Simon Reynolds once wrote that the first three letters of the word Autechre stand for "autism".

No
offense of course, this is not how the English critic has become one of the most quoted musical pens of
the last decades. If anything, his theory, even if not quite delicate, tries to correlate the shy nature of
Rob Brown and Sean Booth with their music: a complex universe of apparently random strokes, waves
and impulses, or in any case the result of an artificial will and not cof synaptic junctions.

So it's easy to get to the myth of computer geeks, locked in their silicon world and especially reluctant to
give interviews (from the early 90s to today, the talks with the journalists will be a handful). The truth
however, and perhaps even for someone like Reynolds is hard to accept, is that Rob and Sean are part of
that category of musicians, very often English like them, who has all his own way of managing fame. Do
you want to hear the Autechre? Buy the disc. Do you want to see them live? Arm yourself with patience
and wait for them to feel like it. Do you want to interview them? He hopes in a planetary alignment that
includes the release of a new album (in this case, the NTS Sessions for Warp Records) and their good
mood. If, as happened to me, they had to accept the request, they will be proud to disassemble every
Reynoldsian myth by welcoming you with a video conference on Skype. Everyone from his house,
everyone with a cup of tea in his hand. Because the clock marks five o'clock.

I wonder why but I had this romantic vision of you in the studio together.
Sean: Nope, we live miles away. I'm in Manchester, while he lives in Bristol.

So you always work remotely?

Sean: Yes, but I would not say we send "tracks" to work on. If anything, we send out software and
updates, very often even project snapshots. We've been doing this for ten years now.

Rob: Actually we have always had two separate studies, each with its own machinery.

Is that how you managed to stay together for so long?

Sean: We've come to a point where you no longer need to be in the same room. We realized that we
work better this way, in parallel.

Rob: Sometimes when you create complex software systems, slowdowns in your workflow can occur. It
takes a long time to develop them but then there is very little to evaluate if they work. If we do two of
us, each on his own, we greatly reduce downtime. In addition, we started as boys, when everyone lived
with their parents and had their study in a bedroom, so we are now used to working alone. For heaven's
sake, we also lived together in Manchester, but soon we realized we had the same machines, like two
mirror studios in the same room. We had a double of everything, because if you're on tour and
something breaks, it's more convenient to replace it than to fix it.

In short, how often do you get caught for a beer?

Sean: If I have to be honest, I do not drink beer. Better a nice whiskey. However, Rob and I almost never
talk about music, just about software.

Do not you even talk about other people's music?

Sean: That yes. Sometimes we recommend artists to listen. The last one I suggested is Patricia . He's a
house-dude, but it's something completely original, unusual.

And how did these NTS Sessions come about ?

Sean: At the beginning, those of NTS Radio asked us to do a DJ mix. When we did, they asked us if we
wanted a real residency, but it was not for us. We did not want to publish only mixes, so we proposed to
do it with our material, since we have a lot of unpublished pieces. So we gave shape to everything
inspired by the Peel Sessions , what John Peel did.

Quantify the term "moltissimi", please.

Sean: Oh, we've kind of 450 hours of unpublished pieces stuffed into a hard drive. There's always a lot
more stuff than you would like to get out of it. I do not know how many of these pieces are printable:
you have to take them in hand to understand. It is not that there is a precise criterion to establish what
you deserve to go out and what not. It's something physical, you just feel it.

Rob: In my opinion it also depends a lot on the context: it changes and evolves continuously, but the
recorded material is always the same there, on the hard disk. Sometimes you come in handy and the
perfect opportunity happens, while others have a good track of 20 minutes that would not have
anything to do with the mini album you want to do. Examples, eh. There are traces that I adore but that
probably nobody will ever hear. Another context is a mix of traces destined to the radio, as in this case.
Paradoxically, the bulk of our work is to choose the songs, not to create them.

The frequency of your outings in recent years has increased. Why?

Sean: Yes, it's true. In this case it must be said that we have asked, more or less at the time when elseq 1
came out. Immediately after doing quite a few dates around, we wondered if we had time to do this NTS
thing. The answer was yes.

The same applies to interviews: it is rare to be able to interview you, but the reason is that you are
rarely asked.
Sean: Because there's not much to talk about. How should I respond to a colleague who asks me: "How
come you did 'is track?" And what the fuck do I know? I'm a musician, I just did it!

And I instead ask you: how much do you hate the term IDM from 1 to 10? I would answer 15.
Sean: Yes, such a thing. It's really bad. I went to the Internet for the first time in '96 / '97, so before that I
did not know the term IDM. Before then we either Aphex [Twin] or the Black Dogs were in the same
meatloaf as Carl Craig, Derrick May, Juan Atkins. There was talk of electronics in general. It is only after
someone has invented 'it is something of the Intelligent Dance Music to distinguish us or Aphex from
others. It does not make sense.

