RŠ INTERVJU Autechre, Radio Student FM89.3, November 2016

Taken from https://radiostudent.si/glasba/r%C5%A1-intervju/autechre, on November 4th, 2016. Interviewer: Goran Kompoš (GK), interviewing Sean Booth (SB) and Rob Brown (RB). Transcription by EnergyIsMassiveLight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n6NDXUarQQ

Transcript

Jutri se v Kino Šiška po dobrih šestih letih vrača cenjeni britanski elektronski dvojec Autechre, ki je skupaj z Aphex Twinom in Squarepusherjem, ki ga bomo v Šiški videli decembra, sredi devetdesetih na noge postavil glasbene smernice založbe Warp. V intervjuju, ki smo ga z njima opravili pred dobro uro, sta spregovorila tudi o tem kje se vidita znotraj sodobne elektronske glasbe, pa o povsem novem setu, ki je bojda nastajal tudi s Kinom Šiška v mislih in še čem...

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GK: You're currently on a tour. How is the tour going?

SB: It's going really well, we've had some great reactions. Interesting because we're playing slightly different kinda music since the last few tours that we've done, but people seem to really like it, we've been getting great reactions.

GK: How is it different to previous times?

SB: It's a little bit slower, and a little bit more focused on sounds and beats.

GK: So it's nothing like those lives sets you released last year?

SB: That's right. I think we basically come to the end of the line with that particular set. When we came to making a new one, we wanted it to be quite different to that.

GK: Was it somehow inspired with the last album that, I don't know how is it pronounced, is it elseq?

SB: Yeah a little maybe. I mean, elseq was kind of made around the same time as the last live set, so those tracks were tracks we didn't use in the live set that we just recorded in the studio. But they were made using the same setup system as the (?) AE_LIVE sets. It's kinda related to that more than it is to the new stuff. The new stuff's kind of its own thing really.

GK: What kind of gear are you using for the live setup at the moment, is it digital or analog?

SB: Well both, but it's computers. It's just all done on computers now. We use Max/MSP and a digital analog converter and controls.

GK: You played here over 6 years ago now and it was the first time. Then after the concert, quite a few people thought that your first show came too late, many years too late. And I was wondering, since you've been making music for over 25 years, well close to 30, is there a period perhaps that stands out for you, or maybe what were the most exciting years to be part of Autechre?

SB: I don't really think of it in those terms. I think, even on a tour like this we have some days that are quite boring and some days that are really exciting and interesting. So I'm not sure that I can think of a period of time. If it was like that, I think I would've probably given up, you know? But you don't really know when the surprising things are gonna be, when it's gonna be interesting.

GK: And what does this affect, you know you said that even now some unions(?) are not that good. You know what does affect the particular show?

SB: Sorry, can you repeat the question? I'm not sure I understood.

GK: When you know the show wasn't as good as you wanted it to be, what usually affect that?

SB: Technical problems usually, something that we did wrong or something the software did that we didn't predict.

RB: Or sometimes not being able to hear the results of your work on stage, like sometimes if the sound system is so big in the venue, but there's no sort of feedback from the room. You can't hear what you're doing on stage as well, so if there are technical problems, you can't get over them as quickly. But my most fun times are when the sets going well and we can hear what we're doing and we're able to sort of react immediately to what's going on and change it, improve it, or repair things, or just be creative. They're usually the ones that work well, and anything else that doesn't let us hear what we're doing or the sound system's no good.

SB: It's definitely not our fault, you know what I mean? We work pretty hard to cover all bases and make sure it's not gonna fuck up, but just sometimes there's something that you've overlooked. Especially with Max, there are so many combinations and possibilities and things that it might do, it's quite difficult to be booked(?), so it can catch you off-guard when you're on stage, but it might not feel like it's your fault. That stuff, it can be really annoying, but it can also make it really exciting and interesting, especially if you overcome it on stage.

GK: This similar experience we've had with Battles, they're also from Warp, on their previous tour, when they had those big video screens and things weren't working. But then solved the problem really well and it kind of added something to the whole experience.

SB: Right, yeah, exactly, that's part of what we do. I don't think we'd be happy using something that never broke.

RB: Or never changed.

SB: Or never changed!

