean digitals are way superior | ||
1100 | ZombieLincoln666 | How about your (newer) stuff? | i think exai sounds good on vinyl but the digitals are what we delivered so.. i like both for different reasons i prob slightly prefer the vinyl but purely cos of the novelty of it sounding all new | |||
1101 | fhisch | What percentage of your time awake per week would you estimate is spent doing some activity (research, daydreaming, experimentation, or active production) related to your music? Have you found yourself in situations where you have to reject certain obligations (such as earning money, or going on dates, or spending time with family) because they would get in the way of your projects? | Sean | for me prob about 80-90% most days, day or two off each week, usually one depends tho i take weeks off randomly sometimes | ||
1102 | Rob | prob 12hrs on weekdays. weekends is not so. | ||||
1103 | hoggy | WIll you ever make different kinds of music? (It's hard to pin down the things that hold all your music together exactly, but something about the approach to process is very consistent, and there's something about your music that is so easily recognisable as yours - literally nobody as far as I know does close to the same thing) | Sean | i thought we were doing that half joking there, really i mean yeah i do stuff that i think sounds nothing like me and it gets spotted straight away if i've got a mate round. so nah probably not. i mean i might think it's really different but whatever, everything we do sounds like us, it would do i suppose cos we don't know any different. | ||
1104 | Does Eutow sound sexual to you? | i dunno is the sea sexual? it sounds like the sea to me | ||||
1105 | Do you think porn is destructive or fine? | both | ||||
1106 | Are you into Throbbing Gristle? The Tuss? The Melvins? | tg yeah bits, tuss yeah, melvins yeah, random bits i picked up - (houdini, joe preston ep, bootlicker) | ||||
1107 | Tesco have started scanning faces to target adverts, the UK has more surveillance cameras than any other country, the NSA and Google are watching everyone - is it the beginning of the end? Is there anything we can do? | most of the ones in the uk are privately owned nah you can't do anything, but they're not in charge either | ||||
1108 | triachus | Was the "wob" bit near the end of jatavee C intended as an intentional play on what people call dubstep these days? Tongue in cheek, if you will? Probably not, but many people dropped that word a lot when talking about jatavee C Did you guys ever incorporated tongue in cheek bits on albums? Did that happen on every album? I recall an interviewer once asking about the "humour" in some tracks or something. He took Sublimit as an example for some reason. Can't remember what your response was. | Rob | its jatevee C, sorry. :P its just a nice sound thats all the way thru - left on its own near the end. the whole track is clubby so yeah i bet they would. sublimit is better considered as serious. just buoyant mbe | ||
1109 | amni | Your live sets, say Oversteps,each year sound quite similar from town to town so how do you approach it? You have a foundation and then tweak over the top? I kind feel bad for you guys at the moment although I am sure we are all enjoying chatting to you, but I cant help feeling like you are doing tech support. So my final question is, my Windows 8 computer isnt working. What should I do? | Sean | not really they vary tons, unless u mean in terms of tracks, the patterns were changing constantly it doesn't even really repeat bars never mind whole tracks unless, is this a ruse? | ||
1110 | Rob | =) chuck it. | In response to amni's second question | |||
1111 | Retosik | are you two going to make two separate albums in the future? i'm a huge fan of this idea | Sean | it might have happened already how would you know | ||
1112 | Nobody could know... i bet rob made Oversteps. seriously tho, you should make separate albums once, not neccesarily under "autechre". another q's: what's your worst track? did you made a bot to make tracks for you? have you considered not making music anymore (plsno)? and please answer this: what are lyrics to "ccec" and what's the sample from? | Sean | haaa i don't want to answer any of them | |||
1113 | chim | want to ask about all that complexity in your music. Is it something purely to keep the mind interested, or do you both find it the best way to communicate that deeper artistic intention behind Autechre as a whole? Being a synesthete myself, looking at the context of the artwork and album track flows, a lot of it suggests a kind of synergistic communication - you mentioned Autechre being bigger than the both of you consciously and I found this a fascinating statement. I know how hard it is to put stuff like an artistic vision into words, but many of your tunes literally go all over the place and I'm curious how that connects with the intention that seems to be going on behind all that work. Your music has the strangest intricate combination of hard and soft, dry and wet, fat steady beats and arrythmic cacophonia. It's clear from most of your posts and your music that you are ultra-committed to getting your production process just the way you want it. Do you ever feel like you lose track of your musical output? In some of your work, you seem to make a thing out of hiding or disrupting melodical content, in the midst of percussion or disharmony/microtonality (An example would be the post 4 minute mark of Lcc on Untilted, it's like you're intentionally bordering on breaking the track). What's up with that? | Sean | it's not about intention. well it kind of is in a way, but our intention is to interact with the world in a way that makes stuff that we like appear. there is no deeper intention or thing that we're trying to accomplish beyond that production is music, all the same thing i don't think of it as hiding. and pretty much every sound we use is tuned, technically the whole thing is melodic | ||
1114 | Schlitze | When you guys are on tour do you ever get to an unfamiliar venue, look around the place and have any concerns about how good it's gonna be? or do you put all your faith in the organisers to get the right venue? or get pissed off at a venue change at towns you've played in previous years? I saw you in glasgow 2005 and 2008 which were at the Art school (organised by Numbers i think), great venue, and the sound was massive. Then in 2010 at Sub Club, still a great gig, but a much smaller venue, more intimate and more subdued atmosphere (lots of chin strokers there that night / monday night, in comparison to Art School where the crowd can get a bit mental down the front {chanting ''one more tune'' i recall, lol}). I guess if i was on tour and had played a couple of gigs in a great venue, and was ready to go back there a coupla years later only to be told ''we're moving you somewhere less epic, you'll have to turn the volume down a bit, it's a monday night'' i'd be a bit pissed off. Any grumbles about that kind of thing? | Sean | i way preferred the art school gigs but that stuff's beyond our control really it's as much in the interests of a promoter to put on a decent night as it is ours the monday night thing was just cos of us being on tour, we have to play somewhere on monday, glasgow got the short straw that time soz | ||
1115 | I actually turned up late to that sub club gig thinking u guys were playing later, as you never usually started at the art school before midnight. Walked in about 11.40 and went to get a drink at the bar, my mate was like ''i think thats ae started already'' i was like ''no way, thats rob Hall, ae don't start till after midnight''. my mates like ''i think thats them on just now''. I pushed my way through the darkness to find it was indeed ae mixin it up there. I'm still annoyed i missed that lovely screechy track at the start. Anyway, went back to the bar finished my drink and then went and enjoyed the rest of the gig. It was only during rob Hall's set i pondered ''Why the hell was Sean wearing, rob's Planet 69 T-shirt?'' | ha we both got given them shirts when we were in the d in 96 or 97 whenever it was i still got mine | ||||
1116 | gmanyo | what do you guys think of shit like this: - | Rob | its doable, familiar elements every single one, but none an aesthetic I've ever not wanted around, i mean growing up with Art of Noise doing adverts, MAGI showreels, catching Vasulka films on BBC2 TV accidentally, all that was enriching for me, thats not gonna happen to kids now, so this suffices cos its supplying most of the same in a steady stream, so all good. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYM0kEJM8mU | |
1117 | fhisch | How can I become a member of Gescom? Here's a track I did in 45 minutes, is it good enough? | Sean | not good enough sorry | http://yargarg.com/snd/art/soundart003.mp3 | |
1118 | gmanyo | Have you ever released a track on album that you made in a super short amount of time and just liked? Also, from a long ways back but if you ignored on purpose then do so again by all means, I was wondering if there were any really cool unknown artists that you enjoy that you could share. Possibly even just soundcloud or bandcamp pages that you've stumbled across that you think deserve more listeners than they have. | Sean | yeah quite a few, esp on the early albums i can't think of any but i'm not on sc much, and i think all the bc people i like are already known here tbh | ||
1119 | Sorry, can't help but be curious: how short are these? Less than a day? An hour? Any specific tracks you remember doing in a notably small amount of time? | yeah most of the tracks on amber were done in less than a day for example incunabula the older ones took longer cos we were using a 4 track but soon as we got the atari we were firing them out, one or two a day, but not working every day cos we had jobs | ||||
1120 | Terpentintollwut | Is there an extremely distorted voice-sample in tuinorizn at 0:20 / 0:21? First time I heard this track was in an Amsterdam Hotel and I thought 0:20 was the landlord knocking at the door complaining cause we were being too loud. | Rob | hahah perfect, but no, voices. in the synthesis, theres glottal shit on the baseline | ||
1121 | skibby | pottery and textiles have transmitted design and art thru millenia, paper and musical notation has transmitted the great classical composers with acurracy for over 1000 years, where/how will *binary* data be stored and retrieved in 100 years? where do you think music such as yours is best stored if it were to be sustained for thousands of years? | Sean | [ANSWERS WITH LINK TO THE RIGHT] | http://www.technologyreview.com/view/520541/million-year-data-storage-disk-unveiled/ | |
1122 | Rhombix | just wondered if you had any thoughts on an early minimalist/process piece for solo organ called Melody III: - It uses a 36-note pattern which is layered at nine different speeds... are you interested in this type of process/generation? | Sean | i am if it sounds good | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKV5yV603-s | |
1123 | sorry, the youtube didn't show up: - | ok this reminds me of laurie spiegel tons i like it | ||||
1124 | Uniret | Have you listened much to jazz, and if so, who are your favorite jazz musicians, favorite jazz albums, etc? | Sean | not really i only have like 4 jazz records, all of which i just got cos i heard them round mates' houses i find it really inconsistent in terms of sound | ||
1125 | Frankie5fingers | would love to hear your guys' thoughts on another one of my favorite artists, Solar Fields. ever heard/listen to him? Aside from you two he's one of my biggest influences to making music. | Sean | not heard any, will check it | ||
1126 | beetles | Lifeforms or Dead Cities? | Sean | Accelerator | ||
1127 | Rob | hahah we had that, lifeforms for cascade, cerebral, vit, room208, e burn dead cities for the whole second half why or? when i have both available to me at the fingertip. whats with false opposites everyone | ||||
1128 | ZombieLincoln666 | Do you have a track that was more difficult to make than it sounds? | Sean | - parhelic triangle - all tomorrow's linoleum - squarepusher remix there's 3, there are quite a few | ||
1129 | Franciscus | talking about parhelic triangle @ Sean, what does it remind you of? i guess it creeps me out a bit sometimes confield was my first proper ae album btw | Sean | yeah i dunno what it reminds me of actually, some kind of lumbering deep thing it has that dragging feeling, sort of ancient and sleeping | ||
1130 | northernplastic | Could you give a little input on the making of your latest webcast? How long were you working on it, what software did you use (could you rec any for a basic mix?), how did you choose tracks etc. | Sean | mostly traktor made a huge playlist really gradually, like over the course of a year, and then went thru it later doing lots of 20-60 min mixes in certain bpm ranges, then mixed them together | ||
1131 | mokz | What is the most Autechrean planet? | Sean | saturn | ||
1132 | Rob | ah jupiter | ||||
1133 | jules | Jupiter has io, that has to count for something | Sean | and europa altho that's not ours | ||
1134 | northernplastic | Was this thread partially cringeworthy? Be brutally honest. | Sean | at times but overall it's been alright i reckon and who the fuck else is gonna do this | ||
1135 | John Ehrlichman | is that a real or simulated spring reverb effect at about 4:25 on Ipacial Section? i like the few tracks you've done that seem to have a lot of spring reverby type effects going on, i've forgotten the tiles now though. | Sean | it's real, analogue systems eurorack one | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtC-iN_PFlM | |
1136 | maybe you can refresh my memory of what other track I'm talking about. I feel like it was one of the quadrange tracks.. maybe but it felt like the entire reverb bed was spring (not just quick sections) and it sounded really nice. | Sean | the beginning of bnc castle, maybe? that might be a diff box actually, we had a beige one i can't rem the manufacturer tho, right noisy fucker, think robs got it now | |||
1137 | Rob | PSE , a wheezy bastard with earth problems but deep | In response to Sean | |||
1138 | i was just informed by forum member Obel that the track is called blyz castl (probably one my favorites of that era, but what was that technically on, not quadrange or versions?). Did you just put an extra e at the end? is that halfway confirmation the song actually translates to bouncy castle ? | yeah, it was the PSE on that - japan only release of downloads only, sorry harder to get double 'only' action there. | ||||
1139 | jasondonervan | Favourite scene/artist in Style Wars? | Sean | fave scene prob the one where cap i going 'more' just cos he's so mental not cos he was ever good at anything fave artist case 2 | ||
1140 | Ivan Ooze | have you heard the yeezus album by kanye west, it sounds like shit at first listens but i think its fun and has a lot of excellent moments, my favorite 2013 release together with exai/l-event *ducks* suppose he finds out about autechre and asks you friendly to do a track with, would you do it if you know it's gonna work?? | Rob | well, i'd probably imagine its a nice thought, i mean money too, but its like , wouldn't we be just become some minions? if it was proper collab, id be happier. really dunno his methods from the clips i see. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT3swdCJrrg | |
1141 | Franciscus | what do you think of gerald donald's 'scientific' solo work (after the passing of james stinson)? and what's your fav drexciya album? | Rob | big fan, before n after james, dopplereffekt yes. neptunes lair today, grava4 is also dope | ||
1142 | Sean | only heard bits, sounded alright, bit clean maybe need to hear more tho i can't really comment on like 2 tracks randomly | ||||
1143 | Franciscus | do you know federico leocata? i like this video of his - | Sean | dunno, it's alright | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jP-_FyH7lRc | |
1144 | feltcher | Given that Quaristice Special Edition was limited to 1000 copies, do you guys get peeved that pretty much everyone has a ripped digital copy? | Sean | nah obv we knew that was gonna happen, but only 1000 people get the nice metalwork and hopefully they'll look after them | ||
1145 | Retosik | do some of your tracks have a hidden meaning? like, the track tells a story? (rather: audio output of a event) if i am wrong this might be funny for you, but i thought about this many times when listening to exai. | Sean | yeah some of it's autobiographical i'm sure but not in a conscious way but you can't help it, if you're doing what you want it's bound to happen | ||
1146 | grey | Do you use custom controllers for your software? Any of it over midi, or osc, or something else? Do you keep it mostly around knobs and buttons when you use controllers, or other kinds of interface? | Sean | atm the only input device i'm using is a kenton killamix mini, but only cos it goes in my bag, and it integrates perfectly with my setup mine has knobs that click and i need that to run my stuff cos all the input is discrete vals | ||
1147 | Zantman | Have you enjoyed answering all these questions? | Rob | yeah, some tricky cos despite having the answers (i mean we are the subject, not say Maths or a given syllabus), which is ok - been done b4, but its like a race to get them down. with true feels ;) | ||
1148 | IOS | So, Lars von Trier approaches you and asks you to redo some existing tracks (I'm thinking Five Obstructions here). What in your opinion would be the five rules that'd make you go "Aw for fuck's sake man!"? :D Actually let's say, one of the obstructions is to (re)do a track on a player piano only. Maybe two - one normal player piano and one prepared. | Sean | nah i'd just tell him to fuck off and stop making shit films | ||
1149 | Jev | I would not. I have heard he is psychically/mentally ill. I have understanding for his imaginations and needs that he realize in his films. I mean I don't enjoy what he does (I am not into films too much) but I respect his problems. | oh right so no one can tell him how shit his films are explains a lot | |||
1150 | No, that wasn't what I meant. I mean, I would tell him politely that it's not my cup of tea. I mean, I can fuck off somebody that makes shitty films just for money and is motivated only by fame and greed (although you can argue those can be defined as psychical problems too). You know what I mean. | yep | ||||
