Sujet Autechre

sean if u go, wait till 808, kraftwerk would be proud.

then u can go get some crashage

pls

What's the worst thing that ever happened while playing live?

Sean : once my r8 caught on fire, and my hands were covered in vodka so they also caught on fire, and to put them out i starting clapping my hands together, and all the audience started clapping as well, and some of them started setting their hands on fire as well, as a kind of tribute

do you remember that gig with fennesz & roedelius ? i've seen pictures & always wondered about it, like some all star game or something.


Sean : that was actually a bit of a weird gig

i think roedelius had expected us to do beats like amber, and we were at that point where we had dived headlong into doing algo stuff, and we were giving him really weird rhythms. he kind of gave up halfway thru and starting playing solo piano stuff, so we all had to kind of back off and let him get on with it, cos he couldn't deal with the weirdness in the rhythm.

so it sort of happened in 2 stages, with us jamming with christian for a bit (going really well i thought), with bits of roedelius, and then a big solo section of roedelius playing sentimental piano stuff.

he shouted at us afterwards, i felt really bad. huge fan getting told off by elder statesman. he actually thought we had deceived or tricked him somehow. it's a real shame, we felt like we had fucked it up by being too adventurous.

we were discussing this recently (milking it for all it's worth)

the main barrier is the sheer amount of it we would have to go through, it's a few months work i reckon, if it was going to be comprehensive (and that's hard cos the archive is WELL patchy)

and we were debating what we'd actually do with it as well

ie. whether it's better to stitch the best bits of different gigs together (like a lot of 70s/80s live albums did) or to release them slightly edited (george lucas), or to touch them up here and there sonically, or leave them totally untouched

it's our style to release them untouched really - but they would sound a bit weak if we left them 100% intact cos they were mixed for a live rig, and what sounds good mixed in a venue can sound terrible as a 2 track master played at home (a bit better really loud on cans but never quite right)

the fact that we would prob end up messing with the sound sets off my autism and makes me want to make other changes

are you sending CV/ Gate out of your computers to external synths with these new computer cv boxes like expert sleepers? or is it Midi or native computer synthesis on the computer in your last couple releases?


Sean : we have a motu interface that can send cv but most of my stuff's internal

we don't use midi we made a better protocol. midi is stone age really


Will it be published for free or commercialy in the future or is it already available somewhere? How does old hardware recognize this better protocol? Does it behave significantly better when syncing software (DAW, or MAX) with external hardware?

Sean : nah we're only using it with our own stuff. it's incompatible with anything external, if we need midi we have to convert and we use sysex to do that usually, it works well enough

i'm not using any midi gear atm at all, rob still uses a bit but not much these days



we don't use midi we made a better protocol. midi is stone age really

could you elaborate on that? what did you improve exactly?

Sean : baud rate, resolution, the type of messages

it's not really a good way to ask the question tbh cos it wasn't designed as an improvement to midi, it's a different kind of protocol

but it makes midi redundant apart from for talking to old gear

By the way, what was the reason for not going on tour with Radiohead? I mean, was it a collision of two different music approaches (in case they wanted you to colab with them on stage) or was it because you were offered being just an opening act for their show (in that case I would fully understand - to play for people that are not really interested...).

Don't you regret the decision a little? I mean, money offered surely must had been good! ))

And what do you think about Radiohead's takes on making electronic tracks like Everything In Its Right Place and Kid A? I personally think they are very well produced, the vibe is strong.


we didn't want to play in stadiums to radiohead fans really. just seemed a bit superfluous

i dunno i mean they were good at writing songs and then they got into our stuff and their stuff didn't seem to improve much, i thought they would take it off in some mad direction but the critics bit hard, everyone around them got upset and they retreated. whatever