And then it is also a bit 'wrong to give to you clever and not to others.
Sean: If you look at the history of electronics or techno, nothing would exist without intelligent people. I
mean, it's not that before us music was stupid. It's not like we locked ourselves in our "smart" corner
and left everyone else outside.

Rob: As a kid you just want to do your stuff without external pressure. Looking back on those years, I
think it was a self-defense mechanism to lock ourselves in our small group of like-minded artists. People
like me and Sean built minimalist music, painted with numbers and maybe even positive. Unfortunately,
someone to group these people thought to use the adjective "intelligent", maybe some Midwestern kid.
With all the negative consequences of the case.

Sean: English culture is famous for reinventing. Before us there were Nightmares On Wax, LFO, Unique
3, A Guy Called Gerald, 808 State. Each with its own original style, and all with the conviction that it is
always better to be yourself and keep away from the homologation. We grew up with this mentality,
which also has a lot to do with hip-hop. You know, being "fresh". In America, instead - and believe me
I'm not doing this absolutely a race issue - many guys have grown up with the industrial, dullly interested
in techno but ignoring the black culture. Then when records arrived like ours from overseas, someone
must have said "Wow, what a cool one! Yes, this is intelligent dance. "

And then the Internet did the rest.

Sean: From there, then there was the explosion. No one has ever dared to call himself IDM before, but
then there was a swarm of American labels that made a name for themselves. It was enough to have a
808 or a 909 and all to shout "Let's do the IDM!". And we think, "What the fuck are you saying?"

Rob: Maybe because in America there was a lot more competition between guys looking for fame and
social interactions. So at some point a label hanged on the jacket.

Sean: What nobody has ever done in the UK. We do not like giving names to the genres. No one in the
shoegaze scene would ever tell you to be part of it. If you do, you're a newbie.

How important is the random component in your piece?

Sean: Really little. We do not use software like Ableton, sometimes to cut audio tracks. But for the
composition we use Max / MSP, using sequences that we write ourselves. They are all unique: some of
these are extremely deterministic, others have a small part of indeterminacy, but there is total control
of everything that happens, when and how. We also use noise generators, but they are strongly forced,
conveyed. The sequences are part of their universe: sometimes they interact with each other,
sometimes they run parallel.

So never leave the machines the chance to improvise.

Sean: It would sound like shit, it's safe. In fact, it's not really sure. Maybe a miracle could happen, as if a
monkey wrote a meaningful word on the typewriter. But it's almost certain that it would sound like shit.

Rob: Machines are software created by our hands. Slowly, you can see the software take shape even
before playing with it. In a sense, you can direct the software to your taste, keeping open branches and
branches of possibilities that are good for you. In short, sometimes we leave the software free field, but
we have drawn the boundaries of the field. We do not jammiamo with the machines, if anything we
build them from scratch. It is a long and complex process.

Sean: But it's easier and simpler for us to write a sequencer and give it instructions for when and how to
play a cash shot rather than opening a Logic or Ableton program and doing everything with MIDI.

A few months ago, Kraftwerk's The Man Machine turned 40 and is as devastating as they predicted
the importance of computers so long ago.
Sean: In Computer World you list everything we are today: Interpol, Deutsche Bank, Crime,
Entertainment, Education, Information. It was all there. They were futurologists, not musicians.

What they did is humanize the robots, you may have robots humans.
Sean: When you talk about human you mean something that is not artificial. I like the artificial, I like
Kraftwerk because they sound unnatural, they do not seem physical entities. I was 7/8 years old when I
saw their video on TV for the first time. My mind went crazy, they really seemed to come from the
future. And growing up in the '70s and' 80s, we all had the feeling of having the future in our hands and
of being able to shape it. We were convinced that technology would change the world, and so in a sense
it was. But I would not feel to distinguish the artificial from the human, because the former is always and
in any case the work of the second. No one has ever had computers in history, neither dinosaurs nor
anyone else. The computer is human. Now, the future can also scare, with all those androids and
humanoid robots. But it's not my problem, I'll be dead for a long time. The responsibility lies in the
hands of those who are young now.

Rob: I think Kraftwerk's was an attempt to approach machines by romanticizing the artificial, like some
sort of 1950s retro-futurist echo. Come on, like those movies like Metropolis. They were extremely
cynical because of those words listed in Computer World, but at the same time romantic in the
exaltation of all the possibilities offered by the future. The moment the sounds stopped being
rudimentary-just voices, claps and chants-and the organs popped up in churches thanks to technological
innovation, that's where the popularization of music began. Only in church had religious power, while in
Kraftwerk attention is shifted to the banks, the police.

Sean: And just like the first person who heard an organ, even when I heard the Kraftwerk or Moroder for
the first time I thought, 'What the heck of stuff is this? It's unbelievable 'As well as the first time I saw
someone scratch on TV: "Fuck, but then that's how they do it! I have a record all this way! "From that
moment on, a world of possibilities opened up for me. I would not say that we are inventors, we are
explorers of the universe of possibilities that technology offers.