1151 | Jev | I was listening to Tilapia recently when walking through super-quiet evening streets to a grocery store (countryside) and realized one thing about the mix of the track. It is almost absolutely perfectly balanced volume-wise. I mean, you know when you listen to some great mix really carefully you suddenly start hearing how were things done or start hearing nuances like: - this instrument is slightly more forward sounding and disconnected from the rest - the snare peaks are too sharp/too dull - or a sound that is supposed to be in the back sometimes manage to go little bit forward and break the balance of the mix because one of it's bands wasn't compressed/EQed efficiently but even with those flaw the mix still sounds great and you have to be really carefully listening in order to hear it. But with Tilapia, there are no such things to be heard. It's one of the most solid mixes I have ever heard. As I already discussed with Sean it has amazing space and depth for a "dry" track but this super-perfect loudness and peak balance is really stunning for me. I mean...I am speechless, really. I am not going to ask how was it done, but was it difficult or do you remember spending remarkable time mixing this track or choosing sounds for this track? Or is it just a few-times-in-lifetime coincidence of elements that sounds in perfect loudness-harmony together? I am really serious, this is one of the best ever mixes I have heard in my life. Tilapia may sound like a little shy track in the context of others you did but when you realize it's qualities it's a thing to wonder about. Seriously serious. | Sean | thanks, well it was mixed as it was made so like, prob didn't take that long tbh we kind of do stuff as we go, there's no point at which we start mixing, we do it all the way thru just comes from having made loads of stuff in realtime before we had that kind of full song sequencing available, there's never been a 'mixing stage' as such | ||
1152 | Yeah, you mentioned it somewhere in this thread already. Well, this is a one incredibly lucky track mix-wise then. I mean even in the context of your whole discography, this is the one that is the most stunning mix-wise for me. And you have constantly great mixes so it means something. Big up for this one. | thanks i'll consider what u said, i never thought of that track in that way before | ||||
1153 | I hope this is not going to be considered in a way of taking twice as much time between individual releases in order to achieve "the peak of Tilapia". :biggrin: | yeah, all your fault :D | ||||
1154 | Schlitze | rob, where is your Planet 69 t-shirt? Sounds like Sean has been taking care of his (washing at 40 degrees with fabric softener, letting it dry naturally in the cooling breeze). Where's yours? | Rob | its hammered, i think the nice old lady at the dry cleaners preferred Sean, had lower temps on the dryer | ||
1155 | KunoMerit | When you record jams are they multi-track/channel or 2 track? Curious if the editing is splicing or cutting individual tracks when an element got out of control or sounded bad. | Sean | nah it's almost always 2 track if an element sounds bad then i try to learn what i did wrong and not do it again, bin the track (trust me you do that enough times you start to learn) | ||
1156 | Rob | happy to cut stereo file tbh, with editors as fast Wave Editor and so on.. i did some jams 8 track a few times cos of the mpc and nords being happy w 4 each, but just to be able to s/chain if needed on a whim. like the idea of 2ch = more of a craft | ||||
1157 | Erothyme | How do you guys keep from developing chronic wrist/arm/shoulder/back issues from spending so much time dialing into the world of digital audio? Do you use a trackball? An arm rest? A particular sort of chair or particular arrangement of your physical interface? I ask because I have been producing as many hours and as I can and as many days as possible for years and this lifestyle seems to necessitate frequent stretching breaks and the like... I have sooo many knots from clicking on things all day. Was wondering if you had any suggestions for avoiding carpal tunnel and repetitive strain injuries as a producer. | Sean | i use a trackpad cos multitouch and being able to vary the angle works for me, I'm always changing the way i sit best way to avoid strain is don't extend too far and don't hold the same position for ages, keep moving round | ||
1158 | Retosik | what is the sample from IO? | Sean | secret, sorry | ||
1159 | danke | Do you have any advice on how to get into playing shows in an environment that seems mostly closed off (even almost allergic to it, it seems) from anything that's the least bit experimental? Like, I've given my material to bookers/promoters, and they dig it, but don't want it played at their venues. It's quite a bit frustrating. I think you mentioned something about this weird-sameness going on in Europe right now, too. | Rob | dunno if were much use in getting u in any scenes in the US. they'd run a mile if u told them u even asked us. | ||
1160 | Sean | ah yeah i mean it's tricky man i don't wanna fuck up your whole career by saying make weird tracks, but if that's what comes naturally then i'm inclined to say do that all depends on what you're trying to achieve | ||||
1161 | Captain Kittens | 6ie.Cr, one of my all-time favorite tracks, can you shed any insight on to how it was created? Roughly? I love that fact that it sounds like really quick snare rolls at different pitches rapping back and forth. | Sean | yeah it's a cr-8000 being fed thru an rsd10 with the nord controlling the pitch of the rsd10 the second half is the same thing but brutally gated and layered weirdly, can't rem exactly what we did | ||
1162 | Retosik | on my copy of exai, on back, the L in FLeure is uppercase. meanwhile on bleep it's lowercase, "Fleure". Have you changed the L on bleep because the name sounded too much like it made in FLstudio? (lol) i'm asking because your track names were always easy to catalog and tag until this. | Sean | nah looks like they fucked up | ||
1163 | Rob | oops | ||||
1164 | Nimhbus | Paul Morley has an interesting theory that some band names are so great that they shape the music of the act ; that the band live up to their name, their name somehow gives them their sound, their aura. He was, of course, referring to Joy Division - suggesting that after they changed from Warsaw to JD, the name lifted them, they couldn't not live up to it. Is Autechre one of these names? Certainly it's the most incredible label for your music, but when you found it , did you think it made sense of what you were doing, in some way? Excuse me if that's bollocks, that's what you get for reading Morley. | Sean | nah i like it, he knows the power of words partly his fault i got into all this shit to begin with but yeah we had that title for ages (it was a lego feet track) and it just really stood out as a potent word, it was at least a year before we started using it as a name so we kind of knew by then that it was good | ||
1165 | Rob | well as it was unique, that nailed it for a start. it was ours. i like the way it looked as we got to sit with it around for ages - it was initially a track name. Morleys alright! | ||||
1166 | Roksen Creek | Is it true that you chose "au" because there was an au sound in the track, and then you randomly crunched a few keys on the keyboard to get "techre"? Or is that one of those things on the internets I shouldn't believe? | well yeah, and the atari only held 8 char. so it might've turned out autechredwads or something if not for that. | |||
1167 | Chris Toffer | rob, have u used renoise at all? | Rob | yeah, its super slick, and retains that DIY vibe. kind of reminds me of a software ITT (military looking') radio i had when i was a kid. | ||
1168 | naawRaybarn | favourite character/moment in Lost (if you watched the series?) | Sean | er hurley probably, at least he's the one i'd be most likely to hang out with | ||
1169 | favourite Yoda scene in any SW movie? | the meeting scene when luke doesn't know who he is and yoda's trolling the shit out of him | ||||
1170 | C. Nolan's or T. Burton's Batman? | burton's (sorry but that first burton film was ace when it came out, i know it seems a bit shit now) nolan's are like, not serious enough to be seen as serious. they could have been a million times more serious imo. bane was shit as well, sounded like a bad impression of patrick mcgoohan | ||||
1171 | Brave New World or 1984? | brave new world | ||||
1172 | Favourite type of beer (ale, lager, stout, etc)? | ipa or ale, but I'm not much into beer, its alright | ||||
1173 | Could you recommend a dessert featuring banana and chocolate? | i don't know any but i dunno maybe i just don't think the tastes compliment that well | ||||
1174 | good choice, Hurley is a great lad! I'm a big fan of Locke myself! how do you think they managed to finish up the whole series? | argh i don't even know why i carried on watching tbh, they snagged me somehow, it got progressively more weakening, the end was just, oh fuck off | ||||
1175 | haha yes that's a good Yoda moment, I second that I guess :) btw why do you think Lucas decided to add Jar Jar to the franchise? | i dunno man i can't tell wtf i'm meant to think of the prequels i wonder if he watches them at all | ||||
1176 | do you think our society today are "progressing" towards Huxley's vision of BnW? Or maybe we are there already more or less? | i dunno i mean both huxley and orwell nailed some things, but i reckon huxley was more insightful, altho both of them were really a product of the time we have a kind of mixture of bits of both but neither of them really understood what comms was going to end up like i'm not as paranoid about surveillance as a lot of people seem to be tho | ||||
1177 | last dessert you had that gave you pleasant vibes? | hmm dunno i don't eat much dessert its years since i had something memorable, and i can't even rem what that was | ||||
1178 | what do think of Spielberg's AI? | i slightly liked ai - but i saw some of the work chris did for it back when kubrick was doing it, and i wish it had been kubrick basically, it would have fucking owned | ||||
1179 | oh and here's a photo of me visiting some folks in Wales over a year ago. me to the right. Any comments? :) | oh yeah nice shirt | http://www.2imgs.com/3673f2d80b | |||
1180 | Joseph | I notice that some of the tracks on Draft have a "latin" or "spanish" feeling, like the light metallic-sounding rhythm that comes in on Surripere before the Whacks and Thuds, and parts of Kidney Bean. By design or is that just the Torero in me?? | Sean | yeah i think i have a slight predilection for it no idea why tho | ||
1181 | Maxwell | I've been using Reaktor for a few years now and find it hard to leave cause it's got a very nifty randomize 1-100% button. I'm getting tired of being stuck at my computer all day though. There any good beginner piece of hardware that would enable me to get the depth and randomization ability? You guys ever mess around with any Reaktor ensembles? | Sean | u ever played with synplant? it's well basic but the way it works is good fun, for about 10 minutes | ||
1182 | Is it really worth $99?? | can't u just get a demo i dunno, prob not, i used it for about a day and didn't record anything but i liked the idea of it | ||||
1183 | I've been using Reaktor for a few years now and find it hard to leave cause it's got a very nifty randomize 1-100% button. I'm getting tired of being stuck at my computer all day though. There any good beginner piece of hardware that would enable me to get the depth and randomization ability? You guys ever mess around with any Reaktor ensembles? | Rob | that button! lol what do want random for anyway? is elektrons beginner? anyone? help me out watmm - ae are on other planets now no i haven't | |||
1184 | u mean a button that moves all parameters a bit more. 1-100. yeah ok that is diff a bit, but what if your really close to something quite good, and u press that, u may never find what u were after - and be further from it than b4. we call that 'pot' luck | |||||
1185 | Yeah exactly. It's risky. Like u said, I could be on to something. Usually if I can feel something sounds decent I'll begin the manual tweaking and cleaning. Synplant looks like a quirky thing. I could mimic that using a more complex patch with hundreds more values and randomize everything in 1% increments. I use this method mostly when I have a blank slate and am feeling lazy. It can be tough jumping into things cold when there's no idea of what sounds I want to get into. That being said, I am gearless thus subject to the electronic abyss. Shit can be scary. The elektron looks like fun id like to get my hands on one | more like u should have 2x reaktors , then make the one u like less, become more like the one u like, i guess thats what synplants more about. | ||||
1186 | doublename | If you were an MI5 agent who had to use IDMz to torture a possible terrorist, whose music would you use? | Sean | oh, i think i'd make some for the purpose | ||
1187 | triachus | I've found out in this thread you guys have once performed with Fennesz. I'm guessing there are no recordings of it? Also found this: - What year was that? How did it that you guys performed together, who contacted who? You said playing with him "went well". Is there a chance you guys might ever do something like that again? Or a collaborated album? Maybe just 1 track even? Fennesz is quite the collaboration beast. | Sean | yeah i like his stuff a lot, i'd def do another gig with him i think he gets what we're doing | http://autechre.net.ua/en/articles/article11.htm | |
1188 | that brings me to another thing: When doing collaborations/remixes, do you usually approach someone, or do you get approached? Or are there middlemen who do suggestions and lay connections? | we get approached, it's always cos someone has a release coming up etc | ||||
1189 | Rob | not done many, zoviet france was mutual - we should do this, both agreed i think ben started it, might've been Sean tho' fennesz/roedelius, partly conspired by Pita MEGO | ||||
1190 | 21B | any albums stood out for either you recently? I totally loved the rashad becker one. | Sean | not heard that cheers i hardly bought any new stuff in 2013 so any reccs are good, keep em comin | http://boomkat.com/vinyl/763232-rashad-becker-traditional-music-of-notional-species-vol-i | |
1191 | kieselguhr kid | how do you like cyclobe? (had this one earlier but it slipped... would be interested though; i think their stuff is genius) did either of you guys ever grow a full beard / moustache / any other kind of serious facial hair (PICS PLS!) would you do a collab with scott walker? do your wifes/gfs ever get jealous of your tight bromance? what do you think of oval's new style? | Sean | not heard almost, i don't have pics tho, and mine grown with bits missing so i dunno if you'd call it full nah nah not heard it | ||
1192 | John Ehrlichman | I'm curious too about the Oval question, and it ties into the mysteriously unanswered physical modeling questions as well. Real guitar manipulation or simulated? | Sean | no guitars on our stuff, if you're hearing strings it's simulated unless u mean oval | ||
1193 | Friendly Foil | Just how "generative" (not sure this is the right word for this) were some of the tracks on Confield? Tracks like Sim Gishel, Parhelic Triangle and Uviol, for example. I've read so many rumors and theories about this, that I don't know what to believe at this point. I mean, it sure doesn't sound like you just hit record and then left the computer running for a few minutes, since all the tracks seems to go somewhere. Were you adjusting stuff on the fly or? | Sean | parhelic triangle wasn't algo at all sim gishel was slightly uviol was a lot but none of it's in the way you prob think of 'algorithmic' with loads of randomness. it was all planned out, with bits of it being executed after intervals etc like a track but codified that's the thing when u say algorithmic people think you mean unplanned and sprawling. doesn't mean that at all in our case, just means procedural | ||
1194 | Rob | 10% give or take | ||||
1195 | Indicator | I repost my question about vocal samples from deco Loc (soz) and opinions about bocs harvest | Sean | i like TH and i'm waiting to see who figures out the samples | ||
1196 | Jev | Well, psn already suggested Personal Jesus and made some "proof" mix for it. | yeah but he's wrong | |||
1197 | auxien | What's myslb mean/stand for or whatever? | there's actually a clue out there and i'm waiting to see if anyone notices | |||
1198 | Alcofribas | are the samples from something fairly well-known? | nah not really | |||
1199 | k h o v | there is a 30min recording of Gescom, live in manchester in 2002. are you involved in that ? | Rob | u got a link? just to be clear, theres a few geswackers | ||
1200 | Zeffolia | Did you really smash buttons into your keyboard randomly and come up with the name "Autechre" | Rob | mbe not random, but i had no idea after AU' of the outcome. | ||
1201 | Was AU meant for Gold, or Astronomical Units, or something else | the AU was a reference to a sample on the FZ10, a list of samples we named 'au[insert descriptive]' for sounds that were a like low vocal choir voices sustaining a single note. phonetically speaking it was the sound u would get saying 'or', 'awe' 'au'kland and so on | ||||
1202 | Sean | funny/weird how we never released that track not for any reason or anything, just falls in that nether zone | In response to rob | |||
1203 | Rob | was good. defining actually, i mean thats why we robbed our own name off ourselves. grabbing our new us. | In response to Sean | |||
1204 | barbara planar | do you recall Iera being used on an adult swim commercial for the Tim and Eric show, or a Steve Brule spinoff? It felt like an odd match because the tune is pretty wicked, and the commercial is for some *sick* comedy.. they use a lot of Flying Lotus on the channel. Does Warp consult with you guys to use a track, as in that case? | Sean | they probably paid for a blanket license, which means they can use stuff when they want within some stipulated limits and everyone gets a cut depending on something like market share | ||
1205 | soma | If y'all had some actor play you in a movie, who would you pick? Also who would direct it? Hell, who would write it? | Sean | argh i have no idea sounds like the kind of thing watmm should decide i mean that's always how it works irl isn't it, some actor gets picked and the actual person groans when they read the news story telling them ken loach did a decent job of raining stones tho, that was set in my home town actually you could just throw that into premiere and do some head swaps | ||
1206 | ZombieLincoln666 | have you listened to that Meatbingos album out on Skam? It is so good. | Rob | yp got it. its like eating loads of sweets not stop. till u forget what sugar is like. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzt_7YCKCdA | |
