Autechre

All Music Guide:

Like Aphex Twin, Autechre were about as close to being experimental techno superstars as the tenets of their genre and the limitations of their audience allowed. Through a series of full-length works and a smattering of EPs on Warp, Clear, and their own Skam label, Autechre consistently garnered the praise of press and public alike. Unlike many of their more club-bound colleagues, however, Autechre's Sean Booth and Rob Brown had roots planted firmly in American electro, and though the more mood-based, sharply digital texture of their update seemed to speak otherwise, it was through early 12"s like Egyptian Lover's "Egypt, Egypt," Grandmaster Flash's "Scorpio," and "Pretty" Tony Butler's "Get Some" that their combined aesthetic began to form.

Booth and Brown met through a mutual friend, trading junked-up pause-button mixtapes of their favorite singles back and forth. Happening onto some bargain basement analog gear through questionable circumstances, the pair began experimenting with their own music before they were out of high school. After some disastrous experiences with a few small labels, the pair sent a tape off to Warp Records, whose early releases by Sweet Exorcist, Nightmares on Wax, and B12 were announcing a new age in U.K.-based techno (and one in which Autechre would become a key component). Releasing a handful of early singles through the label, Autechre's first stabs were collected on their debut full-length, Incunabula, as well as the 10" box set remix EP Basscadet.

Subsequent albums reached a wider audience through stateside reissue, first on Wax Trax!/TVT, later on Nothing (the label managed by Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor), and finally through a stateside branch of Warp. Although stylistically rooted, affectations for the ponderous extend beyond their name and track titles ("C/Pach," "Bronchusevenmx24"), with the basic premise of their approach being music without a whole lot of stylistic baggage but plenty of DSP'ed-to-death hyper-programming. Later albums Untilted (2005), Quaristice (2008), Oversteps (2010), Move of Ten (2010), and the two-hour Exai (2013) were not as groundbreaking, yet Autechre easily retained one of the most distinctive sounds in the world of electronica.

In addition to Autechre, Booth and Brown released material as Gescom on their own Skam imprint and through the Clear label, most notably the Sounds of Machines Our Parents Used EP on the latter. The group also provided a number of memorable remixes (oftentimes more memorable than the original material) for artists including Palmskin Productions, Slowly, Mike Ink, DJ Food, Scorn, Skinny Puppy, Tortoise, Phoenecia, Various Artists, the Black Dog, Apparat, and the Bug.

Wikipedia:

Autechre are an English electronic music duo consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth, both natives of Rochdale, Greater Manchester. Formed in 1987, they are one of the most prominent acts signed to Warp Records, a label known for its pioneering electronic music and through which all Autechre albums have been released.

While heavily associated with IDM (Intelligent Dance Music), Booth and Brown are ambivalent about relating their sound to established genres. Their music has exhibited a gradual shift in aesthetic throughout their career, from their earlier work with clear roots in techno, electro and hip hop, to later albums that are often considered experimental in nature, featuring complex patterns of rhythm and subdued melodies.

Autechre have also recorded under various pseudonyms. One of the duo's earliest recordings was a 12" under the alias Lego Feet, released in 1991 on Skam Records. The majority of releases by the mysterious "umbrella project" Gescom, most of them on Skam, have been attributed to Booth and Brown, among other artists.

Pronunciation [edit]

Booth and Brown pronounce the name Autechre with a Rochdale accent (/ɔːˈɛər/ aw-TEK-ər). However, they have explained that the name can be pronounced in any way one sees fit. Booth explains: "The first two letters were intentional, because there was an 'au' sound in the track, and the rest of the letters were bashed randomly on the keyboard. We had this track title for ages, and we had written it on a cassette, with some graphics. It looked good, and we began using it as our name."

