Radio Mix Interview, March 1997

Taken from Radio Mix, March 1997. Transcription by EnergyIsMassiveLight. Audio is obfuscated with intentional glitching/manipulations and cut together responses.

Transcript

Sean: Um well, my name's Sean, and I'm from Autechre.

Rob: I'm Rob and I'm the other 50% of Autechre.

Sean: Well Autechre doesn't really mean anything, is sort of, it's just a word that we use to describe what we do (the crap). We do really like our music just because Autechre because, um, I don't know any other word that'd be too referential really. If I had to explain it to my granny, I'd tell her it was, nuh, this sort of thing she'd probably be into. Well we're up to our fourth album.

Um, we spent a lot of time before we made music, do a lot of, uh, pirate radio broadcasts and stuff like that. Before that we were quite into graffiti.

Rob: Our titles come from all over the place, we like messing around with words and we like the way words sound if they are spelt wrong but actually sound correct. What we do a lot of the time we're writing tracks, the track title'll be part of, uh, maybe a reference to the samples we're using, this and that, you know, part of the actual construction of the track. Other times we'll be, sarcastic...

I met Sean through this guy who introduced us. He met Sean on a bus one night, tagging, and he met me one night, sort of exchanging graffiti files. When we got together, we used to, sort of, edit my turntable mixes and Sean could mix as well and he'd do mixes and we both, both create sort of production mixes. And then eventually other people's records, their ideas, got replaced by our own ideas cause we got all the drum machines and samplers by then.

Sean: Well I mean yeah. People just get their own end of the sticks, we just reckon that there's nobody doing decent stuff at the moment. I mean I actually reckon there's a lot of form for exploration within that... People haven't even sort of touched the surface yet.

Chris [Cunningham] is sort of a mate of ours, he's worked on films, he worked on, sort of Alien 3 and Hardware and various other films that we're quite into, um, and he used to work on this comic 2000 AD that I used to be quite into. Yes, he's basically sort of, he designed and built models that's used in a video for a track that we did, um, which called Second Bad Vilbel off an EP called Anvil Vapre, and it's just sort of, um, I don't know, it's kinda this robot that at the end of it starts moving around and stuff, which is computer animations by a mate of ours called Ged...

In February, Warp'll be releasing our fourth album which is, um, another collection of probably about the last 12 months work, and it's called Chiastic Slide. Um, well the thing that's coming out in January is called Envane...

Rob: Yeah we got some live club gigs coming up say late February, we're gonna do a handful of UK dates, but the majority are going to be European dates. I think-

Sean: I think the fact you can see people when you DJing in a club makes a lot of difference.

Rob: Yeah there's a reaction to be had, from live DJing that is directly responsible for the way you DJ DJ DJ.

Unknown interviewer: Do you enjoy remixing?

Rob: We've done a lot of remixes, using their source material as you would your own, using their basic elements to make a track for yourself, as opposed to using your own basic elements.

What do we do when we're not being Autechre? Um, uh, I don't think it's really relevant to be honest. I don't know, I'm suppose we're quite absorbed in that.