1207 | http://boomkat.com/downloads/785390-meatbingo-trendy-robots | |||||
1208 | pyramidpanes | just listening to 'nth dafuseder.b' (grt trac!) whats the off kilter melody that drops in around 2 min? was it sampled ? how was it made? got a nice boc quality to it, can pick up on some break samples near tthe end like the track disintegrates itself through the reverb. | Rob | custom synth sound, somewhere between flute and electric piano - from a distance while were on the subject there is a break. | ||
1209 | Alcofribas | over the years you've been criticized for being too "difficult" or whatever. I wonder, have you ever made any tracks that were impenetrable to you when you went back and listened? basically, is autechre ever "difficult" to you? | Sean | course not | ||
1210 | viscosity | I think you mentioned a soldering iron earlier. ever experimented with circuit bending? I understand most of your recent stuff is done via computers and generative processes. any happy/interesting accidents involving this? and I don't just mean through tinkering in max, but like, you spilt your coffee, smoke-spewing out of your machine, glitch-inducing accidents that you decided to keep | Rob | yeah once we accidentally spilled Vimto on one of our SK's, which caused it to bend itself really. it stayed like that. we're not that into trying out the best gear 'to' bend, but when we started before there were road maps for this, we would find new things (latent potential if u like) in the small setup we had, notably the other SKs, RSD10s was another | ||
1211 | hanz tisch | Hi, what do you think about DIY stuff such as this: - Did you ever craft anything alike? Is it possible to you to use such lo-fi instruments for some sounds? | Rob | its ok, its a bit limiting, but i get that its personal , i reckon its good to have yr own sound/thing if it makes u happy and keeps you active and open. apart from our own little setup when we started, i was keen to get hold of anything, not troubled by it being custom or not, i think ideas are my custom thing, i can use any mainstream gear and always have. i don't make distinctions anymore as to what is lo-fi or not. | http://www.bastl-instruments.com/trinity/ | |
1212 | Indicator | Can you identify this track please? - | Rob | no ID on that, not sure, is it in a gescom mix? - or u asking if its gescom track, cos its not. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voZU5CwHD9Y | |
1213 | xf | Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses, or one horse-sized duck? | Rob | ducks are way harder than horses in my experience. | ||
1214 | Lianne | To me your albums have just got better and better. Of the latest output, 'Prac-f' in particular totally blows me away. Were you guys feeling the "Woah!" moment as much as I do at the switch 1:55 in? And I know this kind of question can be annoying - but could you share anything about this track? It's got such an amazing, 'thick' vibe. | Rob | thanks, switches yeah, good. i tend to follow the pressure changes through this one…. | ||
1215 | azatoth | I like all of your albums more or less, but Draft 7.30 is something special. Probably because I listened to it in the dark on headphones while on acid and every little click and fart was perfectly placed and felt like I fell into some weird futuristic machine city morphing constantly. A great experience. My question is did you do something differently when making that album. I remember reading somewhere that it was "sequenced by hand", whatever that means and that it was the result of several "drafts", the 30th being the one that became the album. Is this true? Care to elaborate on the process how you did it? | Rob | draft7.30, sequenced by hand, meaning in an interview about overall shifts in that periods' process than the previous LP, it meant that a lot of the work was a result of being really concerned with getting as close to the events as we could in the DAW, getting access to as much of it as we could - and jamming less while still working on a larger sense of flow. each track was different to some extent because all the tracks were done at different times. not as a whole LP project in strict order. | ||
1216 | thisfieldisrequired | Who of you two wrote Bladelores ? Who makes the most tracks out of you two ? How would you describe your differences in style ? Can your relatives say "this track is definitely rob" or "this track is definitely Sean ?" | Rob | we don't say who did what to anyone depends what were doing respectively only us and our mates really know that, we mimic or copy and impersonate each other a lot, and we compete in a way thats like giving someone a track to dig. friends mostly, but we can play games at them though. for field tests. | ||
1217 | phudoshin | I find a lot of my fave tracks of yours are somewhat melancholic... say like V-Proc...... Is it just me or or would you say you are creating this feeling in some tracks on purpose? | Rob | Vproc is way more upbeat to me actually, its got a slower swagger so as not to be annoyingly percy. but ur meant to bust out to it. | ||
1218 | mcbpete | Is there a good way of doing real-time FFT based shenanigans without the obvious latency issues that get introduced from to the block size you're manipulating ? | Rob | mbe if u have a time machine? or massively parallel setup? | ||
1219 | So I'm guessing the only way to do it is render down what you want and then bump it back in sync with the DAW. (or hopefully Doc Emmett Brown can invent a negative plugin delay compensation) | ok i thought u said realtime. | ||||
1220 | Ivan Ooze | i don't have any tattoos but lol, i'm thinking about getting one of the exai cover (about 1 cm2 tall or something), where should i put it on my body?? do you have any tattoos? | Rob | only scars, nothing intentional | ||
1221 | MadameChaos | i really enjoyed the stories about mud dives and vomit rockets, do you have any more amusing anecdotes you'd care to share with us? | Rob | probably, it may come to us as we continue, but not certain | ||
1222 | mokz | Favorite dub album? | Rob | tough one. i really rate Augustus Pablo - 555dub st., east of the river nile, and more. Scientist - rids the world…vampires, - wins the world cup sly and robbie - none shall escape... lots of basic channel chain reaction or mauritzio | ||
1223 | Philip Glass | Anyone of you care to say what was you trying to achieve in 1995 with that Plaid/Autechre set? - | Rob | it was a bit more separate how we each worked on this, plaid and us. we brought sequences and sounds and kit from our current autechre set at that time, adapting it and writing new stuff as the work we observed of the teams and participants rehearsed during the day. on the night we performed continuously building while the performers and the movements/chapters/parts played out - using larger shifts at key points of the directors timeline. it was nice to get a new original track/set out of it though looking back, cos it was unique as it had to be a specific length and structure, but linked due to the voices that the gear had from other sets. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_yoHHdBE1Q | |
1224 | triachus | Can you guys talk about the japanese bonus track for Untilted, "Zurich 2001"? It seems many people don't like that one. Why did you decide to add this very short, improvised(?) live track as a Japanese bonus track? I mean, a lot of people didn't like the track. Now's a good time to defend yourself! | Rob | it was a good display of how well it can kick off in Europe at a electronic gig. the situation was full on intense, cos they were really pushing us, and we fully pushed back. | ||
1225 | hoggy | If you live to be old men, will you still make music? If when you die you cease to exist and it becomes for you as though you never existed (the obvious truth as the brain matter in which you exist decays), what's the point in doing anything at all? | Rob | yeah i really hope so, i mean it'd be nice to keep a grip on all my faculties enough to still make stuff of any distinction. but yeah once I'm off, i won't know will i? | ||
1226 | aht romain | After many years listening your tracks, I still can't control my shivers and can't understand properly what happening in me with the track "Recury" Can you just give me some words about the moments you made it, about this tracks who seems to give me sense about everything about the illusion of this world | Rob | yeah thats nice. shivers rock :) we were in sheffield at the time, not sure what i can answer for u. i like the high ceiling room feel it has on the perc, and the 'crowding' building up from 1'30'. and the general steady mayhem building. + the hat/swing/downbeat. | ||
1227 | Roksen Creek | Who would win in a fight between SuperTed and Bananaman? | Rob | orm & cheep | ||
1228 | modey | I love that comment that Sean (I think?) made about Parhelic Triangle being more complex/taking more time than it seems from the finished recording. For me that's one of the tracks (most of which appear on Confield) where I don't even have the vaguest idea where the 'percussion' sounds came from.. so I guess the hard work was worth it. Anyway, much like everyone else, I'm pretty thankful for you guys doing this. Really helps to break down the barrier between famous musicians and us 'hobbyists'—realising you're just a couple of guys like us, who like to make fucked up/awesome sounds, it's really inspiring me to ramp up the synth jams! | Rob | hahha yeah we've probably spawned another multitude of competition now! good though, i mean we started making tracks mostly to tryout things that we could see others (mostly heroes and ace producers/artists) doing stuff that blows us away - but but then missing a bit. or whole takes on tracks that were never fulfilled by anyone | ||
1229 | auxien | in what time signature is the weird melody that is nearly alone in the middle of Garbagemx? 7/4? 15/8? | Rob | its 202 onboard sequence at shorter than measure length so i'm not sure its either, | ||
1230 | Do you have your own Quaristice-era playlist of tracks? A fair amount of us have our own versions of the album/s. See mine: | well no not really, we made it so u could do all that instead of us. | http://i.imgur.com/u1KLh5w.jpg | |||
1231 | It's been mentioned before that you get early releases of gear and/or get given the new stuff for free. Is this the sort of thing that they want your technical expertise (where their rep asks "okay what's wrong with it, how can we make it better?) or a situation where they're hoping you'll endorse their gear? | more like they want endorsement, fair enough to some, cos they're really into what they're doing, and small business etc…. so using in public hopefully addresses any lost leads | ||||
1232 | Do you use any vintage gear to create music with, such as specific monitors or headphones, mixer, etc.? | yeah sometimes, we have some HW around, not because its vintage, because its what we have. i like the PSE spring mentioned earlier, and our 4track, its not all that old tbh | ||||
1233 | When was the last time you used a minidisc in creating a track (either a track that's released or not) | ages | ||||
1234 | How the hell do you get those awesome white/pink/whateverfuckingcolor noises in so many of your tracks? In many older ones (PIOBmx, Second Scout, etc.) it sounds like the noise is often artifacts left from a recording that you've recorded or sampled that've been manipulated afterwards, but a lot of the newer stuff seems like more of a digitally created noise...or is that a secret? | yeah haha | ||||
1235 | Have either of you ever been somewhere unfamiliar and heard your own music being played; e.g., a car drives by you with Left Blank blasting? (like basically not at a friend's place where you know they have your stuff or whatever) | yeah can't rem the last time tho' i think it was a swimming pool. | ||||
1236 | The bit of vocoded stuff that comes to the foreground a bit before 7 minutes into recks on 'til about the end, is that actually vocals? It sounds like vocoded synth or vocoded delayed percussion. | custom gear | ||||
1237 | I remember a story being told of a Gescom show in Japan or somewhere that was just like 4 or 5 dudes in Hazmat suits or something similar on stage with minidisc players randomly hitting play or some shit. Any truth to that at all? | that was manchester cathedral gig - not randomly hitting play tho' we all hit play at the same time. | ||||
1238 | What personal portable headphones do you use (assuming either of you use any). | i have sennheiser buds' for bedtime and walking | ||||
1239 | There are a few instances of 3's in Tri Repetae (C/Pach focuses on 3 measure loops, as does Dael). Are there others that we've not noticed, that you'd divulge? :) | there must be shed loads…… | ||||
1240 | How much hassle is it for you/Warp when a fake track (like this fake tac Lacora that I made: http://ge.tt/70Z4ePt/v/0 how good of an Ae copy do you think it is? I thought it came out okay...) comes out ahead of release? | i think most ppl can tell whats what, its not a hassle, we have the real tracks. | ||||
1241 | What is the hint out there about the meaning of myslb? I've never heard any info at all that might be a hint (as in no info at all). | no hint, we haven't told anyone what it means is all. | ||||
1242 | thehauntingsoul | What's the deal with SonDEre-ix? Sounds like someone was having nightmares about lawn gnomes | Rob | yeah its a house track basically, but with a garden | ||
1243 | Entorwellian | What is your favourite breakfast cereals? I like cinnamon toast crunch myself. | Rob | i do rolled oats in OJ at the mo. | ||
1244 | Sean | wow i've not had that stuff for ages but you're right it's lush think i'll get some on next shop i've been eating porridge loads over the last few weeks. dunno why, winter childhood association | In response to rob | |||
1245 | thegirlnextdoor | how do you feel when I tell you that you're my favorite artists and I don't have a clue how you make your tracks and that I don't even want to know how! (not that i'm not curious, I just feel it's beyond me and i just like it that way.) Do you think it's important to know how something is made to enjoy it ? | Rob | its not important, i'm glad u asked. | ||
1246 | Sean | nah it's not important at all unless you're making stuff yourself and then you might wonder about things but like, i was into music really heavily for years before i know how any gear worked and i still like the same tracks from back then, even knowing loads of things about how they were made, if anything it makes me like them more cos now i know how delicate the balance is and how much taste went into them | ||||
1247 | campaign | any favourite Dockstader's pieces? | Sean | water music, telemetry tapes, luna park | ||
1248 | Piel | If you curated another festival (like ATP), who would you want to play next time round? | Sean | oh a long list i can't rush it into a post unfortunately it would take like a week to compile | ||
1249 | korona15 | if you were touring through the u.s. and were asked to appear on a show like conan o’brien or jimmy fallon, would you do it? | Rob | no it would be hideous | ||
1250 | Sean | i dunno it depends on whether they could satisfy our backline requirements | ||||
1251 | do you have a recording of this show and/or any memories of what this show was like? | Rob | i remember panasonics' bass caused our monitor to fall off the cabs and do some damage. pretty good night, rare BOC show esp. | http://bocpages.org/w/images/Cylob_flyer96.jpg | ||
1252 | Sean | yeah i remember panasonic had this really loud bass in one track and it made one of the speaker cabs fall onto our mixer, fucked up some of the channels before we played, and then they were laughing about it. it was a bit weakening really, i hadn't thought of them as cunts before that, w/e. cylob and boards were good tho. no recording sorry | ||||
1253 | warp’s 25th anniversary is next year. know if you’ll participate in any special events, like contribute to a warp25 box set or perform at an event? know if they have big plans? | Rob | didn't know it was 25yrs blimey | |||
1254 | Sean | no clue yet | ||||
1255 | on Osla for n at 3:57 onwards, I keep thinking of 61E.CR, like how it (osla for n) has a similar beat but slowed down somewhat and also similar sounds. would you agree there are some similarities there? loving l-event btw | Rob | hadn't noticed that - could it just be the swing? | |||
1256 | Sean | hmm never thought about it but i guess there's a similar greyness to some of the sounds | ||||
1257 | an oversteps soundboard would be amazing to hear (and download for pay) one day | Rob | ok noted | |||
1258 | Sean | right yeah, we should go thru that folder really. as u can imagine it's a bit long | ||||
1259 | jhonny | What were the last presents you bought each other for Christmas/bday? | Rob | usually books, really tasty books. i'll be getting him chocolates this season though, don't say anything | ||
1260 | auxien | One or both of you asked for music recommendations...I'll mention a few you may not have heard that that might be interesting to you. C-Clamp, anything off the album Longer Waves, such as Meridian. Miocene, check out their A Perfect Life with a View of the Swamp album. Genghis Tron, their album Board Up the House is ace, I really think yall would enjoy it. Have y'all listened to any Death Grips? Lil Wayne? DJ Screw? There's a bandcamp artist called WWC that I've been coming back to A lot lately, and a fella called QBLA on bandcamp as well, our own watmmer Friendly Foil stop that label if I'm not mistaken. Cheers, hope y'all find something to your tastes. | Rob | ok thanks for this, obv i'll need to backtrack here later….. ta | ||
1261 | telefunken | what sample rate do you use, when synthesizing and mixing? what do you think about mr. oizo's post-'moustache' output? did you saw his recent films? | Rob | mixing sample rate@ 44.1, i did some old tapes to dig@ 88.2, but i doubt there was much point. not seen his films but i rate the guys tunes | ||
1262 | skyking | From Discogs comment section: - "phonoforumdotcom, April 4 2012 referencing Gescom E.P., 12", EP, SKA002 I dunno how much collaboration took place on this EP, but Dane One & Cicada pretty clearly sound like Autechre productions. Five & Sciew Spoc pretty clearly sound like Bola productions." Is it true or all involved conspirators worked together on each track? Oh, and speaking of Bola and Discogs, have you ever heard this one: - If yes, what does it sound like? Tears for fears-tier cheese? Also, does it piss you off when out of print vinyl/cd are sold for insane mounts of money online? Like tenfold of their original cost. | Rob | each track was a contribution from different ppl, none of the trax were solely me with Sean. edit oh forgot the other q's friends of kane played me demo's didn't really hear any full finished. its UK soul. no it doesn't, but would be nice to have more records to spread around | http://www.discogs.com/Friends-Of-Kane-Rejuvenator/release/1825714 | |
