After 6 years, we welcome back Rob Brown and Sean Booth – Autechre! Rochdale’s duo has a long history of creating and demolishing electronic music, captured somewhere between techno, electro and hip hop, eventually creating IDM, a musical expression that got them directly to Warp Records. On May 19th, without any prior notice and completely
After 6 years, we welcome back Rob Brown and Sean Booth – Autechre! Rochdale’s duo has a long history of creating and demolishing electronic music, captured somewhere between techno, electro and hip hop, eventually creating IDM, a musical expression that got them directly to Warp Records. On May 19th, without any prior notice and completely unexpectedly (in typical Autechre fashion), they released the new album elseq 1-5, which Factmag magazine very clearly named the “most challenging album in their 29-year career”.
Formed in 1987 when both members lived in Rochdale, Autechre began their career making and trading mixtapes but gradually moved on to their own compositions, while collecting equipment.
Autechre has also recorded under various pseudonyms, possibly as a way of escaping from the attentions of the media and the obsessive Autechre fanbase. One of the duo’s earliest recordings was a 12″ under the Lego Feet moniker released in 1991 on Skam Records. Various Gescom releases, most on Skam, have been attributed to Booth and Brown, among other artists. Autechre helped initiate the music festival All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2000 and was responsible for curating the 2003 festival.
Much of Autechre’s music has a strong focus on complex rhythm and driving percussion, and more recently, on meticulous sequencing. Later work has been notably experimental and abstract, in contrast to the more club-friendly and conventional early 1990s releases.
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.
Autechre retained one of the most distinctive sounds — as well as one of the most fascinating artistic progressions — in electronic music. 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.
