Autechre

Myth or otherwise, it’s frequently reported that Autechre – Sean Booth and Rob Brown – are offered early versions of computer equipment to put through their paces, to record on, to test on, to abuse. Message board legend even goes so far as to suggest that the duo experiment with “devices cadged from the army.” On occasion, the latter seems a particularly apposite rumor: tracks like Quaristice’s “Fol3” sound like fucking carnage.

Such experiments have made Autechre one of the most distinctive and revered electronic groups of all time. They’ve previously been commissioned to remix the likes of Stereolab, Tortoise and Surgeon and have notably been feted by Thom Yorke, with the Radiohead frontman stating on his official message board that Confield “made my head spin” and citing Booth and Brown’s work as an influence on his own Kid A and Amnesiac (Autechre themselves admit indifference to this).

Initially based in and around Manchester, former graffiti/tag artists Booth and Brown began constructing/trading pause-button mix tapes before working on their own compositions, with the stated aim as being simply to “make good stuff” (With the release of their ninth album, this intent remains: What are they trying to do on Quaristice? “The same thing, only now.”) Sharing a love of Mantronix, the Bomb Squad and Arthur Baker and thrilled by the process of looping and cutting up sounds, their early releases – Incunabula and Amber – were corrupted modifications of techno and electro cut through with a curious poignancy. Recent releases – Confield, Draft 7.30 and Untilted have largely (but not wholly) ditched expected melodies in place of increasingly complex machine music such that they have been likened to an equivalent of the more abstruse graffiti “where typography is convoluted to the point of illegibility” (Simon Reynolds). Confield was notably described as “one of the purest approximations of ‘machine music’ we’ve heard yet … [as if] an automaton’s creation.” (Philip Sherburne).

Nevertheless – or perhaps because of this – Booth has gone as far as to assert Autechre’s fizzes and crunches, the hisses and clangs as a form of “modern folk music … it did feel like pastoral music to about six or so people” (Jockey Slut magazine).

For some, however, Autechre’s twists and turns seem impenetrable and unfathomable. In equal measure, the duo have been venerated and vehemently criticized for the supposed complexity of their music and have been dubbed difficult, willfully perverse and even obnoxious.

“Difficulty isn’t our thing,” say Autechre, straightforwardly, “We make it because we like it.” Rather, the duo assert their music making is driven by “a child like fascination and total curiosity.” There is “No agenda, no plan. We just go for satisfaction each time. There’s no express purpose or aim other than making stuff we like. That’s all there is but that’s not very interesting, is it?” Booth, for his part, describes music making as his “default activity.”

Echoing their early obsessions, Booth and Brown draw comparison between their own music-making and hip-hop: “It’s about sleight of hand, where you’re revealing things and pulling them back. I think that’s hip-hop, the whole attitude of wanting to do people’s heads in but also give them something that they’ll really appreciate.”

“We like to dissect things,” they say of the meticulous detail in their music, “I think the trick is to not let the detail become the main attraction.”

“We listen to a lot of our new stuff and it seems to be coming from somewhere other than what we can understand,” claimed the duo circa the release of Chiastic Slide, “That’s probably why it seems slightly magical, I suppose.”

Booth and Brown have previously claimed to make music that deliberately moves at the same pace as their brains: “You can have your entire track changing piece by piece and that’s what we’re into. We like things like a puzzle where it’s revealing itself and changing. And you can almost follow it because it works at the same pace as your own brain works. The trick is not to get it to work faster or slower but to get it in tune with yourself.”

Reluctant (or perhaps unable) to ascribe specific meaning to individual pieces of music, Booth and Brown tag there releases with seemingly cryptic titles like (to list a trio of tracks from Quaristice) “SonDEremawe”, “Tankakern” and “fwze”.

“Usually, we don’t know why we like a title or why it seems apt,” admit Autechre, “We just do or it does or something happens to make it fit.”

On Quaristice, such titles mask a variety of moods, themes and influences. Documenting a shift in sound and scope, the long-awaited album covers a wide-ranging terrain, sometimes brutalist, sometimes acutely melodic, always utterly compelling.