1263 | Sean | hey tears for fears were alright man shout is well heavy does the free market piss me off? i mean, no, i paid top dollar for some of my records, and i can get top dollar back for them later (usually more) them two track names in that discogs post were both collabs with diff people (lol one of them is even named on the record and the title, come on it's not that hard) the other one u can prob figure out by elimination | ||||
1264 | cebec | Have you guys heard The Wizard mixes? Awesome stuff. Do you have 'The Sounds of Star Wars'? Recommended... | Rob | yeah this is lush | https://soundcloud.com/walt74/sets/jeff-mills-is-the-wizard-1986 | |
1265 | Sean | nah but cheers this is ace | http://starwars.com/shop/books/the_sounds_of_star_wars/ | |||
1266 | theinvasionboys | question for rob - a mate I met at recording school gave you a demotape of his before one of your shows in 1998, somewhere in New England, I think. I'm curious whether you've got any memory of him, or the tape? He was making tracks as both ESP and Spool at that time. | Rob | we've still got all the tapes, but there a lot. as for my memory 15 years was a bit back. really sorry. but tell him i'll take a look for it - just to see | ||
1267 | danshoebridge | Been listening to l-event loads recently. 'Osla for n' for example went through a familiar autechre-style evolution for me - the first couple of listens were really jarring, but after a while it opened up and the sounds and rhythms started to connect. By now listening to it seems to actually put shapes and textures in my brain (best way i can describe it). I don't know any other music that has quite this effect on me. Anyway, it's a massive track. Thing is, almost everyone I know finds this sort of listening experience is not for them. Some people seem to have an almost visceral distaste for it, and i've had people get almost angry, or genuinely worry about my mental health, when i play them an autechre track. A lot of the stuff that makes it awesome also makes it very difficult for a lot of people. As the guys who actually make this music, do you get this reaction a lot? Having a discography like yours must be enough to give you a fair bit of self-belief, but does it ever get to you when people react like this? | Rob | no, i can't imagine everyone liking it, i know we can make more normal music if we wanted to. but theres a sense that it would turn out to be a futile kind of competition. i mean everyone doing the same things more or less. no real gains and we wouldn't be at all entertained | ||
1268 | Sean | course not, everyone's different i used to think that maybe some people just had different brains or something, but a lot of it is cultural i reckon, as are attitudes to mental health a lot of the time | ||||
1269 | triachus | Aphex likes to say (or bullshit?) there's stuff out there that nobody would ever find out it's done by him. Did you guys ever do that, sneakily doing tracks or productions behind everyone's back, very hush hush, mum's the word, that nobody will ever find out? (aphex was bullshitting, right?) You guys seems to listen to a lot of music. Roughly speaking, how many hours of music do you guys listen to daily/weekly? You both seem to share the same taste in music, but is that always the case? Are there any genres/bands/musicians that one really likes, but the other really hates? (kind of like how Beavis loves Metallica, but Butt-head hates them and calls Beavis a dork). hypothetical example: Sean: *loudly sings with the chorus to Biz Markie's Just A Friend* rob: Sean pls | Sean | well it wouldn't really be a good idea to say so here if it was true, but even if it were true, how much time do you think we have? it wouldn't be that many would it. no idea about richard on that - i mean he does so much stuff i wouldn't put it past him, he's stupidly prolific depends i mean there's usually something on most of the time i'm awake unless i'm watching a film or something. sometimes actively listening but not always yeah there are slight differences, rob prob listens to more soul than me, he's a couple of years older (that's my excuse) that example lolol | http://youtu.be/9aofoBrFNdg | |
1270 | Rob | hahha yeah, i think so kinda, for example i'd be tuned into stu allan's souled out for 4 hrs : hiphop 1 hour then soul 2 hours, then house/acid last 1 hour. Sean would switch off for 2 hours in the middle, then take the piss the next day about all the wet perms all the singers had | ||||
1271 | Roksen Creek | Please could you describe each of your albums in one word and one word only. For instance, Quaristice: succulent; Oversteps: haunting etc... | Rob | no - i can't - they're collections of tracks to me - inside a long 'track as a whole' piece - id like to try to finger print each album, but its hard. | ||
1272 | That's understandable. No worries. | thanks for understanding, each album has something that its tracks share amongst them. and each album is periods in a time line, so theres tangible difference to how we made them , what with , where, and what we were into, but a word like - crystalline for draft7.30 would be too easy to come up with, but to be far too misleading as a whole. | ||||
1273 | k h o v | regarding karaoke, what's your weapon of choice ? | Rob | no karaoke, 'back in black' by ACDC if pushed | ||
1274 | Sean | if wigs are available it would have to be fools gold really | ||||
1275 | you mean the stone roses? | yeah | ||||
1276 | keltoi | i watched made of stone last night. have you seen it and what are your thoughts if so? brown is autotuned to fuck in the rehearsal bits and the H Park is overdubbed beyond recognition! still a good watch for an old fan but cringey as fuck! maybe obvious but did you (like me) find 808 state through the manchester thing? joy division, mondays, martin hammet, etc. | not seen it i'm not a stone roses fan really but i do like fools gold cos of how they flipped that break nah first time i heard 808 state was when stu allan played flow coma, we were into dance music for years before that that madchester thing fucked a lot of things up tbh cos according to rock historians dance music started in manchester with the haccy, but it's not true at all, there was a huge black music scene round here in the early 80s, my secondary school got so sick of us breakdancing in the toilets they decided to open up the assembly hall for it every lunchtime | |||
1277 | feltcher | So do you guys fancy doing WATMM Secret Santa this year? PM me your addresses* and i'll stick you in the mix! *obv will not divulge addresses to anyone. Or send me a forwarding address or PO box or whatever. Would be cool for everyone involved though and you might even get something wicked back! | Rob | we might sneak one in, do a fake watmmer track as opposed to u guys doing fake ae. if thats not too upsetting. nice one feltcher | http://forum.watmm.com/topic/81159-secret-santa-2013 | |
1278 | daed | I noticed a lot of Exai's titles ("jatevee C" = JTVC (Jet Controlled Thrust Vector), "T ess xi" = [SEE LINK TO THE RIGHT] seem to have something to do with flight/jets... Were you often thinking of planes when writing it, or were these findings just fumbling speculation and complete coincidence? | Sean | coincidence altho there are other refs to aero-things in our stuff | http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZL_TS-11_Iskra | |
1279 | Rob | thats coincidence, there are often title abbrevs and caps in cool places, but ur not quite on. and no planes this time. | ||||
1280 | triachus | Sean > look west what do you see? rob > look east what do you see? | Rob | a photo op? | ||
1281 | AdieuErsatzEnnui | Do you feel that your emotions are directly related to the type of track you compose, or are they possibly inversely related? For instance, if you are happy do you make a happy track. Is there a certain pattern you have recognized relating to your emotional state and the overall mood of your composition that I may not have considered in my question? | Sean | yeah possibly inversely, it's hard to tell really cos i just do whatever feels good on the day, but in my experience the correlation is more direct than inverse. it's rare that if i'm feeling tired and emotional that i'd make a jaunty happy tune. but sometimes i do, so | ||
1282 | Do you find that you have a sort of default nature when it comes to recording in that you naturally create a certain style of music? Do you have to make a conscious effort to vary your tracks and keep things fresh? | not really, we're attracted to novelty the same way most people are, but maybe personal perception and weird attention to detail means that we can find it in unlikely places sometimes | ||||
1283 | Would you say writing your music is like casting a spell or summoning a demon? | what's a demon? | ||||
1284 | What is your worst bad habit when it comes to being an artist? | assuming things about other people | ||||
1285 | Do you have any self-imposed rules when it comes to creating music that you might share? For example, do you refuse to use stock drum samples, because it doesn't "feel right"? | nah i use whatever feels right, sometimes that's a stock drum sound | ||||
1286 | Training vs Discovery? | discovery - it's a bit like, if i see someone else make a discovery, then i'm usually interested in whatever they discovered, but if i see someone who's well trained, i'm not so interested. i mean, cool, you can pole vault or whatever | ||||
1287 | Has this experience changed your opinion of WATMM.com in any way? + or - ? | still neutral | ||||
1288 | vanillarama | I haven’t been listening to Autechre for decades, or even very long, really. I do look forward to experiencing more of your music in the future and learning more of your back catalogue, but I do feel in the short time that I’ve gotten to know Autechre, I’ve received so much from listening to both your music and your webcasts. That said, all I’ve wanted to do since getting to know your music is to give something back- and that thing would be sandwiches. I’ve discussed this with many of my friends, and there have been many theories put into place. If I were to make you guys sandwiches, what kind would you like? Are there dietary restrictions and/or allergies for me to consider? I’d be willing to make each of you an entirely different sandwich, but I’ve often thought that avocado would be something both of you might be into. | Sean | yeah i like avocado, esp with a bit of soy sauce, sesame seeds, and some foil cooked salmon so, something like that? i'll let you figure out if it needs anything else. you seem experienced at sandwiches | ||
1289 | So, I'm afraid I must press on for an answer from rob. We've spent so many evenings discussing this in detail, even considering doing a SWOT analysis on ingredients, and having heated arguments in regards to whether sandwiches themselves are even appropriate. Some of us are getting together tomorrow night for a birthday, and we're going to have a lot of time to discuss and debate your answers. It would also be helpful to know what kind of bread you like. | Rob | ah yeah i totally like avocado, i like lime juice, olive oil, vinegar, or balsamic, focaccia, ciabatta. or proper irish soda bread, toasted if u can. | |||
1290 | rd1994 | many tracks sound hiphop to me (examples: recks on, eutow, cipater etc. etc.) intentional? ever thought a bout (obv in a autechre way) a straightfoward hiphop album? | Sean | yeah course it's intentional :D tbh we usually think of what we do as a branch/offshoot of hip hop. we could in theory, but i dunno how straightforward it would be, being us | ||
1291 | I think Second Peng is quite dubby...agree? | yeah that's fair | ||||
1292 | do you ever do meet and greets? | not for the sake of it | ||||
1293 | I some time ago already mentioned the Autechre Track Titles Wiki can you just give us a link which page has the most and which one has the least correct facts? | they all have a mixture, i dunno if i cba reading it all just to post that soz | ||||
1294 | will this track ( ) will ever be released as a studio album on an EP or so? - | no that was a live jam done at graham's toolshed night at band on the wall, no recording exists afaik. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzcaWhBpeSM | |||
1295 | Rob | wasn't this at the music box in manchester. it was released in japan only, as a bonus track for confield. | ||||
1296 | Sean | nah it was at toolshed | ||||
1297 | why no EPs for Untilted? | Sean | i was moving house and things were a bit hectic | |||
1298 | keltoi | you dig andy stott at all? he seems to almost be at the opposite spectrum to what you do in terms of sound iykwim. | Sean | some of it's alright but it sounds a bit easy to me | ||
1299 | MadnessR | Krib is my fav song by ae. Compared to your output these days, it's a very simple song. What song is your most complex? What song took the longest to produce? | Sean | dunno i mean that word complex has a lot of diff meanings and contexts longest to produce - i dunno that either, i don't keep track properly at all | ||
1300 | k h o v | You're credited in the Prebuild LP, were that you who convinced 808 state to put out those old tracks? | Sean | yeah i was bugging graham to see if there was anything unreleased and i ended up with a cd of tracks, and then like 3 days later i was getting emails off richard about it | ||
1301 | rd1994 | look here - thats prob the most weirdest (I know thats totally wrong english but thats just the best way to describe what it is) webpage related to autechre comments? | Sean | >canon discontinuity stopped reading there | http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/Autechre?from=Main.Autechre | |
1302 | salvaKPO | Were there any equivalents in your opinion of you and RDJ (In my opinion, haha) in before you started releasing stuff? I mean in terms of dedication, taste, experimentation, etc. All those things that make you and him unique. | Sean | i dunno what you think marks us out tbh, there were tons of amazing electro producers before us | ||
1303 | KunoMerit | it's 1986 - pause button breaks, what do you jam in there to continue making mixes? i found a screw-driver to work the best. the little plastic pause button hinges always broke. | Rob | the pause button mixes were more serial compositions than what i think you actually mean, turntable pairs of tracks could be edited like a splice to get beats running into each other. the pause was used as a razor in trad tape edits. | ||
1304 | mpc1000 - what role does it play live? samples only or sequencing too? are most of those nice kicks from the nord or samples? | mpc1k, on untitled tour, mpc was samples/fx, sequencing those and the nord modulars. some kicks were samples, usually the dirtier ones, clean mostly nord. | ||||
1305 | you seem to run the nords, etc. dry live or is there compression going on other than house sound system protection compression? i never really got the need for compression on electronic instruments other than dancy-effects compression. you seem to master most of it with the programming. or is there something i'm not seeing? | usually we had a pair of comp/lim units at each of mine n Seans' workstations', and one at the master, then yeah one at the FOH console. | ||||
1306 | would you say you are "into" synthesizers? like do you keep bits of gear around that aren't part of the current recording/jamming studio? or is it strictly using what is needed and not getting bothered with gear obsessions. | i tend to keep gear lying around, or stacked up in the studio - but my actually main workspace where i focus on current tracks is less random. i like having it around, but not obsessively | ||||
1307 | MadnessR | Do you master your own albums? If not, have you ever been disappointed in the mix? | Sean | no and anyone who thinks that's a viable option doesn't really know what mastering means we do the mix ourselves (mixing != mastering) | ||
1308 | InSpectr | how to relate to today's listener can feel a difference between a rave nineties and so what happens now? | Sean | with electronic music there are always going to be overlapping generations of producers, it doesn't have the same kind of physical limits that being a rock star seems to as far as knowing what a younger audience thinks of early rave music, i have no idea house has been quite trendy over the last cpl of years, and i'd like to think that's cos some of the good stuff has enduring aesthetic qualities (but then i hear someone play 'ride on time' in a club and i realise i might be a bit wrong about that | ||
1309 | naawRaybarn | what do you guys think of xploding plastix? like tracks such as these: | Rob | really not feeling the kazoo in here or the washboard stuff - thats totally wack, but the carpenter esque stuff with mellotronage at the beginning is nice - overall comes over as knowingly bad goofy. some sounds in it are good - like deep acoustic percs, but its not really focussing on any in particular, like needlessly switching to the wrong instrument every time i notice a good bit. seems like they're not 100% sure what they like imo. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnJ998Trn7g | |
1310 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDz1Q_pxgc0 | |||||
1311 | cheers rob, interesting views on these tracks! (tbh i'm not into music making at all, and ehm.. know very little of the technical stuff behind the process. but I really appreciate your thoughts and opinions, very interesing). . oh.. and ehm.. feel free to consider providing something on the other q's to in my post, I'm really curious about the pule track for instance! :) oh and one more thing, I'm sure many in here are curious about this: *** drumroll please *** who would win a match of arm wrestling between rob and Sean?? and a match of pool (8-ball, etc)?? | yeah ok, sorry if i was too nitpicky - hot/cold those trax. oops but yeah re: norway 'pule' - its quite a slinky number too so could be deployed to good use? funny someone posted that æ means 'I' in finnish was it? so yeah theres probably a few i think Seans lower arms more chunky so i'd put money there if i were u. i might win pool. we'll run that test next outing and report. | ||||