RB: I think what I was saying before about being able to hear the sound system well. It allows a bit of chance to have an influence in what's happening on the night. As opposed to perhaps being detrimental, it usually becomes an enhancement or a contribution of a good kind.

GK: You know, this - not being able to hear good enough the music that you were playing that you were just explaining - is it something connected to this new live approach or did this sort of thing happen before?

SB: Oh no it's not that, sometimes it's poor monitoring, but not on this tour because we actually take our own monitors with us. But occasionally it's just difficult because a lot of clubs nowadays use line array and all sound goes away from the stage. So it's difficult from the stage sometimes with some of the newer venues to actually hear what you're putting out. Paradoxically, they tend to do the venues with the best sound. What you want in the venue, you don't want all the sound to go back towards the stage really, that's not good sound. But there are issues with it in that you can't really get a sense of how loud it is on stage. Personally, I don't really have much of a problem with that, I just play and get on with it, but it is a little bit weird when you can't hear it and they all can hear it.

GK: Going back to you producing music for a long time, as I said earlier for over 25 years, I was wondering what motivates you nowadays after all these years.

SB: Just the sheer amount of bad music that's out there, really. No, I think you have to kind of uping(?) lots of good music to try and reset the balance. I mean I kind of am joking, you know that. I don't really know. I mean me personally, I just make stuff because I want to hear it. I think even though there is a lot of music around nowadays, there isn't as much variety or at least it doesn't feel like that and I think that's perhaps one of the things for us is that I'll feel that there's a gap or there's something I'm not hearing and then I'll try and make that. So, I guess as long as I feel like that, that there is something I wanna make that I don't already own or I can't buy, then that's enough motivation really. That's kind of why we did it in the first place. And so, that reason hasn't really changed, the world's still giving me that same ache(?) for music.

GK: Yeah, it definitely became much tougher to find the really interesting stuff. But there is-

SB: Yeah, there is so many things. I mean it's not even- I'm not saying that there's a lot of bad music, I mean there is, but I guess there's also a lot more good music. It's just like, it's quite difficult to find, because there's just fucking million things out there. It's a bit when I was really young and I'd go to a jazz shop, and I'd look at all the records, and just feel like I wouldn't even know where to start, and I think people must feel like this a lot with music now, they want someone else's curated version. That's why playlists are so popular. Even on streaming services, people are quite happy to listen to an artist's playlist. I think people just want things to be curated. The same with live events, you know. You got a live event now, it will be 5000 acts on them. You know, it's all been curated by a tastemaker, and that's not something you used to see so much. I mean, it used to just be that people went to events to see bands that they already knew about, but nowadays you'll get kids going to events and they won't know half the bands that are playing because they're relying so much on a third party choosing it.

GK: You know, maybe this is now particularly visible in the United States when one sound becomes popular, suddenly there is lots of people copying it.

SB: Well yeah, I mean it is true. It's also in the UK as well. I'm not complaining about this, I think it's cause that we have scenes still that are healthy. There will be thousands of records that sound really similar to each other, but...

RB: There's also lots of festivals that actually have the same lineup in one summer...

SB: Yeah that's the thing!

RB: ...they're(?) going around the whole world and there'll be a curatorial thread amongst different festivals so almost like the festivals are influencing one another, so they have the same kind of current lineup.

SB: You do see a lot of the same acts in different countries now, that's not something we used to see as much. (?) somewhere like Albania(?), I imagine that there are festivals that certainly are in Croatia and some of the other parts of the former Eastern Bloc countries, where you'll see the same list of acts that you'd see in a London festival.

GK: I think this is because the promoter or the people that are putting together these festivals are actually British.

SB: Oh that makes a lot really(?), I didn't know that.

GK: So it kind of makes sense.

SB: It's not necessarily that bad I think, it's just that I say 20 years ago where if we'd go to a festival in Croatia today, we would've been playing music alongside whatever music they like, and it would've been a lot more varied and perhaps strange to us. Not necessarily to our tastes but it'd be the sound of what people like there, and yeah you don't really get that as much now. The fashion is the same thing, people tend to wear the same clothes (?) throughout the Western developed world, the same(?) dress code. This is new, really.

GK: You were explaining there is loads of music nowadays. What type of music do you listen to nowadays, maybe since you are saying that the lineups are very much alike throughout the festivals really, did you maybe see some cool live acts recently?

