Autechre Autechre interview

If only we could breath underwater...

http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4139467-dis-meets-autechre

Nice interview - some good questions and proper answers for a change.

  Quote

We’ve got a lot of vestigial stuff left over from fish.

 

DiS: Except we can’t breathe underwater…

 

SB: That would be fucking dope, wouldn’t it? I mean frogs have got it made, haven’t they?

What's so fucking great about being a frog? Maybe they get their pre-orders on the release date when ordering from bleep??

i believe this is the yourube video SB is talking about in the interview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRAQss4hGKw

it's uploaded by setanor, didn't he use to post on watmm or still is?

How come I can't see anything when I click the link? Fuuuu

that page didn't work for me in firefox too, explorer is ok with it

yes, page didn't work on chrome, but worked in explorer.

Ah, cheers. Except for the constant clicking noise of the advertisement re-loading, it was an enjoyable read! :)

PROTIP: Temporarily disable adblock in firefox for this page to work

  Quote

We don’t really push ourselves in any direction. What we like when we’re working is that moment of discovery. It’s not like we’re making this stuff; it’s almost like we’re finding it.

Favorite quote from interview ^^^

  Quote

There’s something about sound that you don’t get with visuals, which is that it surrounds you and it affects different parts of your body. Your ears get fed into the auditory cortex, but that’s also getting feeds from other parts of your body. The vibrations are getting picked up in your chest cavity and even in your arms and legs, depending upon what kind of frequencies are involved. So it’s a myth that you’re restricted to just hearing the range that your ears can pick up; your hearing range extends a lot lower than that, actually. That’s how fish hear, you see, and we’ve got a lot of vestigial stuff left over from fish.

ah, so what're you're saying Sean, is that listening to high resolution audio files through a system that is capable of high quality DAC is actually discernible to a listener?

fuck all you people who say that you can't tell the difference!

you've heard it from your God

that's not really what he's talking about.. he's talking about infrasound..

for which you need more a pretty decent p.a. than anything else

  On 4/1/2010 at 4:28 PM, TwiddleBot said:

that's not really what he's talking about.. he's talking about infrasound..

for which you need more a pretty decent p.a. than anything else

i was just joking

  On 4/1/2010 at 4:32 PM, oscillik said:

  On 4/1/2010 at 4:28 PM, TwiddleBot said:

that's not really what he's talking about.. he's talking about infrasound..

for which you need more a pretty decent p.a. than anything else

i was just joking

guess i'm still learning the ropes here

the round of oversteps interviews have been pretty cool. ae dudes seem more relaxed.

  On 4/1/2010 at 4:28 PM, TwiddleBot said:

that's not really what he's talking about.. he's talking about infrasound..

for which you need more a pretty decent p.a. than anything else

Well I'm sure to an extent this is true but at the same time just as you can feel bass vibrations in a car or with a good computer sub, I'm sure there are inaudible frequencies that you can feel with either of these setups as opposed to a decent p.a. Obviously the P.a. will be better and more revealing but still, unless you have no tactile bass coming out of your soundsystem then I would be inclined to say that there are some frequencies you hear through your chest or wherever else feels the vibrations.

Jus' sayin'

so, this raises an important question. wtf songs use elements of machine code?

  On 4/1/2010 at 4:56 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

  On 4/1/2010 at 4:28 PM, TwiddleBot said:

that's not really what he's talking about.. he's talking about infrasound..

for which you need more a pretty decent p.a. than anything else

Well I'm sure to an extent this is true but at the same time just as you can feel bass vibrations in a car or with a good computer sub, I'm sure there are inaudible frequencies that you can feel with either of these setups as opposed to a decent p.a. Obviously the P.a. will be better and more revealing but still, unless you have no tactile bass coming out of your soundsystem then I would be inclined to say that there are some frequencies you hear through your chest or wherever else feels the vibrations.