1312 | skytree | Saw you were already asked a few questions about field recordings, but if either of you could choose (1) a favorite man-made sound and (2) a favorite "natural" sound, in terms of something you've just always enjoyed since you were younger or ideas they've inspired, what would they be? IE: found the other day that the little strips of bark that spiral off of a birch can be whittled down easily to produce specific pitches, then played like a kalimba...made a melody for a track this way recently. I'm curious if this sort of thing happens in your process very frequently, at least in terms of inspiration coming from the sonic environment around you. P.S. If you could name my EH Holiest Grail, that would be most rad. | Sean | i think we already did this but i like this q so will answer again throwing stones onto an icy lake is really lush and the sound of an approaching train sometimes sends shockwaves up the tracks which you can hear way before the train arrives, i always liked that that fact about birch is amazing, so the harmonies are built into the structure of the wood already. mind = blown yeah i mean we stumble upon things a lot i think the thing is to stay open minded so when things like that occur you actually notice them, as opposed to rigidly finishing the task you started (this is the main reason i prefer max to sc) | ||
1313 | Rob | yeah re sounds…. i like yr tree find there, i have loads of London Plains trees near me, the ones with the camo bark that wants to peel off in really neat pieces naturally, tapping the ones that are only part way off are very cool to listen to. EH is now called The Splund | ||||
1314 | keltoi | it's rumoured both you and cunningham didn't like the 2nd bad vilbel vid? any truth in any of that? | Sean | nah not at all i mean we had no money at all to make it, it was all favours, and when we got the original edit we wanted to tighten it up a bit so me and rob went in with chris and kim (the editor) to see if we could make it seem more 'in time' and what we got was pretty good considering i know chris was never quite into the alien bits and later he did his own edit in final cut to try to remove the bits he didn't like but i always preferred the original myself, i like how cheap it is | ||
1315 | nizzleone | Speaking of limiters, and this goes back to the mastering question I asked before, but do you usually put any compression/limiter on the main bus or do leave that up to Noel? Do you guys make more money from releases or touring? | Sean | we might but noel never does, all he ever does is roll off a tiny bit of bass (we have smaller speakers than him) more from releases but touring doesn't make a lot of money for us cos of all the expenses, we like it like that tho one off gigs are a lot more profitable than both | ||
1316 | What kind of monitors have you guys been using recently? | Rob | dynaudioacoustics | |||
1317 | DorkingtonPugsly | So my music teacher wants me to write a paper on Augmatic Disport. But I don't know what to write. Help pls? | Rob | why don't u write about the polarity of the beats or something, just made up stuff. something about the to-and fro of the 'forward looking vs the backward looking' bits. and the amount of the percussion thats where it should be compared to the parts of percussion that are inexplicably absent in others. dunno see if yr teacher buys it. | ||
1318 | nizzleone | Oh yeah, what is the noise in the beginning of 2nd Bad? That is kind of the best noise ever. | Sean | a korg ms-10 patch | ||
1319 | TSF | please name my Octatrack | Rob | your octatrack is called Wetsuit | ||
1320 | Tok | Can you give us a hint about wether there is a hidden message encoded in the covers of Exai and/or L-Event? Many cryptomancers are working on it. But without any result yet: | Sean | yeah cos revealing hidden messages is a brilliant idea :D | http://www.reddit.com/r/codes/comments/1mmmqu/hidden_message_in_autechre_cover_art/ | |
1321 | Rob | no need for hints, looks like the Experts are already on it. =) | ||||
1322 | triachus | At gigs, does the crowd (re)act notably differently depening where you are? rob said you chose "Zurich 2001" as a bonus track because it's "a good display of how well it can kick off in Europe at a electronic gig". Things don't kick off like that at other places? Do you know what kind of mentality to expect from a crowd before you perform? You did say it's mostly Americans constantly checking their phones, iirc. Are crowds notably different from country to country, or is it more notable on different continents? | Sean | well thats a lot of questions for one question yeah it varies tons, every city is different, and countries have their own tendencies too | ||
1323 | Rob | it differs, we just need to get the right spaces/people/mood ratio right and it can go anywhere really. there are exceptions here n there. | ||||
1324 | How do you consider the Belgian crowds like? Dull? Bangin'? Just ok? | Sean | really good so far, they get it no matter how hard or weird we make it | |||
1325 | Rob | yeah belgian crowds are cool, as in, they do it properly in all contexts, be it at a botanical garden, or the First Techno Club in belgium (FUSE) | ||||
1326 | You have any anecdotes involving Belgian gigs you are willing to share? Or just Belgium, doesn't have to be at a gig per se. | Sean | yeah once i re-eq'd derrick may's dj set from a mixer which he was running thru but was like at the other end of a venue behind a curtain i was hyping up all his snare rushes with eq sweeps and stuff, was p good lulz | |||
1327 | Rob | where Renaat R&S told us we should definitely rethink about releasing some tracks, after seeing us live, on our post Incunabula / Basscadet timed tour. | ||||
1328 | What did he mean by that? Did he mean, "Release some tracks on R&S, pretty please?" Or did he mean "If I were you I would think twice before ever releasing this stuff I just heard" ? | actually he meant, hey you guys do good tracks you should put some out. | ||||
1329 | Sean | nah it went more like this renaat: 'i really enjoyed your latest EP, it's amazing' me: 'oh thanks, that's an honour' renaat: 'what was that track in your live set? i would love to release that!' me: 'oh, er, that's on the latest EP' renaat: 'oh god i'm sorry you caught me out there, oh how embarrassing' me: 'yeah, lol' | ||||
1330 | Sean, do you know that rob has already updated his status here, chatted a little bit in chatmm, and added a bunch of friends to his list? Using nearly all functions of this forum. Just saying, because I heard somewhere you guys like to one-up eachother ;p | Sean | yeah but i answered like 10 times as many q's - TAKE YOUR PICK | |||
1331 | Rob | heheheh ok were there already are we? | ||||
1332 | Little Lord Faulteroy | who is your favorite visual artist at the moment? i, personally, am very into illustration and arty stuff... and do you sometimes make tracks pure for your own listening pleasure, like Boards of Canada with their cassetes, and Richard with his Thousands of tracks? perfectly finished tracks, but specially made to never leave the studio? | Sean | i like john berkey a lot, i like how he manages to convey scale but using really vague strokes, think he's a bit of a genius actually and i really like syd mead and jean giraud as well yeah we make tracks for ourselves all the time but sometimes i expressly make say a hip hop track or a straight 4/4 techno track, but i usually get bored before i finish them i dunno how other people get anything like that finished tbh | ||
1333 | Rob | yeah a real dark horse. robert Mcall is another nice style - pen/inky for sci fi illustrating, but Berkey is top acrylic | ||||
1334 | k h o v | Dunno if its been talked before but there is this Seefeel remix of yours, Spangle, could tell a bit more about it ? its been released on cd in 2003 but i was wondering if it was from amber era, some forgotten tune that took years to release. | Sean | yeah we gave em that before basscadet came out, we did the swap at the same time roughly i dunno why warp didn't release it (lightweights) | ||
1335 | Joseph | In total, how many ae tracks have the vocal sample from draun quarter :) in them? | Sean | is there a vocal sample in that? | ||
1336 | Yeah and it's a mindfuck | oh god yeah i rem now ahaha not telling | ||||
1337 | rd1994 | how much percent of recording actually turns up on an album? I hope you understand what I mean | Sean | varies a lot, some albums it's about half and some it's like 10% the last couple have been more like 5% actually, maybe less actually- including things like sketches and test files it's <1%, but you wouldn't wanna sit thru all them unless you were mental | ||
1338 | net | Any thoughts on Funckarma and other output by the Funcken brothers? The structure of some of their early stuff is somewhat reminiscent of mid-90s Ae, and they've done loads of music without much development after getting in their comfort zone of sci-fi music (I often find it evoking the 'high tech low life' atmosphere of cyberpunk). I just have such a soft spot for that, and along with your own catalogue find bits and pieces of it among my favourite electronic music at the moment. Does it hit that spot for you too? The track you did at Stormy Waters in 1995 is one of my favourites. Rumours went around here lately that it went by the name 'Second Crane'. Was this the case, or is it a fan name? Dunno if we're still playing the naming game by this point (just got home) but well: I don't know how either of you feel about spiders, but I keep tarantulas as a serious hobby. Having passed the 50 mark I'd appreciate some help with names. If you wish to suggest any for my two Pamphobeteus sp. "Machalla", it would be a great/amusing honour. I include a photo of one in the spoiler should you wish for a visual reference. | Sean | not heard much apart from the stuff on skam, which is p good that sounds fairly legit but i can't rem, prob them PRS forms again your spider is now called Itsy | ||
1339 | Rob | edit, was thinking of someone else yeah that does ring a bell, mbe someone heard us say it there as a joke, cos i don't think we left any notes there with it written or anything. deadpool | ||||
1340 | hoggy | Have you ever heard a music which successfully combines the best elements of say The Melvins/Venetian Snares or Queen Adreena/Aphex Twin or The Locust/Autechre - is such a thing possible? (Something that is neither rock set to electronic beats nor rock music with electronic instruments but a true melding of the two? Music with electronic stimulation, imagination, diversity and exploration of sound and vocal/analogue instrument gut human emotion/physicality?) | Sean | tbh i find these kind of axes a bit artificial, arbitrary at best. it's a shame there are these two predominant camps given how flexible it all actually is | ||
1341 | But you believe that the two camps exist? I've never heard omnivorous music in that sense that is as good as specialised music (at least in some small sense) as far as I know - I genuinely want to find music that makes me think differently, I don't want there to be a boundary either | nah i think they don't really but a lot of bands seem to and the press are lazy so it perpetuates | ||||
1342 | Can you recommend any musicians who use both electronic made music and noisy physical instruments/vocals in a way that rocks and makes you want to go crazy? (genuinely interested, totally understand if you can't think of one off the top of your head) | cocteau twins | ||||
1343 | xox | speaking of CPU load, could you make all the sounds at the last tour only with MSP? i understand that not all tracks for tour 'work' as tracks for releases but the track from 2008 tour that starts at 20 min is absolutely genius. that momentum, that energy (creative, sexual and intellectual all in one) is something i heard only in beethoven's symphonies, no where else. the closes released track is spl9 and it 'works' fantastically. will you consider releasing more tracks with that kind of energy? | Sean | most of it, some of it's g2 stuff which we'd still have to build, but yeah i reckon there's nothing too intensive there really er yeah i guess, we always did those kind of tracks for EPs and live sets anyway, at least it felt that way, maybe slightly less slamming on the EPs i think what it is, we like listening to certain kinds of stuff at home and on headphones, and we like hearing more slamming things when we're out in a club, and we do what feels right in each context | ||
1344 | Talis | How accurate would you say the "10000" hour rule is? Is it something you've ever taken into account? | Rob | could he have just plucked that number out of thin air? | ||
1345 | rd1994 | what do you think about the cavity job single in retrospect? | Rob | hardcore | ||
1346 | Sean | i still wish they'd had the balls to release the original but i guess we still could ourselves sometime | ||||
1347 | coconuthead | When you say, "the original" do you mean like alternate versions of the tracks? If I'm right, the first track in that live video of you guys from 1991 is the song Cavity Job and around the 1:31 mark where this girl takes a sip of her beer, this awesome melody comes in. If that is the original version of the track, I have to hear this because that melody has been stuck in my head for two weeks! | Rob | yeah the actual synths way better in this mix lol | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC7LGzCZ-q0 | |
1348 | Sean | yeah the released one has that melody but the filter is different, not as good imo | ||||
1349 | rd1994 | you said somewhere that the Incunabula album was a compilation made of presenting tracks to WARP ...will the other tracks ever see the light of day | Sean | maybe, we have talked about that dunno | ||
1350 | keltoi | can you name my left nut? | Rob | (like a zombie….) your left nut is called Hitler | ||
1351 | lumpenprol | wait, you named someone's left nut Hitler, but shied away from proposing baby names? Clearly you don't fully appreciate the solemn, terrible responsibility inherent in naming someone's balls. Next to that, naming a kid is a walk in the park... | Sean | i know and hitler? how lazy you could have called it bobby | In response to rob | |
1352 | Rob | whahah true dude. christ, u got me. its just that yeah easy to be silly with ppl s testicles, but yr offspring? what if the kid sues me in 30 yrs time or whatever ? can u sign something to make it all safe | In response to Sean | |||
1353 | cool, bobby it is, let's hope it's not a girl then. Will let you know in 6 mos | thats a bit like my name, anyway bobby's nice for a girl too. | ||||
1354 | Sean | wait you're giving birth to a testicle? | ||||
1355 | sine | Ok I'm really torn here about what to ask you guys and obviously a bit awestruck that youre being so gracious in patiently answering some of these questions,also even though a part of me wants to shamelessly whore out my S.O's music I've decided Im not going to. However his birthday is on the 25th of December...can you imagine losing out to Jesus every year? So...at the risk of reading like a postcard to Tiswas,please could you wish Happy Birthday to Max ?I know its early but what the hell. Thank you both,in anticipation of your reply. kisses etc Lynne x | Sean | oh happy birthday max (is that ok?) | ||
1356 | Rob | sorry i was thrown by 'my S.O' what is it, i'm melting Autechre say hi, happy birthday Max, and many happy returns too. | ||||
1357 | radian | Favourite episode of "the trap door" ? | Rob | a useful one def, but i like them all really - a lot | ||
1358 | You mentioned Sunvox and Renoise but have you got any background in older trackers like Impulse or FastTracker ? | Sean | nah i haven't at all the one everyone i know/rate uses was octamed but i never tried it. they all use renoise now | |||
1359 | Rob | no i hadn't used trackers b4 renoise….. i badly missed out. | ||||
1360 | yenorom | Have you used java with max or do you stick with C only? Java seems easier, OO not having to mess with pointers etc | Sean | yeah but i don't have se6 on here so not atm | ||
1361 | ZombieLincoln666 | Have you ever heard an interesting sound while out and about and sampled it with your cellphone? | Sean | [NO ANSWER] | ||
1362 | Rob | yeah loads | ||||
1363 | Given the flexibility of software and controllers, do you still find your old hardware boxes (e.g. r8) useful? | Sean | i haven't used the r8 for ages but the board is a bit knackered so it bends when i push the top left pads, needs fixing really i think we got so good using it that i'd always keep one around, and yeah will prob even get a mk2 one day haha the memory is shit tho i used to run out by doing busy patterns | |||
1364 | Rob | i keep my NMv1 v close. | ||||
1365 | How did you make fold4wrap5? The timing does my head in. Is the name a reference to this? | Sean | ah that's easy tbh but i'm not saying | |||
1366 | Rob | you'll sort it i'm sure | ||||
1367 | mcbpete | Modey's done a bloody ace go at recreating the process here - | Sean | yeah pretty close, not bad at all modey | http://forum.watmm.com/topic/30105-fold4wrap5-how-its-done-discussionarguments-thread/ | |
1368 | Rob | yep. funny hearing it by someone else, strange feeling, well dunz | ||||
1369 | ZombieLincoln666 | Do you ever play keyboards/pads live and record (opposed to sequencing)? | Sean | yeah | ||
1370 | Rob | yeah loads | ||||
1371 | olo | Justin Beiber has taken to Graf. Looks like Brazil is a little pissy he's been doing it there. No questions really. Just figured it needed to be posted. | Sean | is this.. what.. i.. | http://i.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/justin-bieber-graffiti__oPt.jpg | |
1372 | thisfieldisrequired | what's the worst piece of gear you ever bought & why? | Rob | mpc1000 with akai os preinstalled probably…. due to completely wasted potential - boring eh | ||
1373 | Tok | ylm0. I'm Lost in Montreal because i redfall overand second peng my lowride bike. The ipacial section of this deco Loc is so freeze 28i and now i'm Cichli with a rale Bronchus2. My newbound reniform puls is rew(1) at a sublimit of M39 Diffain :( It's gaekwad to ask, but should y7 r ess notwo, nofour but Nine Etchogon-S to Recury? I could also Inhake 2 Djarum before i dropp Tewe down the Drane2 or teartear them into the Garbage because they Pen Expers soon. Please Calbruc, Dial or bilfil and Chiastic Slide me a leterel. Nice Altibzz with you, M62. | Rob | :D lol 'i could also inhake 2 djarum | ||
1374 | Talis | Earlier in the thread, an analogsolutions reverb was mentioned, yet in the recent fact mag interview, rob mentioned not wanting to jump on the euro rack bandwagon or something like that. Could you clarify?/Do you have a proper or small modular system?/What are your thoughts on eurorack/ is it relevant to you? I asked something like this earlier but I think it got lost in the forest of questions, or maybe you answered it and I couldn't find it haha...Either way, I'd like to extend my thanks again- this thread has been really inspirational. | Sean | yeah we had the rs integrator since 2001 or 2002, but we haven't been buying loads of modules since it got trendy again i think the track awep was asking about was from 2005 or something my thoughts? i dunno i mean, it's cool but i think it's enabling a lot of rich stupid people at the same time all i care about is the tunes really. play me the tunes | ||
