...is Sean Booth and Rob Brown. They got together in 1987 at the ages of 15 and 17. Other than BMXing and tagging, they also listened to a lot of early hip-hop, and began to screw around with a drum machine. Neither of them were interested in conventional music as such. After gaining some fame, they landed a radio show that they still run today. Then, they got shafted by their record company a fair amount, and joined WARP in 1992.

Since then they have been writing both harsh and nice electronic music, most of it with a heavy mechanical feel to it. Some of it's a bit on the dark side, but a lot of their stuff is extremely high in quality. They convey the shape of sound.

Discography:

WARP LP17 (LP/CD)
Autechre - Incunabula**

WARP LP25 (LP/CD)
Autechre - Amber

WARP LP38 (LP/2CD)
Autechre - Tri Repetae++**

WARP LP49 (LP/CD/MC)
Autechre - Chiastic slide

Gescom Minidisc (MD)
Gescom - Minidisc

WARP LP66 (LP/CD)
Autechre - LP5**

CLR 408 (LP)
Gescom - The Sounds of Machines our Parents Used**
WARP EP7 / WARP EP7.1 (EP/CD)
Autechre - EP7

>>they also have a heap of singles that aren't all that important.

and if I may... ** denotes 65535 recommends
"As far as we're concerned, it's all one big grey area these days. It's not just a rhythm or a melody. We tend to start making something more tangible in terms of parts of a track, but we never really know if it's a rhythm or whatever, just that it's coming together. We tend to make lots of little elements then chain them together to find the feel or structure of what the rhythm might be."

Autechre (pronounced "awe-tek-er" - supposedly, it is an amalgam of "Audio Technology Research") was formed in 1991 by friends Sean Booth and Rob Brown who had known each other for quite some time. Introduced in 1987 by a mutual friend, they learned that their fields of interest were basically a Venn Diagram consisting of one circle, containing BMX biking, tagging, hip hop acts such as Grandmaster Flash, and breakdancing. As they say, "we were the only two people that we'd met that filled in various gaps".

As acid started to take off in the UK, Sean and Rob joined in, and found their true love. Acquiring a drum machine and noodling about with it every day after school, they started recording demo-tapes and sending them off to various labels.

The pair's reputation led them to start a weekly radio show on Kiss FM (102 mHz) in Manchester, called Disengage. They started slipping in their own demos, and got to release Cavity Job on Hardcore Records. While the record sold decently, they had problems with the label, and quit, to send off a demo tape to Warp Records. This led to the tracks Crystel and The Egg appearing on the seminal Artificial Intelligence compilation.

After working on their debut for a year, Incunabula was released. Their sound already defined, the album stands out as one of the earliest pure IDM records. During the years, they have kept up steam by consistently putting out quality releases (although there was some turmoil on the IDM mailing list over Confield - it is somewhat less accessible than their other records, if that is even possible).

Not afraid of trying out new gear, they have continously expanded their setup, from the Roland TR-606 and Casio SK1 sampler that Rob had when they met, to the BBC Micro and Macintosh computers, as well as Clavia Nord Lead synths. Software-wise, they use Cubase and MAX. Rob even used to have an old reel-tape recorder that he cut up various recordings in, making his own brand of Musique Concrète.

Besides Autechre, Sean & Rob record in the "umbrella-project" Gescom, and have remixed countless acts, including Skinny Puppy, Neu!, Tortoise, and Nightmares on Wax. They have also been featured on the soundtrack to the movie π by Darren Aronofsky. According to Sean, there are even more tracks out there, that are by Autechre, but not known as such: "Yeah, we do all the time, but it wouldn't be a secret if I told you about it, would it? Obviously we don't always operate under the same name and don't always produce the same kind of music." Among the releases suspected of originating from the team are Lego Feet, Dual Purpose and Mortal & Chemist.

Discography (strong denotes album):

Sources: All Music Guide, Biography by Peter McIntyre, Warp Records homepage, Henrik Marstal & Henriette Moos: "Filtreringer - Elektronisk Musik fra Tonegeneratorer til Samplere 1989-2001", 2 interviews, one from intermusic.com and one called "On the Armchair with Autechre", and finally, the Official Autechre FAQ. A complete Autechre/Gescom discography can be seen here: http://membres.lycos.fr/autechre_gescom/index.htm. Also thanks to irexe for a couple of corrections. Coincidentally, this writeup was submitted almost exactly one year after my account was created (only off by 4 hours).

- CRT -

"Experimental" electronica duo signed to Warp Records (Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Plaid etc.). Their early material is mostly quite ambient and chilled, but later material (about Tri Repetae onwards) includes more harsh and/or frantic tracks.

So far they have six albums, and more eps. The newest ep at the time of writing is called Gantz Graf and comes in both a CD and CD/DVD version. The DVD has different tracks (though both obviously feature the title track), each of which is accompanied by the video. The track itself at first sounds like just a noise, but makes more sense with repeat listenings, and upon watching the video. The video features a futuristic-looking computer-generated construction that changes and shifts along to the sound of the music. It's something you have to see rather than have explained, but it really brings out the patterns of the music and is quite mesmerising to watch.

Some people consider Autechre's ep material to be better than their lp material, in that they tend to put their better material on their ep's, and they are more of an important part of their development. Ep's allow them to put maybe 4 or 5 tracks (wheras lp's usually have at least 10) on the cd, and these are often very long tracks. In fact, some of their Ep's are as long as an average album (about 40-60 minutes).

One Ep of particular note is from early on in their career. The release Anti contains the only official instrumental protest song. It is in protest of the Criminal Justice Bill, which banned raves. A rave is defined as a gathering of more than a certain amount of people dancing to music with repetitive beats, hence the track "Flutter" on the ep is designed so that no bar repeats the same rythym pattern.

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