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Autechre - People Always Find You Sooner Or Later

Author: Jonty Adderley
Monday, March 24, 2003
Like their sometime label-mate Aphex Twin, Sheffield duo Autechre are globally renowned for creating incredibly unconventional, sometimes almost unlistenable electronic experimental music, though unlike Richard James, both Sean Booth and Rob Brown remain background, near invisible characters.

However, carrying out a day of promotion for their upcoming album Draft 7.30 from a Reading based country house, Rob is both personable and accessible, about the making of the new record and the duo's forthcoming weekender at All Tomorrow's Party and their singular approach to life.

"We knew from the start that if we were able to incubate a little vibe, purely based on what we liked, then it would be likely that there would be people with the same kind of vibe elsewhere," he told Skrufff's Jonty Adderley.

"If you keep things quiet, people tend to find out about you, for example, because they trust the people who suggest you. People always find you sooner or later."

Putting Autechre's name into google reveals an impressively international array of fan sites and it seems certain that their crowd for next month's Camber Sands weekender will be both enthusiastic and cosmopolitan. Which should reflect appropriately on the event's lineup, which includes Public Enemy, Carl Craig and Captain Beefheart's Magic Band (minus the Captain). And both Ron and Sean will be onsite all weekend, staying in their own chalet, he revealed.

Skrufff (Jonty Adderley): What does the curating role actually involve-

Autechre: "It involves drawing up a wishlist of artists who you'd like to perform and the organisers also offer you involvement in controlling the event's schedule. When Barry asked us, we couldn't believe it. We supplied him with a massive list of who we'd ideally like then he went away and contacted them. Putting the list together was actually quite difficult though because some of the people you'd ideally want, don't perform anymore, such as Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band. But the Magic Band still and we totally admire them anyway, so it all worked out perfectly."

Skrufff: You've also got acts like Public Enemy and Carl Craig performing, did you expect them all to say yes-

Autechre: "At first you think 'wouldn't it be great to get Public Enemy-' as an ideal but the closer it came to happening the more we started thinking of it as a reality. Public Enemy were confirmed really late in the day but we'd been asking them for ages, just to emphasise how serious we were about booking them. We wanted cross pollination to occur between the different artists and I think we've been subject to that cross pollination in the way that we are as Autechre. We didn't want to point to ourselves too much either."

Skrufff: Your new album Draft 7.30 is, as usual, very different and individual, did you have a particular idea of how it would sound when you started-

Autechre: "We always start with a clean slate (blank canvas). The way we do it is to assemble a certain quantity of work, subtracting all the tracks that don't fit together in long form. We barely listen to the tracks once we've finished them, we just archive them and move onto something else. Then later on, when we've assembled a big body of work, we find that some things gel together. There's no great plan at the start, the main thing is to keep ourselves entertained as well as to put something down that still resembles the way we were when we first started out. We were trying to fill a space from what we felt was missing out there in music made by other people. It's all about expressing a taste preference."

Skrufff: Your music doesn't have hooks or choruses and isn't exactly accessible, how much do factors like entertainment and accessibility enter the Autechre equation when you're creating each track-

Autechre: "They're pieces really, with a start and an end. The albums are a public aspect of what we're doing because some tracks never get re
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