Easy to Be Hard
Apr 1, 2008 12:00 PM, By Ken Micallef
THE CLASSIC WARP DUO OF SEAN BOOTH AND ROB BROWN, AKA AUTECHRE, CONFOUND MINDS, EXTEND THEIR MODIFYING WAYS AND GO CIRCUIT-BENDING CRAZY ON QUARISTICE
Photo: Chris Purnell
As part of the innovative '90s Warp Records crew that included such mad boffins as Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, LFO, the Black Dog and Nightmares on Wax, Autechre holds a rarified position in our collective IDM consciousness. Throughout their 15-year career and nine full-length releases, Autechre's Sean Booth and Rob Brown have ceaselessly stretched their own consciousness years past the sell dates of some fellow electronic music expanders.
In keeping with Warp's singular sound, Autechre's music has remained unclassifiable, typically existing beyond standard notions of beat programming and synth sequencing, often confounding those enamored with stock rhythms, predictable arrangements and easy-to-comprehend production methods. Autechre's reputation as a difficult pair who refuses to reveal their working techniques (much less their equipment) is renowned, and through the years has only grown more entrenched.
“You guys always expect a barbed response from this corner, don't you?” Brown says with a laugh. “But we're humans, too.”
This statement may cause a shudder among those who prefer their electronic music with a humdrum four-to-the-floor groove, but Autechre's latest release, Quaristice (Warp, 2008), is more fuzzy and emotional than you might expect. Working on practically identical rigs in separate cities (Booth, Manchester; Brown, London), Autechre pursued conventional recording methods for past efforts like Confield (Warp, 2001) and Untilted (Warp, 2005), but Quaristice is the result of the duo's live improvisations, recorded largely on its touring setup: Apple Mac G4, Elektron Machinedrum and Monomachine, Clavia Nord Modular G2 and Nord Rack, Yamaha FS1R, Akai MPC1000, Alesis QuadraVerb and Lexicon PCM 80 and 90. Can this old duo learn new tricks? Certainly.
“This album was made from really long live jam sessions,” Booth explains. “When I moved to Manchester in 2005, the first thing we did was set up a new studio with the live kit and record these really long jams. It turned out good, so we just kept doing it and writing new stuff with the same setup. Having that ability and so much drive capacity nowadays makes it easy to record everything. We did two hour-long jams a day. It took six months to edit it all down to six- or eight-minute tracks. Then we would reduce them again and again. We had a lot of different versions to choose from. We were also reusing bits of sequences from other tracks. Once we got them in a rough format, we used [MOTU] Digital Performer for all the editing.”
A LITTLE BIT CLOSER
Booth and Brown still refuse to delve too deep into the production methods behind Quaristice, but they do reveal more than in the past. Brown is the most upfront and personable, while Booth speaks in riddles that eventually reveal some finer points of Autechre's unusual processes.
Where Confield explored algorithms using Cycling '74 Max/MSP, the Quaristice sessions began with the duo recording their live improvisations and ending in Digital Performer. Autechre's fondness for modifying effects and endlessly disguising sounds remained, as did the duo's love of the Akai MPC1000. Algorithms out, Digital Performer in.
“We used all the functions in the Nord Modular and the Nord Rack, but we are not wildly exploring the potential of algorithmic sequence-generation anymore,” Booth explains. “When I feel I am not in control of every event, I tend to not like it. So I have to program things that have very fixed variables and run efficiently without a lot of user input. With Confield, eventually we were able to think algorithmically in terms of the ways the patterns were being produced because DP allows you to get really specific about where notes are, but also you can do a lot of manipulation. If we wanted to move something one percent in one part of the track, it was a cinch to do: Just go in there and deal with the data. It was suddenly really liberating to not have to deal with programming the algorithm in a totally different way just for that one bit or incorporating a bunch of modules that are going to knock everything else off.
“There are all sorts of limitations implied with algorithmic music based on the way the system functions that we wanted to get around,” Booth continues. “That is what the last two albums were about, really. We used almost the same hardware for Untilted as Quaristice, but in a nonreal-time way, where we programmed all the sequencers to run in quite complex ways, retriggering each other and receiving each other's outputs and inputs. That was press and play and leaving it for a while and adding slight bits of unpredictability. This one being live is a completely opposite path.”
ANYONE FOR A GAME?
When Autechre supplied the gear list for Remix, it looked like Scrabble playing squares dumped onto a piece paper. Above notations for various hardware and software components, Autechre scribbled “dju76r,” “ju5t,” “ersh,” “654eb” and “4n7m.” Taking the veritable British piss out of Remix? Responding to our simple demands with a bit of the Mickey? No. Booth and Brown were listing the actual abbreviations used for their gear modifications.
“We don't really have names for them,” Booth admits. “We write on bits of tape what they are. We mostly mod old Boss effects like the RSD-10 and RDD-10; they are two of the finest machines ever made. The Boss effects have a real gray sound to them. We used to use an RSD-10 as a sampler triggered from a Roland TR-606. The Alesis QuadraVerb is great, as well. It is a sick, sick device. Amazing. I don't think people really understand the intricacies of outboard effects. They think they are all the same 'cause they all offer the same range of functions. But it's all about the weird space in between. The reverbs in those rack effects are beautiful, even though they are digital. They've got a gorgeous tone.”
The typical Autechre album features a boatload of multifarious reverbs, including Audioease Altiverb, Waves TrueVerb, MOTU 828mk3 Classic Reverb, Renoise reverb, TC Electronic Native Reverb and Symbolic Sound Corporation Kyma X Reverb. That the duo goes further in the process — modifying hardware often deemed useless by the electronic community at large — only adds to Autechre's renegade status and the richness of their sounds.
“Most of our mods consist of circuit bending,” Booth allows. “These things are so cheap, no one seems to ascribe any value to them. And they are digital, so that makes them somehow not cool. You can do quite a lot with them by crossing over certain points in the circuit on the back. I always come back to those effects because there is a certain magic about them.”
But that's not all. When even considering the potential value of mods, Booth's imagination goes into high gear, causing him to wonder: What if?
“One thing I did recently,” he muses, “was use field-programmable gate arrays. It reminded me of using something like Cycling '74 MSP; it was a really visual way of working. If you could store all the components necessary for most basic synth modules on one board and then use a field-programmable gate array to make it be any module that you wanted, that is a pretty adaptable synthesis system. You could use 30 of them to make the most flexible modular synth ever. That would be quite fun.”
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