SB: No, I haven't seen any that I thought was cool. Sorry.

GK: When was the last time you played in the United States?

SB: Last year, yeah.

GK: You did a whole tour?

SB: Yeah it was about 12 months ago, we did 21 dates I think.

GK: You know, I actually did an interview like 10 years ago with Sean, it was also over the phone. And at that time I think Sean kind of said that he had this feeling that maybe American audience wasn't as knowledgable as British or European audiences.

SB: Yeah it's still the same. I think the thing is now though, they've all done a crash course in the history of techno, so I think they know a little bit more, like they got a Wikipedia-level knowledge of dance music.

GK: But you know, now that this electronic dance music is becoming really popular, there are people that are kind of digging deeper, looking for interesting stuff that happened maybe before they even know what electronic dance music is.

SB: Right, exactly. In America, there's a tendency for people who listen to quite urban music in a domestic setting. They'd be sat at home listening to dance tracks. And that is really unsustainable, that what you normally get happening after that is a period of people who don't go to clubs making club music, and that's basically what you'll see over the next few years. We've seen it even in the last few years, really.

GK: I don't know if you noticed this or not, when you played this last tour in the United States. Were there maybe a difference in attendance or something because EDM got so popular?

SB: Yeah, it's weird cause I mean, obviously the kids going to the gigs, they're not EDM kids. But yeah, we've seen this upsurge in interest.

RB: I think we sold out once or twice.

SB: Yeah we did really well, I mean it was a little bit surprising to us, because you know 2005 and 2008 in America, they were the last tours we did. It was a real low, and there were not really too many clubs even in America at that point. And then it just exploded after 2008/9, the dubstep things, it just kind of exploded everywhere and now it's a really different environment where we are considered part of techno history. In America now, everyone is aware of techno history, and so, we attract the kind of mixed crowd of some older people who have grown up with it, and younger people who don't seem to really understand much about dance music at all, but they think that we are part of that history so they come see us. I probably find that quite confusing.

RB: I think there's that upsurge as well, and there's reality that we haven't been there for 6 or 7 years already, so it seemed to be a more eager sort of turnout.

SB: Especially when (?) with Skrillex. You know, there were a few years where it would've been still difficult for us,  even though there was a lot of interest in EDM or whatever. In a way, it's funny because in America, really everything now is split into either EDM or IDM, and that seems really absurd to me that it kind of happened that way. So now you've got this thing where IDM is now seen as having much more weight and kind of presence than it used to have. It used to just be this stupid little made-up non-scene that no one cared about, and now it's actually something that kids will describe their own music as.

RB: As an antithesis to EDM or something.

SB: Yeah exactly, like the way they make electronic dance music that isn't even EDM, and now so all those people are calling them with(?) IDM. People like Arca is out(?) playing it. Yeah, that's quite unusual to see people actually proudly describe it in that way.

GK: Do you follow, or listen to any of that kind of music? Because when EDM first started to become popular, I don't know about 10 years ago maybe, when Skrillex got popular, and he would mention Warp artists often as his influences, and there were people who didn't know about electronic music beforehand and after hearing Skrillex and becoming his fans, they started looking back to find the interesting stuff. For example, in the IDM community, the EDM sound or that dubstep that rivet(?) from the United States, was kind of almost a taboo. But nowadays I think it's becoming a bit less so because IDM people are getting interested in what the EDM guys are doing, and I was wondering, do you listen to any?

SB: I never had a problem with Skrillex, you know? We used to get asked what we thought about Skrillex in about 08/09, when he was first popping up, I get asked my opinion on him and I say the same (?) which was that you know, I understand it completely, I see why kids are into that, it makes sense to me. It's just not really what I've grown up with so maybe I'm just not used to that kind of raving, but I get it, I absolutely get it. It's obviously American, Americans would do that, they would emphasize the midrange, make it sound nasty, (?) festive like a teenager. And that's what America is doing with all their fucking music genres, rock and roll is the same thing. I'm happy for them to do that to dance music, I don't have any problem with it, I understand it, it's American, it's got a real rock and roll feel. I mean it is a bit nasty to me, I would never fucking buy a Skrillex record, but at the same time I'm not going to condemn it cause I see a lot of value in it. Also see, some of his sound design is actually pretty fucking good, a lot better than a lot of techno producers.