 

Jus' sayin'

there is some actual research on the effects of infrasonic frequencies on humans, i think there's a wikipedia page on it somewheres, it's a fairly interesting read if you can find it.

as far as reproduction, a decent car stereo for sure.. i remember cranking track 1 on peel sessions 2 on my friend's alpine subs (custom, large box) and the bassline on that track goes down to about 23 hz at some points (this is back in the day when i was analyzing the bejeezus out of any electronic production i came across).. and we could still pick it up. it felt more like the air pressure in the car changed. but that box was HUGE. you need a larger box to accurately reproduce bass frequencies. anyway it depends on gear. some amps won't reproduce infrasonic frequencies.. and a lot of computer subs AFAIK tend to just resonate at a specific frequency and don't really go all that low... they're WAAY too tiny

for really nice, accurate infrasonic basically you need THIS: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/07/worlds_largest_subwoofer.html

  On 4/1/2010 at 5:36 PM, theSun said:

so, this raises an important question. wtf songs use elements of machine code?

From the sound of the Autechre interviews, I'm not sure THEY even know. If I had to guess for oversteps I would say pt2ph8 and krYlon, although I'm sure there's a few others. It's difficult to tell if some of them are sequenced or generated, particularly ilanders, qplay, treale(melodies) and st epreo. Dunno man. Your guess is as good as mine.

It gets to the point where I don't really want to know how they make their tracks. I like knowing what pieces of kit they've got and all but I'm glad they basically never go "oh, programmed that on me 909, recorded it to the pute, hacked it up with Pluggo, routed it to the filterbank in the Virus etc etc"

That sort of thing would be like pulling the curtain away from the magic act. Wouldn't make the tracks any less affecting but I like hearing an ae track and thinking "how the bloody hell did they manage that then" and it's cool that we never really know for sure.

  On 4/1/2010 at 6:24 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

  On 4/1/2010 at 5:36 PM, theSun said:

so, this raises an important question. wtf songs use elements of machine code?

From the sound of the Autechre interviews, I'm not sure THEY even know. If I had to guess for oversteps I would say pt2ph8 and krYlon, although I'm sure there's a few others. It's difficult to tell if some of them are sequenced or generated, particularly ilanders, qplay, treale(melodies) and st epreo. Dunno man. Your guess is as good as mine.

i don't know how you can even guess. i'd just like to know how sound design works on that level, and what programs do they use to run their machine code? i'm actually a programmer but i got my degree after 1990 so i haven't really done any work with assemblers.

  On 4/1/2010 at 6:42 PM, theSun said:

  On 4/1/2010 at 6:24 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

  On 4/1/2010 at 5:36 PM, theSun said:

so, this raises an important question. wtf songs use elements of machine code?

From the sound of the Autechre interviews, I'm not sure THEY even know. If I had to guess for oversteps I would say pt2ph8 and krYlon, although I'm sure there's a few others. It's difficult to tell if some of them are sequenced or generated, particularly ilanders, qplay, treale(melodies) and st epreo. Dunno man. Your guess is as good as mine.

 

i don't know how you can even guess. i'd just like to know how sound design works on that level, and what programs do they use to run their machine code? i'm actually a programmer but i got my degree after 1990 so i haven't really done any work with assemblers.

you don't use any kind of program to run machine code...the whole point of assembler is that it is code that just runs on the machine.

you write code in assembler for an Atari ST, you just need to get it to execute (i would assume by making the code executable and putting it on a floppy, then switching the ST on).

on a side note, as much as i like hearing about little tidbits (like how they did the drums on Pen Expers), i agree that knowing the ins and outs of every track is looking behind the curtain a bit too much.

  On 4/1/2010 at 6:42 PM, theSun said:

  On 4/1/2010 at 6:24 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

  On 4/1/2010 at 5:36 PM, theSun said:

so, this raises an important question. wtf songs use elements of machine code?

From the sound of the Autechre interviews, I'm not sure THEY even know. If I had to guess for oversteps I would say pt2ph8 and krYlon, although I'm sure there's a few others. It's difficult to tell if some of them are sequenced or generated, particularly ilanders, qplay, treale(melodies) and st epreo. Dunno man. Your guess is as good as mine.

 

i don't know how you can even guess. i'd just like to know how sound design works on that level, and what programs do they use to run their machine code? i'm actually a programmer but i got my degree after 1990 so i haven't really done any work with assemblers.

I'm guessing based on the apparent randomness of the tracks. It is my understanding that max-msp and other generative music creation methods can result in very random-sounding stuff even though there is a very strict algorithm underlaying it all. pt2ph8 and krYlon are the two randomest sounding tracks so they would be my best guesses but algorithms can also be used to make very basic sounding music so I doubt we'll ever know for sure.

yeah but i would imagine writing an extensive patch in machine code would be... counter-productive? unless there's something i'm missing