Rob: There are so many variables and micro-decisions in our systems that it's hard to describe them,
even for us. It is an infinite process that we can not trace now. This mysterious element prevents our
music from being sterile. There is something profound and intangible in all this, that's why we are still
here, still as enthusiastic as the first day.

Paradoxically, in all this there is something romantic in the more eighteenth-century sense of the
term.
Sean: We're always there, it's the charm of the indefinite and the infinite.

So it would be a mistake to define your music impersonal. Some critic made it.
Sean: There's nothing more personal than our music. If you think it's cold it's because you did not
understand it. It matters little if you're a music critic or not.

Rob: It's a bit like when you're waiting for the bus with a stranger at the bus stop. You look at it, but
decide not to talk to it, making everything colder. Have you ever tried to do the opposite? Also to say a
bullshit. You'll see how everything seems less cold. It depends on how much you want to talk.

Sean: But then it's an old cliche like my grandmother, that of depriving human creation of humanity, just
because you do not do it with your hands like a statue. Do you use a computer? So it's cold. But why?

Is musical criticism useful then?

Sean: It's useful for living, to let others know that your record has just come out. But would you be able
to play the album after reading the review? How useful is it? Can you really communicate the emotions
of the album? How much did you approach the record after reading it? I do not really know if it's useful
or not, it depends on who does it and how.
Is it true that you once broke a trailer with the Boards Of Canada just to steal some champagne?
Rob: True!

Sean: It was a festival in Germany that had been canceled due to bad weather. There was mud
everywhere, so we found ourselves segregated backstage, with no chance to play and above all without
alcohol. They did not want to bring us a drink, okay? So we attacked the beverage caravan. I was
stressed, I wanted a fucking drink and these were the assholes of the festival. I stole a bowl of
champagne, for everyone's happiness. They kept her locked up for some kind of rapper. But since no
one showed up, they were hoping to sell it, 'these assholes that not even the logistics had managed to
manage.

Rob: And then comes the part of wrestling.

What part of wrestling?

Sean: Do not listen to Rob, he says bullshit.

Rob: Let's say that after the theft there was a fight, which because of the mud seemed wrestling. I only
remember the laughter.

Do not you turn around with the other Warp artists?

Sean: No, I would not say. Once I was shooting with Richie [Aphex Twin, nda], while in the '90s Rob lived
for a while in Sheffield with Tom [Squarepusher, nda]. Sometimes I get Richie on Skype, but everything
has changed since then. Once we were a more united group, but time changes everything. People
exchanged flyers from hand to hand, there was enthusiasm in the air. Surely the breaking point was
when the Warp offices moved from Sheffield to London.

Rob: It was such a united group that it was literally the other artists who invited you to the label. I think
it was Mark Bell of the LFOs that made us sign the first contract with Warp.

Here, his was a tremendous loss.

Sean: Fuck, yes. And you know what's more atrocious [died in 2014 at 44 during a surgical operation,
nda] in all this? That he left without first completing his things. There will be so much of that
unpublished material of his and the LFOs that will never listen to anyone. My heart is shaken if I think
about it.

I have the LFO letters tattooed on my left knee. Maybe it's better to talk about something else if you
do not want to see me weep on the keyboard.
Rob: Yes, it's better to throw it into politics.

Well, once you've dealt with the Anti EP too .

Sean: Yes, but it was a protest against the politicization of music. He wanted to be an anti-political move
against the British government that was trying to control an art form. In the 21st century. We could not
not make fun of it, it was necessary for healthy satire. Ridiculous. I do not like politics in music and in a
way I regret doing it because people have made the wrong idea of the EP. I like the sounds, I do not
spend my life labeling the other fucking people, I do not make the bile to the liver arguing over the
Internet with the other assholes who do not have a dick to do. "Oh, you're a proto-anarcho-capitalist" or
what the fuck do I know. But please. Always everyone to give labels.
And today how do you feel about yourself?
Sean: I think worse. YouTube in the UK is censoring the videos of rapper drill [trailer sub-genre], because
in the texts we talk about ganster and people who are stabbing. What the fuck, where is the free
expression? Do we need to approve the music now? It's Nazi stuff. I would be almost tempted to make
an album drill. I do not do it just because I do not feel it very much like music.

Rob: And it's amazing how the drill as well as the techno and the drum and bass are united by being very
simple, minimal and at the same time hated by the authorities. The government tries to poison them
since they existed. As far as we're making things less simple, we grew up with Detroit techno and the
Chicago house, so at the time of the crackdown of the rave in the nineties we decided to line up saying
ours. We took more risks. Here is explained the EP.

Sean: Because these commanding people believe they can do whatever they want from their beautiful
offices. But always keep in mind that they do not command a dick. At the limit they can send a message,
with which we can possibly clean our ass.