History [edit]

Early years (1987–1992) [edit]

Brown and Booth met through Manchester's graffiti scene in 1987 when they both lived in Rochdale. Heavily influenced by electro and hip hop, they began trading mixtapes and then creating their own compositions while collecting a handful of cheap equipment, most notably a Casio SK-1 sampler and a Roland TR-606 drum machine. Their first release was Lego Feet, a 12" recorded under an alias of the same name brought out by Manchester's Skam Records. Their first release as Autechre was the single "Cavity Job" in 1991, released on Hardcore Records. Two more tracks appeared during the following year, under the now finalised Autechre name, on the Warp Records compilation Artificial Intelligence, part of the series of the same name. The compilation contained "The Egg", later reworked for their first full length release under the title "Eggshell".

Incunabula and Amber (1993–1994) [edit]

In 1993 Warp released their debut album, Incunabula, which became a surprise success, reaching the top of the UK Indie Chart. The album had a cool, calculated feel, with clear techno and electro roots, but also showed hints of the rhythmic flourishes and tuned percussion that would later become an important feature of their work. An EP of remixes of Incunabula's "Basscadet" was released the following year, with a video for the song created by Jess Scott-Hunter. 1994 also saw the release of Amber, an album featuring a more ambient, less percussive approach than their debut.

The Anti EP was released shortly before Amber and is as yet the only Autechre release to have an explicit purpose: it was a protest against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which would prohibit raves, defined as any gathering of nine or more people where rave music is played. Rave music was defined as music which "includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats". The record came wrapped in a seal, on which was printed a legal warning: "Flutter has been programmed in such a way that no bars contain identical beats and can therefore be played at both forty five and thirty three revolutions under the proposed new law. However we advise DJs to have a lawyer and musicologist present at all times to confirm the non repetitive nature of the music in the event of police harassment."

Tri Repetae, Chiastic Slide, and LP5 (1995–1999) [edit]

1995 saw the release of Tri Repetae, their third album, as well as the EPs Anvil Vapre and Garbage. Featuring a stark monochrome cover designed by The Designers Republic, with whom Autechre have long held a close association, Tri Repetae was perhaps their most sparse and deliberately cold work yet, exhibiting stripped down mechanical beats and an increasingly more subtle use of synthesizers. Often considered a classic of mid-1990s electronic music, Tri Repetae and its associated EPs were combined into a two disc set entitled Tri Repetae++, which was released in the United States. An official promotional video was created for "Second Bad Vilbel" from Anvil Vapre by English visual artist Chris Cunningham (his first). The "Second Bad Vilbel" video featured rapidly cut shots of industrial machinery and robotic movement, synchronized with the music. Cunningham later re-edited the video in 2002, following his disappointment with the original: "It was intended to be completely abstract but it didn't quite work out that way". A two track vinyl-only EP entitled We R Are Why, similar in style to Tri Repetae, was available to buy during certain concerts and via mail order during 1996.

Autechre released three records in 1997: the full length Chiastic Slide, and the EPs Envane and Cichlisuite. The latter EP (pronounced as "sickly sweet") consists, as its title suggests, of five remixed versions of "Cichli" from Chiastic Slide, though they sound remarkably distant from the industrial-influenced, loop-heavy style of the original source. Containing four tracks, each around the eight-minute mark, Envane is a coherent EP that showcases a strong hip hop influence, featuring a clear vocal sample (taken from "No Awareness" on Dr. Octagonecologyst) and scratching on its opening track, "Goz Quarter". Radio Mix was also released in 1997. A rare CD-only promotional recording, it contains an hour long DJ mix of other artists' tracks, some of them remixed by Autechre, as well as a short interview edited sometimes to the point of incomprehensibility.

An untitled record (typically known as LP5 or simply Autechre) followed in 1998, continuing the duo's path into further technical precision, experimentation, and what some feel to be audio abstraction. It has been seen as a transitional work, with Brown commenting in 2005 that "a lot of people have cited it as a classic Autechre album because it bridges the gap between the guys who liked our old stuff and the guys who got propelled on to our new stuff."

