Music used to be very closely aligned with theatre. Even classical music, with its big production and strict scores was ultimately something performed to an audience, with no two performances the same. These days, a significant class of music, if not yet all music, is closer to painting or sculpture than performance. Think about the difference: you’re not going to cheer van Gogh, saying, “Encore, paint Starry Night again!” The artist creates it once, and that’s it, it’s recorded for posterity.

That said, not all painting or sculpture is strictly composed for a definite, finished product. There are many great artists who focus more on process than the end result; they don’t stop at one point, stand back proudly and proclaim, “It is done!” For them, it’s about craft, playing with boundaries, testing themselves and their tools to see what they can do and what can be done.

Autechre are just such sculptors of sound. Over the years their music has drifted from perfectly nuanced “intelligent” techno compositions to just as perfectly nuanced biological structures of flowing machine architecture.

They are craftsman and scientists, creating some of the most exciting, stimulating music I’ve ever hear. But they are definitely an acquired taste, and as much as I love them, each new album is still a challenge to swim through the first time. The thing that makes it worth it is the attention they pay to the music. Much of it is so complex and intricate that people began speculating years ago that Autechre have started using computer programs to generate the music. But as Sean Booth insists about one track in a recent interview, “…no, I really did it, it’s all modeling, it’s not a sample… it took ages to make. You know, we really get into the craft of it.”

Some complain that their music has become too hard or inhuman over the years. In response, from the same interview, they dicuss their craft a bit:

[about] the trend of people saying it’s hard, I don’t know, I don’t hear that. I mean, certainly it’s more dynamic now, but [sighs]…hmm, how can I say this? People’s focus– you can’t ever take it for granted. It’s absolute. It’s essential. When you listen to a track your focus shifts and moves around within it; obviously, we’re really aware of that, and that’s a big part of what we do. [the track itself] is often not that complex, it’s just that the way that you listen to it is, the way that you are guided through it as you listen.

Do you know about wildstyle graffiti? Kids battling to get the least legible but the most fly interpretation that you can get. That’s how we see it, really. It’s that kind of abstraction– it’s not a disregard for the form– you still totally, totally admire and respect what it is that you’ve got to work with– and by that I mean traditional patterns that are recognizable to some extent. So, we’re kind of flirting with available formats. What we’re doing, we don’t see it as any different from DJing or doing a cut-up or an edit mix. A re-application of rules and ideas and twists on them, with new moves if you like. Like popping or breaking, it’s trying to come up with slight variations and new moves, variations on subsets of other moves.

I think that’s what makes their music great. They are aware of the listener as much as of their own skills. They use what they know to guide you through their track as much as they create spaces for you to get lost in and explore.

I really do see their music as more on the level of graffiti, or perhaps Jackson Pollack. Music in sprays, drips and whorls. The basic elements of the art don’t change (percussion, melody), but the experience is wholly unique, and can even be quite humourous.

Well, that’s enough about Autechre. Here’s “Pro Radii” from their most recent album, Untilted, which just came out in April. And for fun contrast, here’s “Clipper” from their widely acclaimed album Tri Repetae, which came out ten years ago, in 1995. [beware, however: Autechre like to compose long tracks, so those files are both just over 8 MB and will take a while to download over slower connections]