Autechre On Darkness, Spotify, And Fish Sticks

The revolutionary electronic duo reflect and opine ahead of their performance at Harpa

Rob Brown and Sean Booth have just a few hours before they perform in Warsaw, Poland, and their tour manager, Mark, gives me a heads-up that “30 minutes” is what he has in mind for this interview. “Or longer, you know, if they get chatty,” he adds. When Rob, Sean, and I get to the interview, we talk for close to 50. The two make up Autechre, the seminal English electronic project that began in 1987. With over 30 years of collaboration, the duo has an instantly perceptible rhythm of idea-sharing. Insightful and humorous, I quickly have a feel for what it would be like to create or tour with them.

“I’d say we’re playing quite well at the moment,” Sean says cheerily, as Autechre’s just started a three-month tour. I ask if they’ve noticed any perceptible theme or emotion emerging so far. Sean considers, then answers, “If I could, I probably wouldn’t be doing it. If I could condense it like that, you know?” He continues, “What we’re doing at the moment, it’s probably unique to us, as far as I can tell. We’ve put so much into building the software to make the music that it’s just — people can’t really do the same thing. It’s not possible, technically. We have a kind of secret recipe, if you like,” he concludes.

Their intricate “secret recipe” is a tessellation of technology and software that Autechre and their fans often call simply “the system.” Despite Sean’s humble and tentative framing, Autechre’s setup and sound are definitely unique to them and allow them to make music that is definitely not technically possible for others to create.

In the dark

Autechre elect to play in complete darkness, which is now integral to their live performance. “The first tour that we did where we expressly asked for it would have been 2001,” Sean explains, adding that they had to fight and compromise for years before promoters eventually accepted darkness as the Autechre status quo. This lack of light harkens back to the 1980s warehouse raves that inspired their own work, facilitating intense musical immersion (and also a heightened experience for those taking the “acid” in acid house literally).
“People have been dancing to music for 1000s of years, right? And for the vast majority of the time, they didn’t have a massive LED wall trying to blind you.”

They both reason that darkness cultivates a musical experience that can be both individual and communal. In those darker warehouse days, Rob notes that occasional strobes allowed ravers to see “there were people actually quite near you. And you found that there was a shared experience, but there was definitely a personal, isolated experience as well. And it would all make you feel like you’re having a deeper moment than watching a big screen or looking at someone.”

Sean concedes, “I’ve never really been into it. I want to close my eyes and get lost in the sound.” Emphasising the point, he laments, “You’re really negating that just by having a big screen at the front. You might as well go to a cinema or something.” He reckons, “People have been dancing to music for thousands of years, right? And for the vast majority of the time, they didn’t have a massive LED wall trying to blind you. I think we’re in safe territory, you know.”

After almost two decades of exclusively playing into the darkness, I’m extremely curious if they’ve grown hypersensitive to reading their audience’s atmospheres. “I think it’s some kind of divination, some part of my brain is kind of aware of what they’re doing and what they’re into,” Sean laughs, then quips, “I could be imagining half of it as well.”

In addition to environmental noise from the audience, they let each venue play a role in their sound as well. Rob explains that in early Autechre days, they would use the soundcheck to painstakingly alter their tracks from venue to venue, wanting to offer the same sound in every live performance. Now, they’ve changed their practice: Rob states that they “allow this space to be a bit more of a conduit. Rather than adapting to it, we let the room have its own character.”

Autechre at MH, 1999. Photo by Jón Svavarsson.

Patience is a virtue

Autechre are also notorious for their long-form releases and live sessions. I bring up their epic 2018 NTS Sessions — an eight-hour-long release that was broadcast in four sessions on radio station NTS, and has since established a cult tradition of Autechre fans marathoning the entire session (something Rob jokes is akin to an “Ice Bucket Challenge”) — and we launch into a conversation about patience.

“I know everyone’s doomscrolling right now, but doomscrolling takes patience! I think people can’t see the wood for the trees, you know. We’re a very fucking patient civilisation,” Sean declares. “My own weird anecdotal research was showing me that people were quite happy to sit and binge-watch an entire series on Netflix for eight hours straight in a day, right? Well, you could do an eight-hour release then because people have got the time in their schedule to dedicate to doing a thing like that,” he asserts.

Their NTS Sessions offered long tracks as well, where 14 of the tracks last longer than 15 minutes (with the final track standing at over 58 minutes). Sean’s quick to point out that short tracks are a survival technique in this music economy, where artists are paid by the play. Further, Spotify often demands different audio quality to help out on their end; Autechre are firmly resistant to this, with Sean stating, “I don’t want to fucking change the way it sounds, just for Spotify or YouTube or whatever.”

Are the kids alright?

We continue on the thread of Spotify. Rob points out a fear I’ve heard before, “It’s like the kids won’t even know some music exists because a lot of kids are only going to be on Spotify and think everything’s there.” He works out his thoughts in real time, continuing, “I should be glad of the fact that they don’t have it all. But it’s kind of bad that there’s a hole in people’s understanding of different areas musically and the history of music. And who did things first — that shit matters. Especially when they’re artists from less privileged backgrounds. Because a lot of those people are just fucking erased from history.”
“Kids won’t even know some music exists because a lot of kids are only going to be on Spotify and think everything’s there.”

We return to the NTS Sessions, and they speak on how the sessions’ reception gave them some hope. “I mean, it actually did really well, considering what it was,” Sean notes. Rob adds, “Some of the tracks are long format, because radio is one of those collective, shared experiences. You can have people want to stay in the room, if you will, longer, because they know other people are prepared to stay.” Ruminating on the success and benefits of the sessions as a whole, Rob offers, “Take people to the brink of what’s normal, and go beyond it,” maybe advising himself, or Sean, or me, or the greater whole. “Play around with time and ideas in your art. You end up exploring deeper places, and the people respond to that — they really do.”

The kids are alright

August 15 will be the duo’s second performance in Iceland. The first? Menntaskólinn við Hamrahlíð, “MH,” in 1999. After the duo gets a kick out of the fact that I wasn’t alive for their last performance in Iceland, I ask to hear what it was like. “I’ve not really, before or since, had an experience quite like it,” Sean laughs, and Rob laughs too, saying, “There were even chairs laid out!” However, Rob adds, “I don’t know if I’m imagining this — wishful, fantasy, retrofit memories. Could have sworn some of the teachers started removing the chairs from the front as we started.” Another Rob memory, one that’s definitely not a fantasy? “I thought I got handed a joint on stage. It turns out to be a fish stick. Yeah, I tried to draw on it.”

And that MHingur must have offered their fish stick because they loved the show. “I love kids’ reactions to things because they’re so fucking honest,” Sean says. “Half the time we can get them into some really radical shit just because they’re open to it because they haven’t learned to fucking keep it at arm’s length yet, you know?” Once the teachers removed the chairs, the kids really got down to Autechre.

“That was a laugh and a really unusual gig for us,” Sean concludes. “Just brilliant. But yeah, it’s a bit of a different venue choice this time,” and the two of them laugh. “We’ll see how that goes.”

Autechre will perform, in the dark, at Harpa on August 15. Tickets are still for sale on tix.is. John McCowen and sideproject will open for them, and there will be an afterparty at MONO (Austurstræti 7).