1999 saw the release of their first Peel session EP, consisting of three tracks broadcast on John Peel's show for BBC Radio 1 in October 1995, as well as a vinyl-only limited edition promotional EP entitled Splitrmx12. 1999 also saw EP7, which is classed by the group as an EP despite being over an hour in length.

Confield, Draft 7.30, and Untilted (2000–2007) [edit]

The new millennium brought about a drastic change in Autechre's style, initially indicated by the heavily generative EP7. Demonstrated by Confield (2001) and Draft 7.30 (2003), as well as the Gantz Graf EP (2002), listeners could hear Autechre's move into a musical territory built upon almost unrestrained rhythm backed by sparse melodies buried further back in the mix than ever before. Although still strongly connected to the IDM genre tag, tracks like Confield's closer "Lentic Catachresis" seem to momentarily sever all ties the duo have with electronic dance music, even in its broadest sense. In a similarly chaotic fashion, the title track from Gantz Graf inspired an iconic video by British designer Alex Rutterford, featuring an object (or an agglomeration of objects) synchronized to the music as it morphs, pulsates, shakes, and finally dissolves. Rutterford, who had previously created an unofficial video for the Tri Repetae track "Eutow" as part of the Channel 4 music programme Lo-Fi in 2001, claimed the idea for the "Gantz Graf" video came during one of his LSD trips. The second Autechre Peel session EP was also released in 2002, containing four tracks broadcast in 1999, named by John Peel himself. Autechre released two collaborative albums with Andrew M. McKenzie's Hafler Trio collective during the following three years (see collaborations).

The reactions by both professional critics and fans to the release of Confield were mixed, as perhaps expected, though generally positive. Some publishers even went so far as to say it exhibits the duo at "the top of their game" and "cements Autechre's name in the pantheon of sonic visionaries", as well as praising its intricate, ambitious and unsettling nature. According to Sean Booth, "most of Confield came out of experiments with Max that weren't really applicable in a club environment." In contrast, 2003's Draft 7.30 was seen by some as a relatively easier record to grasp, combining Confield's sonic abstraction and ambition with splintered, harder beats that recall more the duo's interest in techno and hip hop, such as in the almost glitch hop rhythm of "V-Proc". Booth stated in an interview around the release of Draft 7.30 that "[rhythm] doesn't seem to limit us in the way it did when we first started. Now I think we just get it, we're totally fluent in it and can be more expressive."

Untilted (a play on the word "untitled"), the duo's eighth album, was released in 2005. It roughly continued the sound of their previous two LPs, though featured compositions that mutated greatly during their duration, typically alternating between passages of ambience and heavily processed, precise beats, such as on "Ipacial Section". Its final track, "Sublimit", is at almost sixteen minutes Autechre's longest composition to feature on any of their albums. The release of Untilted was followed by a two-month tour that took the group around Europe, America and Japan, but withdrew them from studio work for an unusual length of time. The outcome of this, coupled with a forced change in studio setup, was a gap of three years between releases, longer than ever before.

Quaristice, Oversteps, and Exai (2008–2013) [edit]

Their ninth album, Quaristice, was released in early 2008. In contrast to Untilted, it is made up of twenty tracks, more than any other Autechre release, each typically around 2–5 minutes in length. The download-only Quaristice.Quadrange.ep.ae EP that accompanies it (as well as the Versions bonus disc and three tracks released exclusively through the Japanese iTunes Store) brings the total length of music released during their Quaristice era to over five hours. Among this is the hour-long, extremely minimal "Perlence subrange 6-36" that closes the EP. The sound of Quaristice, while unusually erratic, is arguably highly representative of Autechre as a whole: it contains washes of ambience, and heavily processed and textured sound design, together with beats both typical of IDM and resembling the techno and hip hop that influenced the duo in their early days. Each track on Quaristice was edited down from lengthy improvised sessions between Booth and Brown, some of which were released in longer versions on Quaristice. Quadrange.ep.ae. Although Sean Booth has stated that the FLAC release of Quaristice is the actual product, the album was also released by Warp Records as a double LP and a single CD as well as an elaborate two CD edition by Warp Records. Limited to only 1000 copies, and containing both the regular album and Quaristice (Versions), this special edition was packaged in a photo-etched steel case. It sold out within 12 hours of being announced.