1375 | keltoi | any plans to play the newly refurbed glasgow art school? would an artificial intelligence reunion tour be mad fun or what? | Sean | we will if we get asked re ai: i reckon it would be a pretty strong lineup if it was all the orig people i'd do it, if there was an easy way to do the tracks, not thought about that bit | ||
1376 | not kidding re line-up. has it ever been discussed at warp d'you know? i can't be the first to suggest it. i'd come of retirement for a gig like that! | no idea, they never mentioned it. fly idea tho, i guess a lot of it hinges on how much the artists would want to honour the ai thing, whether they play old tracks, or new ones etc | ||||
1377 | triachus | What was the image used on the cover of Incunabula? I've been thinking lately to make field recordings. Never done that before. What recorder would you recommend? What do you say, one last shot at naming my guitar? ;p | Sean | it was a video of rob and me which was played thru a tv out of tune and re-photographed, by daniel 72 i dunno much about what's good i have a habit of using absolutely anything your guitar is now called enrico | ||
1378 | What would you use to record a soft, silent sound close to you (say a squeaky coffee pot), but at the same time you dont want louder distant noises to be recorded (clocks, cars)? Are there recorders that might filter that out? Or do you have to do that with software? | i dunno i'd just use whatever shit mic i had to hand and then eq it out later :D | ||||
1379 | skytree | Are you familiar with the project - or similar endeavors using plants as signal transducers or biofeedback oscillators/modulators? Interested in your thoughts or personal experiences. Quite into the idea of sampling the houseplants, and who knows, perhaps the mineral collection as well... | Sean | weird, i have a mate who was doing stuff like this about 10 years ago i like the idea of it definitely | https://vimeo.com/62232734 | |
1380 | TSF | One of my best friends who is a MASSIVE Atuechre fan (she....yes 'she'...turned me on to y'all) is about to have a baby (could be in labor at this moment) named Vivian. Could you send them both a message of some sort? It would mean a great deal to her. | Sean | Good luck Vivian . if u are going into labour, play only our softer tunes to newb on arrival ok? take it easy rB) æ | ||
1381 | soma | what's your fav color? | Sean | i like combinations more than actual colours like, lots of black with small amounts of 100% green and white 100% blue next to 100% yellow cyan and red, with bits of grey tons of others but i don't wanna be here all day lol | ||
1382 | Rob | octarene, its the colour Bola used to classify as that colour greenandpurple u see in your closed eye when yr tripping, but i see it anytime i want now. | ||||
1383 | triachus | Bola took that colour from a book of the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. And it's spelled octarine. | Rob | yeah i think he likes Pratchett. | ||
1384 | logakght | Which tracks (from anybody) makes you cry in an abyss of nostalgia and sadness? | Rob | planet rock | ||
1385 | telefunken | what do you think about Terrence Dixon? | Sean | who hell he? never heard | ||
1386 | Rob | dunno, haven't been played any - detroit guy right? . sorry any good suggestions? | ||||
1387 | atkins' shadow producer and actress' reference | Sean | sounds p good i like how understated it is | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7xAthi5Vrw | ||
1388 | his classic releases on Tresor, Background recs and recent are not bad too (as Population One) he is kinda voodoo man | yeah i can tell i'm gonna like this, gonna do a bit of catchup here thanks for this, good pick | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bISOhHbwsMc | |||
1389 | http://hardwax.com/69500/population-one/random-variables/ | |||||
1390 | Rob | yeah thanks , we like the magics | ||||
1391 | Phoenix | Any thoughts on Drexciyan music? | Sean | yeah amazing drexciya 2 was shocking | ||
1392 | Rob | yeah out of the detroit lot, they were the first for me, to show how 'dizzy' they could get their funk, like mad mike had the funk but really fast and quite pneumatic sort of tight, and juan with his shaky proper dance club stuff, but drexciya, were super wet sounding with the ms20 type of sound they went for more often. rubbery, and yeah i really went for the overseeing nobility they played with as characters. | ||||
1393 | Sean | yeah they really created a line between what we knew about electro as kids and what was happening with techno at the time, but in a really different way to everyone else, like they had their own more correct version of history going on in the early 90s not many techno producers were overtly referencing early electro (we def felt pretty alone in that regard when we first went to america) and drexciya seemed to be one of the only techno things at the time (other than UR and juan) who were doing it so explicitly. drexciya more than anyone really. | In response to rob | |||
1394 | mgore10 | Have you ever checked out some of the electroacoustic/acousmatic concerts at the University of Manchester with their 24+ channel "MANTIS" sound system? They do some pretty amazing things with aural images and spatial counterpoint. The music coming out of there is quite gestural, but still really taps into cross-modal perception in a meaningful way, if one's listening skills and attention span are up for it. Some "academic" composers that are doing some really interesting DSP - Natasha Barrett (although she is from Norway), David Berezan (professor at U Manchester), Manuella Blackburn. Either of you have any interest in Supercollider anymore, or does Smalltalk code do your head it too much? I love Max to death, but often feel deflated when some algorithmic process takes an extraordinary amount of patching in Max, but is only several lines of code in Supercollider. | Sean | no i prefer max cos it suggests tangents | ||
1395 | Rob | no i haven't, i didn't know they got acoustic setup there. ok cool i never used SC. no good at coding really. | ||||
1396 | Wurstwasser | Do you have any favourite albums or tracks in the Chris Douglas universe? I think my fav album is Seimlste. SDSS as a track is great, even though it differs a bit but hey. | Sean | benacah drann deachd | ||
1397 | Oh the Banach Drann is still on my listening queue. Don't know the newer stuff properly. I've got one last question. Will you ever publish a Trololo remix? Kalpol Intrololo? | ah it's worth it for that name alone bit late now tho eh | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1EG-MKy4so | |||
1398 | eclipsis | Newbound should have been titled meowbound. Any way you could fix that huge mistake? | Rob | its pressed , shipped now, heheh, u want a fix - how could i sort that 4u. or meowbouwbouwbouwbouwbouw... | ||
1399 | Sean | it's too late | ||||
1400 | naawRaybarn | ah haha, æ is actually Norwegian again, and yes it's a dialect variation of Norwegian "jeg" which means "I" (æ is pronounced as a combination of a and e, as the form suggests). I happen to speak that dialect actually. Lot's of the vocabulary in our dialect consists of single vowels, like for instance the sentence " æ e fra Norge" means "I'm from Norway" Actually the æ vowel existed in Old English, as in words such as æsthetic and encyclopædia. Reminds me off.. .isn't the track name "dael" from tri repetae actually an old English word, "dæl", meaning "part" or "unit". In Norwegian the word for "part" is "del". (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dæl) pretty cool stuff this I think :) | Rob | ah yeah re Dael. i mean it could be said as dial, or dale or whatever, so i'm glad we came upon autechre, and like that start and end of = ae, it works well in my local ancient surroundings in many ways that are cool. so yeah. thanks for the details there norway cru | ||
1401 | azatoth | Was the Japan bonus track on Exai, 18 (keyosc), a reference to the stupid WATMM misunderstanding of a supposedly new Autechre album called Kiosk? | Rob | hahah i don't think it was…. : - | ||
1402 | Sean | ah - :whistling: you'll never know | ||||
1403 | Hexahedral | What are some of your favourite pieces of euphoria inducing music (considering that different things are euphoric for different heads)? | Sean | now this is fun' by depeche mode always gets me in a really up state, but it's not really euphoric in the way most people mean (i.e. 'too many fizzy synths') | ||
1404 | Rob | isoprophlex - afx mountain goat - amorphous androgynous polynomial-c - afx circles vicious mix - john & julie temple - jon hopkins jungle - jungle wonz allowance - isolee work harder/work softer - perc no.3 - VA chain reaction X2 - electric soul indicatif roissy - parmegiani from the hame hill - brian eno untrue - burial i could go on and on, mbe all diff contexts but pretty much euphoric to me | ||||
1405 | lumpenprol | how many epic ae jams have the fans deprived themselves of by distracting you with this Q&A? | Sean | not too many we might do like 1 each a day at the moment, so you're like, gonna have to wait 5 days longer before we get our live shit together | ||
1406 | aht romain | I finally dare to ask you some words about one track of mine: - i dont need compliments (i dont care), just words about your feelings by sharing sounds i made.To be very happy to know that my stuff went once to your ears :) | Sean | yeah its weird its like hearing memories from 20 years ago thru a time lens of now are those r8/roland sounds? (some bits sound like it, others don't) | ||
1407 | Mainly FS1R and evolver, thanks :) | nice extra points for that | ||||
1408 | Phoenix | Do you want to get down? - | Rob | fully dope. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1PB798s5ik | |
1409 | triachus | Years ago (around the Untilted release period I think) I've read an interview in a (dutch?) magazine. The end of the interview got a bit weird, because the journie asked "whats the most extreme thing a fan ever did" or something like that. You said you were afraid to answer that question. You said you would agree to tell it only if the interviewer agreed not to publish the story. Because you were afraid should that one fan read it, he might get more crazy ideas or something. The interviewer then said you told the story, and he confirmed that it was indeed pretty messed up. So, after all these years, can you tell what that was about? I mean, you probably won't. But I once made a thread about it here, and some said it had something to do with a fake hoax video someone made, that a lot of people thought was real. Fuck, I hope this isn't too much of a downer. | Sean | yeah i think i know what this is about, not totally sure tbh cos i can't rem the interview but nah i wouldn't talk about (what i'm thinking of) here cos it would fuck someone's reputation and that's kind of totally unnecessary in this context oh btw its got nothing to do with any video | ||
1410 | jasondonervan | If you were given the option to select one of your tracks to go on a golden record* to be beamed into space, which would you choose? | Sean | yeah this is a variation of the faves question i dunno man, fuck, you decide | http://nextnature.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Record_Space.jpg | |
1411 | Your golden record track will be Drane 3 :wink: | Rob | aye good choice | |||
1412 | Obel | Sean. Is that Winterbottom I can hear purring away in garbagemx36? Thanks again for this guys, you've gone way way way above and beyond. Appreciate that you've put up with the often ridiculous questions! Looking forward to future ae material with baited breath. | Sean | no, but he did get onto a track on chiastic ok wildo cheers man, it's been more productive than doing 10 years worth of interviews | Winterbottom = Sean's cat (From Garbage EP era) | |
1413 | feltcher | Are there any cool places you would like to play a gig? Weird locations, cities you have never been too, famous buildings? They have started doing gigs in the dungeons at Oxford Castle, this would be an awesome ae gig experience. Not sure what the acoustics are like though Somewhere like Jodrell Bank would make an epic autechre experience. | Sean | jodrell bank kind of owns really, that or blue john mines/white scar caves, and a gig inside the untersberg might be a total mindfuck | ||
1414 | soma | If you could give yourself some cyborg-like upgrayedd what would it be? | Sean | i'd like the same range of hearing as a cat and the same for vision, i'd like to be able to see into the uv | ||
1415 | mcbpete | Either of you suffer from migraines with an aura (that look something similar to this) - First time I had one I thought I was going blind, now I embrace the fractalline (is that a word) beauty of them ... until the nausea and headache sets in that is. | Sean | no, I'm lucky i don't think i ever had one | http://www.migraine-aura.com/site/content/e27891/e27265/e26585/e49135/e49152/Roger_Heaton_Migraine_Images_1992Small_en.jpg | |
1416 | Rob | no me neither | ||||
1417 | Homestar Runner | How much unreleased material do you guys have in comparison to actually released material I know you mentioned earlier that you guys aren't allowed to release under even your own names - but do you guys work separately sometimes on things that you guys don't agree on and leave them unreleased for the future? | Sean | already answered this, sorry, long as fuck answer, cba finding it to paste we keep stuff back yeah, depends, not much of that is cos of us not agreeing | ||
1418 | jules | this has been so awesome and fun. when you get your live stuff worked out and come to nyc, what should i yell out to reference the epic watmm aaa? | Rob | wow, dunno. whats most universal here after all this?? bearing in mind now though there are more guests on here than users, so there might be some lurkers using this hallowed chant without having earned the pleasure. | ||
1419 | nizzleone | Hmm, maybe do a break in the middle of the set to do body part naming requests? | Sean | lel | nizzleone In response to rob's response to jules | |
1420 | Rob | argh lol | ||||
1421 | jasondonervan | Do either of you have a record that you own which you enjoy so much, you have doubles (triples? etc.) of it? | Rob | yeah loads, PE mantronix actually mostly hip hop | ||
1422 | Sean | yeah quite a few some were accidental, happens when i'm on tour | ||||
1423 | lumakey | I hear Guild Navigators chattering in Tankakarn. did you enjoy the original Dune? | Rob | yeah Dune, i did, i think i was too young to criticise it so i was lucky to have it memorised as perfect | ||
1424 | Sean | yeah i love it but that cut in the middle - i hope one day the whole thing comes out | ||||
1425 | soma | On the subject of Dune, y'all mention Jodorowsky...what do y'all think about Holy Mountain? Gotta fav by him? (remember you mentioning a collab w/ moebius) | Sean | yeah it's good, but chaotic and ugly i like el topo | ||
1426 | Rheyne | I noticed a mention of physical modeling and how you said you can achieve the same sorts of formant / vocal sounds using things like band-pass filters and pulse width modulation. I was listening to "Osla for n" again (incredible) and thought of the formant growling throughout the track, later being gated into more of a 4/4 groove. Is this the type of formant control you were referring to, as something you can do in Max without needing a physical modeling synth, or was much of the formant shaping of the sound already present in the source material? My apologies if I'm interpreting what I'm hearing incorrectly. | Sean | er that was a weird method i'd rather not disclose right now but nah it's not 'formant synthesis' as it's normally defined the source was white noise | ||
1427 | Roksen Creek | What did you guys think of Lynch's Inland Empire? | Sean | it's my fave thing he's done it's weird cos a lot of my mates slagged it cos of the film quality, but i reckon it appeals to me even more than film cos i like some old video art as well the way it flows is amazing tho it's sad that he said he won't do any more, but he's old and i like enough of his music for it not to be a huge deal. but man, he was getting so good there | ||
1428 | thisfieldisrequired | to me Inland Empire is the most Autechrian film ever, if that makes any sense. | well that's a huge compliment it def resonates with me in a weirdly deep way i mean i was always a massive fan but that was like, times 10 for me | |||
1429 | ... one thing i've realised from reading this thread is that you guys are being mistaken as two cold technicians obsessed with virtuose modular prowess, when in fact you're just two sensitive guys obsessed with dreams. i don't know but there's a dreamlike quality to Exai i seem to haven't noticed before. maybe it's those huge frozen reverb clouds in Bladelores or SPL9 (@3'20)... but it's like your work has taken a new dimension for me. | Rob | key stuff there | |||
1430 | Roksen Creek | Have you read anything by Thomas Pynchon, Sean? To me he is the most Autechrian author (I guess it's the other way round as he came first, but you know what I mean). Especially Gravity's Rainbow. | Sean | no never i will now tho in a similar vein someone once suggested james joyce, but i tried to read finnegan's wake once and was like, whatthefuckamireading.jpg | ||
1431 | LOL! That's the standard response to Finnegan's Wake. Try Ulysses instead. And definitely try Gravity's Rainbow. And maybe some of Jorge Luis Borges' stuff. | oh i read library of babel once, that was highly awesome | ||||
1432 | Retosik | what do your parents think about your music? also, will you name my casio hdd600 (a watch, not audio gear, sorry)? | Rob | my mum, definitely thinks its cool, she prefers say early stuff, but she's into the new stuff too. she likes FSOL and so on. your hdd600 is called Son | ||
1433 | triachus | Can you name the biggest notable differences in crowd mentalities at Autechre gigs between Europe, Asia, and America? | Sean | well it's never stable, and to an extent things are evening out with the internets and all but back in the day (generally) the rave scene in america was completely different to europe ah u know what i cba typing all this again, everything i was gonna say is already scattered ITT | ||