RB: He's(?) great with dynamics.

SB: They'd just never admit it. It just is technically a little bit better than most techno producers, that's the kind of hard thing for a lot of people to accept. It doesn't come with all that cool passe(?) that a lot of techno producers do, it's a stupid little kid jumping up and down.

RB: Just full of energy actually. (?)

SB: Looks like a rock and roll, he didn't even look like a techno. In the same way, I think that Kanye probably annoyed a lot of hip hop people in the mid-2000s by wearing skinny jeans. Sometimes it's good to just throw a curveball in there and see what happens, even if it is something so nasty that everyone's really familiar with it already from another era. I don't really care. Like I say, Americans have been doing that shit for years. Even fucking Richie Ortan(?) will say originally we were doing that to an extent, that we slightly kind of wide(?) redefining dance music, making it a little bit more nasty-sounding. I think it's unfair to be snobbish(?) to Skrillex and people like deadmau5, I understand what they're going for and they are actually achieving what they set out to do, so they at least deserve respect.

GK: We came to an end to this interest(?), so maybe just use this last question. In previous interview, that one we did 10 years ago, you said that you were basically making four-for-the-floor music, so this new set you're going to play tomorrow is, as you mentioned, probably going to be a bit different?

SB: I wouldn't describe it as ambient, but I've read the word ambient in a couple of reviews. I wouldn't really call it ambient. I don't mind if the people do. It's slower and it's kinda intense and a lot of the sequencing is still very complex, but it's a lot of curves rather than discrete events so it sort of sounds smooth and kind of sophisticated, if that's the right word, I don't know. It really is quite different from the last live set. Some people are adjusting to it quite well, and other people are a little bit resistant because they don't know what the fuck it is. It's quite difficult to categorise. In a similar way actually, Oversteps is a little bit difficult to categorise. It's not really an ambient album, but it's also not anything else, so people tend to use the word ambient to talk about it, but it doesn't resemble any other ambient. I think it's a similar thing with this set, it's just its own thing really, I suppose we just think of it as Autechre. We don't really have another word for it.

GK: Are there any plans that you might release this material that you are playing live as an album in the future?

SB: We want to. We're trying to record it every night, but we had a couple of technical hiccups, so we haven't managed to record everything, but the majority of it we have recorded. And if we end up coming home with enough good sets, then we'll release a chunk, like quite a few of them. But if there aren't enough good ones, then we wouldn't release any.

RB: We need a body of it.

SB: We've only done five dates, we got another, how many?

RB: Something like 23.

SB: We got another 23, so hopefully, among them there will be at least five good ones. If there are, then we'll release them and maybe some more.

RB: If it goes well for us on stage in a creative way, that's good. It's another question to ask, has it been recorded successfully? Sometimes it's quite difficult depending on the stage of the setup.

SB: Yeah we could just have something fuckup, cause we do the recording as well on stage so it only takes one thing to go wrong and it's not recording. It just depends. If we manage to get enough recorded, we plan to release. But we don't really wanna say 'yeah no that'll definitely happen'.

RB: We haven't decided.

SB: We need to get the sets home and listen to 'em a few times before we know whether it's actually worth doing if that makes sense.

GK: Excellent, so great news for the end, and we will see you tomorrow in Kino Šiška.

SB: Excellent, well we look forward to it. Slovenia is definitely an interesting place.

RB: Nice venue, Šiška as well, I remember feeling very good about the sound in there.

SB: Yeah the sound in there is fucking great. It'll be good for this set, I think it'll work in there really well.

GK: Nice, nice.

RB: In a way I think we've found ourselves in venues like Šiška that perhaps give us an insight in what a different approach to a live set you can do.

SB: It was actually one of the venues that we referenced when we came back and made this set...

RB: To model this tour.

SB: ...because we thought this set would work well in these kind of venues because it's so well kitted out in there.

GK: I think it's kind of a surround system or something like that.

RB: It's just acoustics are really good.

SB: Yeah it was good. And I think, because when we came back, we said well what kind of music would be good in a venue like that that isn't what we do, you know? So yeah, it should be good.

GK: Excellent news once again. Thank you.

SB: Alright, cheers.

RB: Take care, no problem.

GK: See you tomorrow.

SB: See you too.

GK: Ba-bye.

SB: Thanks.