On 13 January 2010, Warp Records announced Oversteps, Autechre's tenth album. Originally slated to be released in March, it was released a month early in digital form on Bleep.com to those who preordered it; the CD and deluxe vinyl editions were released on 22 March 2010. A two-month European tour occurred in support of the album, followed by limited shows in Japan and Australia, the latter breaking a 15 year absence. The sound of Oversteps, as with Quaristice, is greatly eclectic, though it is perhaps their most noticeably ambient release since 1994's Amber. Autechre then compiled a mix for the magazine FACT, released in February of the same year, that consisted of tracks by artists as diverse as J Dilla and Necrophagist. On 25 May 2010, Warp Records announced the ten track Move of Ten, an EP by the duo in conjunction with the release of Oversteps. The digipack CD and the two 12" vinyl version, as well as a high quality download, was released on 12 July 2010.

In April 2011 a boxset of EPs entitled EPs 1991 - 2002 (excluding Move of Ten) was released, with artwork from the Designers Republic. It includes a CD copy of their debut EP, Cavity Job, the first time it has been released on the format. In 2011 as part of Warp's 'Made In Japan' relief concert for the victims of the 2011 Sendai Earthquake, an eleven-minute piece was released entitled '6852', possibly believed to be part of a previous live recording.

The eleventh studio album entitled Exai was released on 5 March 2013, having been available for download from the official website as of Valentine's Day, February 14, 2013.

Influences [edit]

A wide variety of influences have been noted as discernible in Autechre's music. The duo's roots in tagging, early hip-hop and electro music, and b-boy culture in general are still evident, with many reviews noting hip-hop rhythms—sometimes heavily obscured or processed, and sometimes explicit even in later work. All of Autechre's live webcasts have featured large amounts of early hip-hop and electro. In a review of Oversteps, The Wire noted "Treale" as being "a reminder of Booth and Brown's musical apprenticeship as teenage B-boys". As Autechre's music and studio setup progressed, reviews started to note influences from farther afield; experiments in algorithmic and generative synthesis, musique concrète, and FM synthesis drew comparisons with Iannis Xenakis and Bernard Parmegiani from critics such as Paul Morley. Autechre also cite Coil as a major influence, with an unfinished collaboration of unknown completeness occurring around the release of LP5 and EP7.

Methods [edit]

Autechre use many different digital synths and a few analog synths in their production, as well as analog and digital drum machines, mixers, effects units and samplers. They have also made extensive use of a variety of computer based sequencers, softsynths, and other applications as a means of controlling those synths and processing the synthesized sounds. Much of the hardware and software they use has been customized by the band themselves. Autechre have also experimented in depth with development environments such as Max/MSP (invented by software pioneer Miller Puckette), and Kyma, amongst others, from 1997 onwards, though it is unclear which are still in use. From 2005 until 2009, they have used the Elektron Machinedrum and Monomachine, alongside Akai MPC and Nord Modular in their live performances, although the group appear to have reverted to a software setup for the tour related to Oversteps. It has also been rumoured that Autechre have used military equipment in their work. In 2008, Sean Booth reported that if he were locked in a cell for a year with only one piece of software and one piece of hardware, he'd "probably take a copy of Digital Performer and an AKG C 1000 microphone. " Other machines that Autechre have repeatedly mentioned in interviews are appreciated for their interface and aesthetics as much as their sound, including the Roland TR-606 and MC-202, and the Nord Lead.