1434 | thisfieldisrequired | Being constantly working / listening to music, do you feel it does still move you as much as when you were young teenagers, discovering everything? Do you think your sensitivity evolved a lot or are your obsessions pretty much still the same? Do you feel more creative now or in your earlier days? | Sean | yeah in a way it's easier to find things now cos there are way more chances, so in terms of it being rewarding it's actually better now than it was then yeah obsessions are still pretty locked (i think u can tell really) now, but only with the benefit of hindsight | ||
1435 | Rob | more more more yeah i'm not kidding,cos its just causing a wedge shape for most things i like, and in doing this as much as i can sort of feeds back in. even something as silly as hearing some new band doing something re-done say but as 'new people', as shit as it sounds, even that adds to it all. we get asked so many times ; when u were a kid what did u want music to be like in the future? | ||||
1436 | TSF | Is there any sense in which you see your work as a critique of technology, art, or mathematics? a la John Zerzan (primitivist philosopher) ...or do you see it as a fulfillment of any of these? | Sean | nah tbh we dunno what we're doing at all | ||
1437 | soma | It was raining yesterday in Memphis, it's rather clear and sunny here today. What's the weather like over there for you boys? | Sean | rainy, grey, cool quite typical for manchester | ||
1438 | Rob | dark, post wet | ||||
1439 | xox | How do you like watmm sense of humor? Also...we somethimes make jokes about you but it's all love. When/if u get really angry about something how that looks like? | Sean | yeah it's not a million miles away from ours i dunno, i tend to get it over with p quickly :) | ||
1440 | Rob | yeah we can take it - also we understand i reckon. | ||||
1441 | KunoMerit | When one of you have made a new bit of music - do you call it a "beat" a "track", etc. ie. Do you say "Hey rob/Sean, check this new beat I made" I call them beats due to childhood hip-hop associations. | Sean | track | ||
1442 | Rob | both, beats for beats - tracks for tracks, but yeah i know what u mean, or we say, "so Sean, what'r u sayin'?" after a friend of ours - who is fully hiphop … pretty much sums it up. | ||||
1443 | When you are amazed at what you just made but the other half of ae is not around, do you then go to your wife/girlfriend/lady/etc. and say Dear love, check this new beat I made | Sean | nah | |||
1444 | Rob | yeah, its not quite the same response tho' | ||||
1445 | Does said wife/girlfriend/lady/etc. then begrudgedly listen and say "That's nice" | Sean | nah cos i didn't play her it | |||
1446 | Rob | no, something more amusingly patronising. =) | ||||
1447 | According to your mood, do you then think "I'm half of fucking autechre - there are fuckers on the internet who'd be going crazy for this shit right now!" | Sean | nah (see above) | |||
1448 | Rob | i try | ||||
1449 | Retosik | recommend me a good album to listen | Sean | pow wow plus by stephen mallinder | ||
1450 | daed | What are your opinions on the use of fractal formulas for generating beats or melodies? Any particular favorite types for particular applications? (i.e. L-Systems for melodies... Mandelbeats...etc) | Rob | i prefer moire effects in music more than fractal - in aesthetic ways anyway - tv transmissions recorded off tv with video etc… fences phasing each other on motorways so on, its a bit more wild but simpler too, and is more like things i find IRL on larger scales. i know theres loads of args to shut me up there, but mbe we o'd d on fractals as a generation. really like L-systems for graf/ix, tho' | ||
1451 | Sean | yeah (altho some people prob already know this) i'm a huge fan of simulating fluid dynamics to make things move around in a controllable but beautiful way (using navier-stokes equations) | ||||
1452 | ZombieLincoln666 | For generating sounds? Can you also do turbulence? | sort of yeah it's a lot easier since gen came out as well | |||
1453 | TSF | Are y'all into any noise/harsh noise stuff? | Sean | bits i really like incapacitants | ||
1454 | triachus | One thing, I was surprised that the word "weird" got said a few times when talking about your music. Something like Q: "do you get annoyed when people find your music weird" A: "nah, we know its weird" I just want to say that to me, your music has never been weird. It all makes fucking sense to me. Not sure what that says about me tho, lol. | Sean | awesome, thanks | ||
1455 | soma | Y'all dig Peter Chung? | Sean | dunno who that is, sorry | ||
1456 | Peter Chung did Aron flux | yeah then, used to love liquid television | ||||
1457 | NewSchoolScience | I think I've been to all your Glasgow gigs. My absolute favourite was in ... Tin Pan Alley I think, the tour around the time of Tri Repetae. Man that was good -- proper pummelling. Anyways, I don't expect you guys to remember that particular gig, but it leads on to my question ... do you have a favourite venue or city to play in, and do you have a stand out gig that's been your most enjoyable to date? | Sean | (places vary) but many fave gigs have been in glasgow, newcastle, dublin, manchester and london | ||
1458 | danke | I would be much obliged if you could name my Roland JX-3P and my euro-rack modular rig that I'm in the middle of putting together. | Sean | jx-3p's are ace, did u get a controller? those things are so cute your jx-3p is now called brian your eurorack is now called galactor | ||
1459 | Unfortunately, I don't have the controller. I'm planning on installing the KiwiTechnics mod at some point (hopefully in the near future). It's a pretty rad mod, pretty much replaces the original CPU, giving things like MIDI control to all parameters, broader range LFO's (an additional LFO, too, I believe), being able to adjust the on-board chorus, stuff like that. So I could just use a knob box instead of the controller, though, as you say, the programmer is pretty cute. Details here: - I'm hoping I don't mess up Brian's guts when I do that. But yeah, it was a super cheap pawn shop buy, going to be replacing its volume pot tomorrow after years of having to have it in a certain position for it to be able to play. Always loved it since I got it, though. Galactor's guts are still being put together. Do either of you have children? I'm a father myself. My sons love playing with my gear. My older one (he's 5) made a track on Audiotool.com the other night. I think he's going in the right direction with it. ;) | tbh what you're doing there is gonna be way better than some cute controller, pls disregard me rob does, i don't | ||||
1460 | patternoverlap | How has running SKAM been for you guys? (I assume you guys still run it. Please correct me if this is wrong) Has it been lucrative? more a labor of love? Does it require a lot of your time or do you have people helping with it to alleviate some of that? | Sean | nah we never ran it, it's run by a guy called andy maddocks a tiny number of their other artists are sometimes part of gescom i would never run a label, way too time consuming | ||
1461 | Boxus | What was the deal with Tried by 12? How did so many great experimental producers get on board to remix? Did you have a lot of fun putting yours together? It's an all-time favorite for me, I love the vocal processing so much. Also, just a taste query - have you listened to Freestyle Fellowship much? Inner City Griots is one of my favorite hip hop albums so I was curious if you're fans at all. | Sean | tried by 12 happened cos that guy seven (think thats his name) was pretty pushy iirc glad it did tho, he had a good list of artists there (like, who the fuck would think to ask sluta leta). yeah it was tons of fun, esp splitting the vocal up into two people never heard freestyle fellowship, i have a weird gap in my hip hop knowledge from about 89-93 cos it changed so much when mtv tried to get hold of it (imo) | ||
1462 | theSun | what types of objects could i attach to drumset for cool autechre sounding drumset? | Rob | u mean drumset IRL or Vdrums? u tried tinfoil yet or crackers (edible) | ||
1463 | soma | I'm currently pumping incunabula in the streets of mem, I'm at that part around 4:00 in bike when there's that synth smoke chamber that gets me every time :) y'all ever have drycleaning? If so is it delivered to you? | Sean | :D that's the best bit yeah, yeah | ||
1464 | ZombieLincoln666 | what are your favorite BoC tracks? | Sean | northern plastics | ||
1465 | triachus | How did you guys do this marathon? How did you keep up with it? What tactics did you use? What are the highest number of tabs that you had open because of this? Were you able to do other things while doing this? It certainly consumed my time to do other stuff, and I didn't even have to answer hundreds of questions! There was talk to ask you guys to take pictures of the place you did this marathon from. The reason for this eludes me. I don't think there ever was one. I assume it is meant for a greater good. You care about greater goods, right? | Sean | no more than 4 at once the main prob is keeping up with ones that have been replied to, if there had been some little light on posts that had been quoted it would have been faster yeah but nah, i'm in the studio atm and i'm not posting pics sorryyyy | ||
1466 | Friendly Foil | I just received L-event in the mail today. Where/how should I listen to it for the first time, for maximum extreme impact? Any suggestions? | Sean | on good headphones track1: rollercoaster track2: ghost train track3: maze of mirrors track4: beach | ||
1467 | SammyTheCrab | To Sean,do you think a majestic raid on a cell would be the most defist shame? | Sean | wow 5 not bad i can't top that i was gonna try but, nah lol | ||
1468 | phling | if there was no more electricity to be had, WAT DO? | Sean | empty sachets of silica gel out onto my wooden floor | ||
1469 | coax | can you name my phone? couldnt resist | Sean | your phone is now called archibald | ||
1470 | nizzleone | Do you guys often create with headphones in mind? How do you usually approach the stereo spectrum? | Sean | bit of both really, i mostly work on speakers but i listen back to stuff on headphones a lot working on live stuff is better on headphones generally and laptops + headphones is pretty common too for working while mobile etc | ||
1471 | Retosik | describe acroyear2 :D will you allow me to take a photo with you on your next tour if we meet? :D | Sean | his arms and legs fall off regularly probably | ||
1472 | IOS | Can you rename Earth? PLS Also, do I really see an 'S' in Etchogon-S on the vector scope? | Sean | planet naming has been forbidden for 12 parsecs yeah, cool eh | ||
1473 | kroe | worst lost on the studio ?! (hard drives burnt or something like that) | Sean | ah too many to recount no whole drives (usually got multiple backups) but plenty of whole tracks like tears in rain | ||
1474 | triachus | Were the Oversteps circles hand painted? Or did they just use one of those brush-mimicking programs? Was the Move Of Ten cover hand drawn? | Sean | hands, both | ||
1475 | Xepha | What feelings/emotions do you want to transfer in Vletrmx? Will you ever come to Mexico? :sad: What is your favorite Aphex Twin track? | Sean | vletrmx was a track made for someone yeah maybe, not been asked didgeridoo | ||
1476 | TSF | would you please name my yet-to-be-born modular synth? | Sean | your unborn modular synth is now called Tambien | ||
1477 | soma | what do y'all think about jean Michel jarre? | Sean | i like oxygene and equinoxe and i even like zoolook but he's a right cheesy fucker isn't he | ||
1478 | salvaKPO | Do you know if David Lynch is aware of your music? If so; Did he ever contact you? | Sean | no idea, no | ||
1479 | nizzleone | Have you seen Lynch's part on the last season of Louie? So good, as is the whole series really. | Rob | wow no, ok i'll get it, i mean its not on terrestrial here, i'll need to get my tv mad neighbour to rip that. | ||
1480 | Ivan Ooze | maybe i should watch it with some shrooms but the "artwork" on my cd of lp5 has the ugliest design in my whole collection, it's lame black font on lame white what makes you decide to use such minimal art with such maximum music? | Sean | the original cd packaging was meant to be an extension of the standard grey-backed jewel case design popular in the 80s, but with the front cover also being grey - cos as far as we know, that hadn't been done before but in america it was repackaged cos nothing records didn't want to spend money on getting a special case made | ||
1481 | jules | ah man, that would have been cool as shit | Sean | yeah we managed it in the uk and eu, and the first run of the japanese ones the only label that chickened out were nothing records | ||
1482 | Rob | yeah we had the fkin huge DIE caster made specially for that one record too. and he didn't even wanna import them from uk. but yeah i guess …US jobs | ||||
1483 | but mine has black font on white paper and and there is a barcode on the back lael and i believe there is nothing on the cd either also no tracklist haha do i have the superlimited ultra special edition? i'm telling this cause i was quit shocked when i found it in the records store that it looked so bad (also shocked the album was so good :biggrin:) | Sean | i dunno - maybe you have the usa release but without the sticker or something tbh i can't rem exactly how it looked, i think i might not even have a copy | |||
1484 | Ivan Ooze | i took a pic of the autechre lp5 cd case, the tracktitles are on the back of the booklet and the barcode is on the front, i was wrong! | i think that's the american one, not sure i thought they used a sticker for our name but maybe it's a later edition it's a bit weakening how licensees sometimes fuck up artwork, you have to just kind of sign off and hope for the best really | http://i1254.photobucket.com/albums/hh602/IvanOoze777/2013-11-07224734_zps8926424a.jpg | ||
1485 | it's american the front says ae production booth/brown p+c 1998 warp records ltd published by warp music/ electric music industries released under exlusive license to nothing records limited inc. manufactured in the united states by carolne distribution all rights reserved. printed in the united states unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited by federal law and subject to criminal prosecution mastered by frank arkwright recorded in england fucking lol bought it in a belgium shop! | haha what wonder how that happened, weird | ||||
1486 | KunoMerit | monomachine vs. machinedrum - who wins? | Sean | machinedrum | ||
1487 | KunoMerit | interesting what you wrote about the tape mixes back in the day. all this time i thought you were making stutter edits. as silly as those sound now we would make those like crazy (and thus break the pause buttons doing stutters and loops). dual tape deck jam box. sk1 was a huge deal as you could make loops without copying it over and over on tape. also, when you speak of mates i wonder if these are real people that live near you or remote people. hard to find that many people that dig the same music. | Sean | i was doing tons of stuttering as it goes, making beats that way as well ah most of my mates are within 20 square miles, there's quite a few of us and like, i dunno these are the people our music grew out of to begin with so theres tons of overlaps, we all go the same parties etc i mean our music is very north manchester (if thats a thing) | ||
1488 | Deepex | Ok, so I'm a huge fan of the seemingly bootleg 'rob Brown Ultra Rare Mix Tape' series, of which I have 13 different mp3s. We don't really know the true source of these mixes, and it's been said that there is no proof that they are even rob Brown's. But I feel that the track selections have a lot of resemblances to the cuts we heard on 12 hour radio broadcast. Legend has it (at least around here) is that these were taken from a Warp employees desk, were unmarked CD-Rs, and assumed to be created by rob Brown... I guess I'm just looking for the definitive answer... Are these your mixtapes I've been rocking, rob? What's the story of their leak? If they're not you, do you know anything about them? | Rob | yep, i don't know how though. i mean i have my suspicions but still no ones owned up. | ||
1489 | missingsense | you ever destroy tracks you're working on, see what happens? or are there always relative small steps involved in the process? | Sean | yeah sometimes, it's easy when you can save versions or if you already finished and it's all in the gear still | ||
1490 | John Ehrlichman | have you guys ever checked out the :zoviet*france: podcast 'A Duck in a Tree' ? It's pretty nice, one of the only drone/ambient/soundscape podcasts I know and it comes out weekly. They put a Gescom track in the newest episode | Rob | aaahhhh top. yeah these guys are fully | http://zovietfrance.podbean.com/ | |
1491 | Sean | oh i didn't know about this cheers man | ||||
1492 | subalpine | Really great to hear that you're fans of zoviet-france too -- I've been really into both Ae and z-f since about mid-1990s and was surprised when I heard later that you played a show together. (I saw the earlier answers about that) Curious if you have any favorites of 'classic' z-f work (say, Shadow Thief of the Sun and before) or any recollections of how you first got into them ? | Sean | we did 3 shows together iirc one of them was a joint bill where we overlapped our sets but the others were collab gigs (i might have that wrong, maybe 2 of them were overlapping, my brain is gone) i can def rem 3 gigs tho, one in newcastle, one in amsterdam, one in nottingham (i think) got into them in 94 cos of chantal, she played me collusion and what is not true and look into me, and i backtracked | ||
1493 | skyking | pls name my incoming casio gw-5510-1bjf | Rob | i name your CASIO 'GMT Atlantean' | ||
1494 | Your opinion on Leo Anibaldi's - Void? Thought it was a severely underrated album. With all that talk of Drexciya and other Detroit related techno/electro acts, do you rate Photodementia? Esp. this tune: - | Sean | yeah void's a wicked album never heard photodementia, sounding p good tho, i like the way the hats freeze it up | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzvLK_8e-FU | ||
1495 | ZombieLincoln666 | This fusion reactor's aesthetics remind me of some of your music: - | Sean | oh what shit that looks amazing | http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~acalongi/EE403/index_files/snakes.jpg | |
1496 | ||||||
1497 | It's called the Large Helical Device in Japan. It spins 100 million degree hydrogen plasma around. Here is a video: - | aw lush | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnMENJUwMQY | |||
1498 | This fusion reactor's aesthetics remind me of some of your music coincidentally, it also looks like a bigger version this unrelated dude's art: - | Rob | thats not bad actually that boothy | http://Seanbooth.com/gallery/ | ||
