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

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:32 PM, DorkingtonPugsly said:

A few questions here.

 

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 :< )

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

Sean, thank you very much for answering my question.

So, do you enjoy In Sides by Orbital? And are you in contact with the guys? Why do you think they have compromised their music so much with later releases (after Middle of Nowhere)? Are they burnout? I mean, after In Sides they have full right to be burnout in my opinion but it is a shame a bit.

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:33 PM, triachus said:

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?

yeah i kind of wish this was real

and i don't at the same time

Has Ae done any recent remixes? Anything that will see a release?

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

You may have answered this before, but of what gear does your home listening environment consist? Have you put a lot of time and effort into creating an optimal listening area?

oh, and thanks for answer my earlier question.

look northface

kills me every time

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:38 PM, Herr Jan said:

Just want to give a massive thanks to AE for all the music over the years. Very cool to do this!

 

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?

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

did rdj really go into your studio and take your sample tapes and mix them up or something and you got mad lol

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:38 PM, phling said:

 

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:31 PM, Ivan Ooze said:

after 20 years of insane music crafting, is this the best videoclip for newbound?

 

 

yes, 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?

 

but we are making dance music

sorry if this has already been asked (still reading the thread but wanted to get this question out!)..

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?

  On 11/3/2013 at 1:34 AM, Sean Ae said:

 

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:38 PM, phling said:

 

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:31 PM, Ivan Ooze said:

after 20 years of insane music crafting, is this the best videoclip for newbound?

 

 

yes, 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?

 

 

but we are making dance music

 

fucking lll

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:40 PM, korona15 said:

thanks for answering all these questions! this is great.

 

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?

nah i just got old tunes vols one and two

and box maxima later

brilliant tho, still cane them

This is awesome, thanks for doing this guys! I have a few questions.

- In terms of structuring your tracks, do you ever sit down and work out how the sounds will progress or is it more a make-it-up-as-you-go type of scenario? Some of your tracks seem like they can't have been made without an impossible ability to see the whole picture. Surripere definitely strikes me as one where you almost had to have known where it was going before you started. I'm assuming it's a more iterative process but can you elaborate on specifics of how you decide what elements of a track will be recurring later on, and what elements later in the track that you want to obfuscate and hide earlier on for the astute listener?

- It seems like many of your tracks contain ghostly elements of more conventional or straightforward tracks buried away below layers of sound. What fraction of your tracks have been completely re-worked from the original version with only trace amounts of the original remaining? Feel free to list a few.

- Is there any trick to how you guys imply so much in your music without actually showing it? Many of your tracks have implied rhythms or melodies that I'm sure most fans would all be able to agree upon, yet never occur in their entirety within the tracks themselves. Is that a conscious design decision?

- Are we going to be hearing more of the only slightly melodic noise synths like those used in Flep and Olsa for n in the future? That's such a fucking cool aesthetic.

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:51 PM, rekosn said:

hello ae!

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?

 

Thanks

sorry we signed an NDA

  On 11/3/2013 at 1:36 AM, Ivan Ooze said:

 

  On 11/3/2013 at 1:34 AM, Sean Ae said:

 

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:38 PM, phling said:

 

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:31 PM, Ivan Ooze said:

after 20 years of insane music crafting, is this the best videoclip for newbound?

 

yes, 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?

 

but we are making dance music

 

fucking lll

 

most sounds on exai are ugly, the plonks, the squeeks, the farts, the vaginal discharges....

yet after a half year it sounds amazing, how does it work??

  On 11/2/2013 at 11:58 PM, Herr Jan said:

Btw, 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.

that sounds ace

is there a recording?

  On 11/3/2013 at 12:00 AM, wabby said:

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?

ask someone who makes idm

  On 11/3/2013 at 1:43 AM, Sean Ae said:

ask someone who makes idm

do you think using real instruments would work on an autechre track?

  On 11/3/2013 at 1:44 AM, paranerd said:

 

  On 11/3/2013 at 1:43 AM, Sean Ae said:

ask someone who makes idm

 

*oh no he din't*

  On 11/3/2013 at 12:08 AM, catchpazuzu said:

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?

computers are hardware, just highly configurable

nah we're not pioneers of anything, we're just using stuff that's around us

Machinedrum once tweeted:

  Quote

 

 

ugg seriously why do i ever read watmm other than to send myself in a downward spiral

We don't make you feel like that, do we?

  On 11/3/2013 at 12:09 AM, Zeffolia said:

Do you guys like Osla for n alot? I don't understand how it fits into L-event at all

it's like when there's a word in a sentence that you don't recognise

  On 11/3/2013 at 1:43 AM, Sean Ae said:

 

  On 11/3/2013 at 12:00 AM, wabby said:

What are the elements of IDM?

 

ask someone who makes idm

 

Oh Sean thank you for this! Thank you!

I hope this is the beginning of the end of IDM-ism. ism. ism