The true meaning of the Ae insignia

Chabraendeky · February 16, 2020

***prepare for irony***

The name Autechre still puzzles fans. It's the shape-shifting meaninglessness, the opennes to pronounciation that keeps us asking for insight on it. There are apokryphal theories, that it's an abbreviation for 'audio technical research', wich it clearly isn't.

Why? Because itself get's abbreviated into the most simplistic form of Ae. An abbreviation doesn't used to be abbreviated itself, doesn't it?

This abbreviation is there since day one: the release of the debut album Incunabula, boldly stated in huge letters on the cover. Ae represents almost as clear their music, as the full name.

But there are some riddles around it that raise interesnting questions. Let's look into them!

Ae. Ist this one sound, or two? Or perhaps it's not to be pronounced at all?

A - it's a sound that is not present in the name 'Autechre'. The first sound in the name is an 'oh', and not an 'ah' sound. That's something that have all pronunciation of the name common. Doesn't seem that odd? A band, who always talk about the insufficienty of the visuals, who even made a song titled 'Stop look, listen", has something in their logo that doesn't represent their name sonically? That 'A' is nothing more, that just the visual representation of the first letter of their name. But not the sound of it.

And it get's weirder: I would argue, that's the case with the second letter also.

You could interpret the "E" as standing for "Echre", like in an abreviation for a double word Aut-Echre" ("aut" for autos "self" in greek, like in autarchy "self-government", but what is "echre??). I think we all can agree that this explanation seems not a little bit odd. I would put it aside, we might find some better.

Far more stringent is the reasoning, that this "E" stands for the e at the and of the written name 'Autechre'. And you guess what? That's the only other letter in the name that is as sound not present in the common pronunciation of 'Autechre'.

The first sound is spoken most commonly as a diphtong, like "ou" (or 'aw' if you like), wich has a short but distinct 'u' sound in it. And I think there is no arguing, that the letters 't' 'e' 'ch' and 'r' are in all pronunciations always present.

But the last 'e' is only present in the noob and most oftenly corrected pronunciation af 'aw-tek-ree'. The most agreed pronunciation(s) doesn't contain a second 'e' or 'eh' sound.

The band Autechre, a band who shuts down all visual perception at their concerts and leave us with the sound only, is represented visually with an insignia that is only visually there in their name but not sonically.

The separation of visual and sonic is complete. If you see "Ae" you don't have to say it. You just have to recognize it. Their vast sound can't be represented with the sounds of language, only with visual silence.

Edited February 16, 2020 by Chabraendeky
fuckin typos and grammar