1499 | Herr Jan | Is there any possibility old Gescom records will be repressed? Would you agree to that? Do you still have the itch for making radio sometimes? I listen a lot to Intergalactic.fm for example and I just imagined the idea of Autechre playing regular radio mixes or something. Lastly, can you put me out of my misery by thinking those marble sounds on Krib was this: - | Sean | we'll try to get andy skam onto something mbe radio takes so much time up, but yeah it'll happen here n there if we can, we keep trying to set up something in our wider gang, skam, gescom, old skim crew, so its possible if we get organised, but yeah mbe when shits quieter no it wasn't those big muthers. blimey | https://www.wisdomproducts.com/images/products/legacy/large/71322.jpg | |
1500 | KunoMerit | your studio workspace: a.) neatly wired, racked, organized b.) whatever gear is currently in use wired up, stacked up, half is on the floor c.) a laptop computer | Rob | yeah pretty much ;) | ||
1501 | Sean | right now it's a) but it prob won't last and will eventual become b) i sometimes wish it was c) - and when i'm away from home i pretend that it is | ||||
1502 | triachus | Does knowing the size and shape of the venue where you perform influence the choice of sounds you will play? Describe in words what it will sound like if you were allowed to give a concert in the Large Hadron Collider: - (probably shit acoustics, but hey it's the thought that counts right?) | Rob | yeah it helps sometimes, but u never really know till u get there. like we got to holland once we played in a circular huge metal roofed gas tank, and the delay was epic, it forced us to change the tempo so we could actually hear any of it fuckin flashy | http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/lhc_11_20/l11_00000001.jpg | |
1503 | kroe | Sean you just did your 777th post, do you trip on numbers? | Sean | ah shit i missed it pictureofpatrickbatemanpointing.jpg | ||
1504 | KunoMerit | have you ever figured out exactly how inverse envelopes work? or the non-adsr envs on juno 1/2 etc? for whatever reason i never take the time to look this up. i think i would be a better person if i did. for years i've just moved the sliders and hoped it did what i wanted. | Sean | same here yeah | ||
1505 | nanoputian | Would you guys consider coming back to Belfast and/or Dublin? (I know it’s not Russia or the southern states but the closer the better!). I saw you here (Belfast) back on the Untilted tour, can’t remember much of it tho but saw you again in London for the Oversteps tour, won’t be forgetting that one, was incredible. Missed you down in Dublin last time and was going to ask how the sound was cos I had been to a show at the same venue a couple of months previous and it was really bad but I’ve just watched a youtube audience recording of it, and from what I can tell, it sounds pretty good, also I can hear tuinorizn towards the end of that set. Was that track something you had developed from the live set for the album or had you been working on it after the ‘main’ tour had finished? Favourite Kool Keith-related record? | Rob | yeah we really liked playing dublin, don't think its ever been shit not once. we'll be there, got a small gang of friends there too. very hospitable, always ending up at ppls houses all w/e after the sets. i think the sound was top. and it wasn't the tour - was a one off later so we got invited to a more fortunate timing like big w/e show at good venue ah u spot - bits of it yeah really fond of first U-magnetics. "Ultra's M'cs" | ||
1506 | Sean | was it at temple bar? played there a few times, i thought it was alright in soundcheck but that place changes a lot when it's full, so i dunno yeah it kind of grew out of the live set err matthew | ||||
1507 | Yea, Temple Bar Music Centre, now Button Factory. Yea, was at a Clark gig there a few months before you played, the sound was really waek (maybe that was just Clark tho..jk) Must've got a better set up or sound engineer! | ah yeah i seem to rem them having some teething trouble with a new setup, vaguely the guy was the same tho, at least i think he rem'd us or soemthing v hazy tho maybe rob knows | ||||
1508 | phudoshin | Well this is my recording from upstairs of the Temple Bar set.. sounds great to me: - Sean, rob.... PLEASE say high to my italian friind Guliamo who is mad for you guys and is "yay" ing all over this recording.... he'd fucking die... | hi guliamo, thanks for shouting all over this bootleg :D | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PK3IL-Pw_w | ||
1509 | triachus | what do you think about Epic Rap Battles Of History? | Sean | yeah i saw it a bit ago, i dunno, kind of crap i like this tho: | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njos57IJf-0 | |
1510 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_2e6fsKs40 | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6Au0xCg3PI | ||||
1511 | Captain Kittens | Not sure if my earlier question got missed or lost since I had to edit it. I was wondering if either of you are into the current state of house and its varying genre's? The deep house boom that seems to be going on right now? Keep up with any techno at all? and I know I am start to be a begger lol, I'll admit I get star struck haha, but can I get a name of my Oxygen 49? | Rob | yeah i should check it more, i get bits… techno too. but so many labels, hard to keep up. mates help your oxygen 49? is Stannage | ||
1512 | KunoMerit | i remember clearly when i decided that draft 7.30 was the best electronic LP ever. Was driving around all day helping some one move to a new apartment. was sitting at a stop light and ... it just hit me. no LP compares to this. most of the percussion on 7.30 sounds like it has a short delay/chorus to it. thick but in a novel way. | Rob | its pretty good space for it a car, some work really well some don't, they seem to have that V'd eq thing, ideally i should get an impulse response for mine to combat this. | ||
1513 | BaggerMcGuirk | Do you have any tips on programming a 202, or is it more of a happy accident machine? And a name for my Grados would be mighty fine. :) | Sean | yeah think of it like a game of dominoes once u got your head round the 12 -24 notelength thing its easy, and u can start doing weirder timings, just takes a bit of arithmetic :) and the cool thing is accent and portamento patterns (which obv u can't do on a 101) tbh it was all we had for about a year so we know it inside out it's worth learning imo, helps with max programming anyway | ||
1514 | Rob | no way its fully 'sit down with headphones and nothing else machine'. try to get into the 2d sequencing , gateandstep shit. Sean likes the special rez it has. grados, posh no? what an honour ;P your grados should be called Forest | ||||
1515 | KunoMerit | alas no noise source. always made me a little sad. and no noise for LFO. still wonderful machine. see - this is why i never make any tracks. worrying about the lack of noise on a 30 year old box. please tell me that you still have your 202 and would never, ever sell it. | Sean | ha yeah still got it | In response to rob | |
1516 | Rob | hahah i keep it within 24" from me just incase. | ||||
1517 | Ivan Ooze | will you get call of duty ghosts or battlefield 4? | Sean | i dunno prob neither | ||
1518 | KunoMerit | two days ago i spilt water all over my monomachine, octatrack and a4. once this thread is closed i'm gonna finally turn it back on and hope for the best. hopefully dried out by now. | Rob | FWIW - leave it as long as u possibly can, just incase its not quite dry, i rushed it once and failed. dry hot space would be good idea | ||
1519 | lumines | Can you come to Wales on your next tour? | Rob | hahah u can come to us, i'm sure it won't b far, like wales, but yeah | ||
1520 | jaderpansen | dear autechres, i'm asking you... FOR TRACK IDS: - specially the first one, please! (were mostly played during 2006 xltronic autechre marathon) oh yeah, prolly should have mentioned: i mashed a couple o tracks together into one file, yes. it's like 5 snippets in 3 minutes or so, if it's too bothersome i'd be reeeeeeealllyy grateful if you'd at least check out the first tune, ever since you played it on that radio programme i've been trying to track it down, in vain D: | Sean | ok so track 1: http://www.discogs.com/Aki-Tsuyuko-Ongakushitsu/master/58282 track 2: http://www.discogs.com/Fred-Frith-Guitar-Solos/master/54796 track 3: http://www.discogs.com/Simple-Minds-Promised-You-A-Miracle-Theme-For-Great-Cities/release/324282 track 4 is scorn i think but i can't rem which one (awep might know) track 5 i dunno, rob what's this? | https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/42153ebde00da4ae6f3c365cf234323320131107012338/28db1ea876de3c1c242941ff01aa726f20131107012338/6ff2c8 | |
1521 | jasondonervan | Here's a video I knocked up a while back using visuals from Prometheus 'Weyland Files' (not from the film, but pseudo-documentary DVD extra footage), soundtracked by Corc. Finally managed to get it uploaded somewhere tonight: - Tell us if you think it's a good fit | Rob | looks like u chose nice slow rotating section 2'30 mark. seems to open up as the melody gets a bit more duration. cheers | https://vimeo.com/78859687 | |
1522 | John Ehrlichman | kind of a fail but i'm going to try some less busy tracks for the next one. Does this type of thing make you cringe Sean or rob? (this why i was asking for the oversteps tempos, so feel free to scrap that idea, hah) | Sean | yeah a bit the first bit was alright tho- until known(1) changed key | https://soundcloud.com/fluorescentgrey/spl9-known1 | |
1523 | Rob | hhah - like i was saying the other day as we used to give each other bits of tracks, and always the keys would work. this isn't far off. i knew after all this u were up to getting bpms so u cld hammer some of these together. goes a bit awry tho when the tunes take a plunge - they split apart at once but yeah good start defo, more surprised | ||||
1524 | phudoshin | heres my video for an unoffical remix of Treale...... have you seen this? - | Rob | yeah cheeky cos u cld probably get away with that no one notice the mix until 1'30 ish, fly this. nice emotion built into the synth sounds, quite nice we like to get emotion IN the sound as well as the notes. | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWbTQb6mmbg | |
1525 | Sean | nah, p cool video tho is that taken from something? | ||||
1526 | Rob | yeah really like the burned out synths, i'll keep this on hand for a bit. yeah i rem that spot thingy viral wotsitty | ||||
1527 | phling | lol while we're on ae video spam, here's my rendition of a video using fol4: - fun in the woods with the vaseline.... we basically had the footage first, but then thought fol4 sounds matched it quite nicely.... editing is super chancey, tried to sync it up partially, but mostly it's kinda intuitive/chunky/luls..... gotta say it scared the shit out of some folks at the screening.... | Rob | vaseline, ah focus i expect yeah dope | https://vimeo.com/5171880 | |
1528 | Sean | looks good, will queue for later soz these vids are all holding me up looks very fitting from what i can see so far tho | ||||
1529 | radian | If you guys could Ask {Artist} Anything, who would you want to pose questions to? ...and if you aren't sick of dishing out names, can you name my circuit bent SK-1 | Sean | hmm i dunno yeah your sk-1 is now called ezekiel | ||
1530 | Piel | really like your remix of Medium - Celsius for 7 Hills Clash Rebuilt (Forgemasters track is great too) Anything you can tell us about that mix, or the artist? | Sean | yeah that guy was cool he used to work in warp in sheffield, his name escapes me tho | ||
1531 | Rob | dunno if i have any real details. they lived in sheffield same time as us, drew wasn't it Sean? had to keep it pretty dubby and brittle cos they new bass up in sheffield and they're good at the sport, esp. the small labels like 10 denk, always pretty characteristic of the sheffield scene as i knew it. | ||||
1532 | soma | What do you do for sinus problems? | Sean | steam mostly i'm feeling fucked tonight tho i might have to bow out soon | ||
1533 | Man steam is GREAT for congestion. Nothing better than standing in a hot shower and just letting it do its trick. Have you tried using a "nedipot" yet? Its pretty wild and makes you feel like you are drowning but will clear the nose and sinus out real quick. | nedipot yeah self-waterboarding lol nah i don't trust it man | ||||
1534 | triachus | No Sean, don't go! Get Better! Sean, no! Sean! SEAAN! SEAAAAN! - | Rob | aw my ribs! not agaaaaaiiiiinnnn | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0t0uCWjQ6Og | |
1535 | Sean | oh god I'm crying | ||||
1536 | SR4 | what do you think of Burt Reynold's 1987 opus, MALONE? | Sean | is that real? that pics amazing, his face ahaha | http://forum.watmm.com/uploads/profile/photo-341.jpg?_r=1383623151 | |
1537 | subalpine | I was really happy to see you give a shoutout to SoundEdit 16 a couple times and hear a couple tracks you've used it in -- what do you use now for similar editing purposes? I'd ask for a recommendation for editing software, but I'm not necessarily interested in the "best" -- just something with a similar feel that doesn't require going back to OS9. SE16 was my favorite software years ago and I'm thinking of resurrecting an old OS9-era powerbook so that I can use it again.. I've never been happy with Audacity or other newer editors considered to be similar. Any recommendations? | Sean | usually i use digital performer but if its something really simple like trimming starts and ends i'll use wave editor | ||
1538 | John Ehrlichman | interesting, so you guys are still pretty die-hard about DP (digital performer)? I tried it a few times and never quite got into it but I know a few producers (one: bloodysnowman) who swears by it. What specifically about digital Performer especially in the context of AE's music sets it apart from other serious daws like Logic, Cubase or Protools ? | i prefer the audio editing in DP logic has caught up a bit but DP still has the edge for me | |||
1539 | Rob | they all have hard grids, i mean that u have to get around consciously. but DP was the first for us to have no safety net as such. or a net thats superfine res, that u can't see it, u get to go really close, and it frees u up to get what u want musically, as opposed to being forced into the more common contemporary structures. its more classical in a way. but if u need stuff to lock up, its possible. just not in yr face all the time with the confines of the fashionable lazy way. oh and they were first to go sample accurate with midi. and automation. | ||||
1540 | naawRaybarn | parhelic triangle, those eerie chimes, is that a sample from something, like some kind of bell instrument or something else? in krib, is that screws or marbles droppin on the table or something else? just to give it another try, as it seems everyone is doing it: any chance of getting a name for my new kindle? | Sean | it's an instrument no, it's not marbles or screws your kindle is now called jimmy wales | ||
1541 | laloslalos | I think that your albums have different character, but for me Confield is special because is based on generative sequences, how did you avoid using random number generators? UnderBOAC has one of my favorite complex beats, did you program a polyrhytm sequencer in max? Are you still using the nord lead, yamaha fs1r, akai mpc 1000 on Exai/L-event? What do you think about ipad/lemur as a controller? | Sean | i dunno it's easy enough not to use random in max not that i'm against it any more (at least in principle - as long as it's done carefully noise can be really useful), but on confield we weren't doing that no that was all programmed in logic audio i think there's a bit of mpc on a couple of tracks but none of the rest never used lemur iPads are great but tbh i prefer something tactile for using with max, for now anyway | ||
1542 | pyramidpanes | mountains or volcanos? (personally i like volcanoes cos they explode & stuff but is there anything like the tranquility of mountains? gona b a tough 1) | Rob | yeah but u can hang out on a mountain with little else to worry about. | ||
1543 | Sean | nah man mountains there are things inside them | ||||
1544 | Rob | Sean if u go, wait till 808, kraftwerk would be proud. then u can go get some crashage pls | ||||
1545 | naawRaybarn | Rob Sean pls, come back to Norway on your next tour! | Rob | yeah norway, been lots of europe - just once up there so its highly likely we'll try to get there to make up for it. | ||
1546 | Shabax | Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like? | Rob | what even is this u need a special place for your most post ever. | ||
1547 | Zeffolia | Some people consider Second Peng the first Dubstep track, predating all others which are like early 2000 Do you agree or disagree with this assessment? | Rob | haha yeah ok. but half has been around forever | ||
1548 | Sean | nah not enough bass otherwise, yeah sure, we invented a genre, BIG DEAL i invent 15 genres a week j/k | ||||
1549 | vincentvc | was it a conscious decision that M62 doesn't even reach above 4khz? | Rob | dope. | ||
1550 | Sean | it does, his spectrum software has low res its saws so it goes all the way up | ||||
1551 | phudoshin | squarepusher judging fan remixes, BoC throwing international breadcrumbs around the place for their new album release and now the 'chre chatting like its no big thang. what the fuck is next....... RDJ popping over for a green tea with a memory stick of 6 new albums....? AAAARRRGGHHHH | Rob | yeah its a new age bruh | ||
1552 | IOS | "Say eight oh muthafuckin eight" - | Rob | yeah, got in a cab with this awesome one, yeah he's been solid amazing since 84. one of my all-times | http://youtu.be/MUFe1ZTSbnE | |
1553 | Sean | ok so i'm gonna have to split i just want to say cheers for asking so many mental questions i hope some of our answers were illuminating or at least amusing i really enjoyed it cos you asked us a lot of stuff that journos don't usually, i was hoping that would happen, watmm delivers and thanks for supporting us (really, i mean, well you know the score) oh and to everyone who thanked us for doing this, YOU'RE WELCOME cheers all and peace bye wattumz Sean | ||||
1554 | Rob | hey all yeah i should really bow out with my mAet. fully fully appreciate all yr kind words and…. nice to be having two way realtime not just lists, or pieces taken out of us.. sorry for any q' not dealt with (haha i don't want to see the first journo's face as they try to mine all this data u got this week). jasondonervan, mbe slow don on the googledoc ! no not serious. but besides the point. just a massive thank u the WATMM, joyrex. nice to meet u all too. rB) | ||||