Other activities [edit]

Collaborations, remixes and covers [edit]

Both Booth and Brown are known to have been heavily involved with the majority of releases by the mysterious Gescom collective, although Booth admitted in an interview that around 20-30 musicians overall are connected with what he describes as an "umbrella project". Three elaborately packaged albums (Ƴo & h³æ, Æo³ & ³hæ, and ha³oe & ah³eo) have been made by Autechre in collaboration with Andrew M. McKenzie's ongoing Hafler Trio project. These albums are significantly more minimal than any other Autechre release, featuring dense, claustrophobic and noisy drones. A track called "Elephant Gear", credited to both Autechre and Canadian breakcore musician Venetian Snares under the alias AEVSVS, was released on a compilation in tribute to Elektron co-founder Daniel Hansson, who died in a car accident. Autechre have collaborated with several artists for live performances, including Zoviet France, Fennesz and Roedelius 3. Telepathics Meh In-Sect Connection, an album by Sean Booth in collaboration with Mika Vainio of Pan Sonic and Kouhei Matsunaga, was released in early 2010.

In 2009 they contributed a cover of an LFO song to the Warp20 (Recreated) compilation, as well as having their song "Tilapia" covered by John Callaghan.

The compilation CD The Only Blip Hop Record You Will Ever Need, Vol.1, issued in 2002 by David Byrne's Luaka Bop Records, contains a cover version of "gnit" performed by Marie + Scratch. It is performed using only human voice samples.

Autechre helped initiate the All Tomorrow's Parties music festival in 2000, and curated the 2003 festival.

Radio [edit]

Autechre have been involved with radio since their early days, originally spinning for IBC Radio, a Manchester pirate radio station in 1991, where they had their own show playing Belgian techno alongside their own demos. Later they would appear as part of Gescom for their weekly "Disengage" show on Manchester's Kiss FM.

Webcasts [edit]

Autechre have streamed exceptionally long live DJ mixes as webcasts to coincide with the release of four albums so far:

Titles and artwork [edit]

Autechre album and track titles often follow a similar pattern, combining obscure references, acronyms, portmanteau words, unpredictable grammar, and deliberate misspellings. Although their first two albums consisted mainly of track titles with easily recognisable words, such as "Bike" from Incunabula and "Glitch" from Amber, this style morphed gradually, resulting in titles like Quaristice's "90101-5l-l" and "fwzE". However, certain track names, such as "Theme of Sudden Roundabout" from Draft 7.30 (which references a landmark in their hometown of Rochdale), offer listeners some degree of clarity.

Their release titles, whether intentionally or not, seem to sometimes reference its placement in the Autechre discography:

Autechre, as with a significant number of Warp Records artists, have long maintained a strong link with Sheffield-based graphic design company The Designers Republic. As a result, Autechre's artwork often echoes the distinctly modern, sharp, occasionally minimal style the studio is renowned for. While often digital and abstract in nature, certain covers feature recognisable themes and imagery, such as Turkey's Cappadocia rock formations on Amber, the circle of black paint on Oversteps, possibly inspired by Kazimir Malevich's Black Circle, and the edited photograph of a Frank Lloyd Wright's building Fallingwater on Envane. With the rise of digital downloads as a popular format, Autechre have grasped the chance to produce subtly different artwork for each track on their two most recent albums: all tracks on Quaristice have their own minimal blue, black and white composition of squares; and Oversteps features fourteen black painted circles, one for each of its tracks.

Critical reception [edit]

Autechre's music has attracted diverse reactions. Though generally hailed, praise is not universal even within the coterie of artists normally labelled IDM: Aphex Twin, for example, claims that Squarepusher "doesn't like Autechre". However, Squarepusher has indicated he respects Autechre, and calls their music "smart". Opinion has also been divided on the specific qualities of the duo's music. Of LP5, for example, reviewers said both that "all the songs are cut from the same sonic cloth" and that it was "one of their most diverse ... works to date".

Autechre are well aware of the incongruous reactions their work elicits, saying that descriptions of their music "usually run contrary to each other" and that "every time we have an album out, we get conflicting reports". As with many artists, they have themselves raised questions about their earlier work; Rob Brown mentioned that Incunabula and Amber retrospectively sounded "cheesy" in a 2008 interview with Pitchfork Media prior to the release of Quaristice.