From Kent Williams Sent Mon, Jul 20th 1998, 23:06
From Kent Williams Sent Mon, Jul 20th 1998, 23:06
On Mon, 20 Jul 1998 xxxxxxx@xxxxxx.xxx wrote: > >> Is there a good reason for their secrecy, or can I > >> assume that it's simply sonic-insecurity? > > I don't think they care one way or another actually, if you check the archives I and others posted the gear list for their last swing through the US. Everything they do could be made on that equipment, modulo a few extra studio gizmos. I don't even remember what it was I posted, because it doesn't really matter. What I hear in their stuff is a few basic analogue sounds that don't have any distinct character to suggest a specific synth, and a lot of creative sample mangling. Things like cutting single cycles out of other samples and looping them, recording found sounds, and repeating signal processing functions on a sample until it gets weird. You could do autechre-like music on a very minimal setup, perhaps even a PC with Sound Forge, or a Mac with Sound Edit 16. The actual gear isn't that important. > Having said that, my question remains - why the secrecy? > Again it ISN'T a secret, it's just not that important. > Perhaps electronic music still has a long way to mature. Well I think it's more like Electronic Musicians need to mature. Electronic Music has been around for a long time, and there are plenty of fully realized, mature works out there. > It seems to me that the equipment secrecy is nothing but > selfishness and insecurity. It would be ridiculous for > Chick Corea to not tell anyone what synths he used on his > last album, or for him to not talk about his creative process > at all. It would be ridiculous to listen to anything he's produced since about 1973, in my opinion -- your mileage may vary. > > So what don't they want us to know? > If you're as famous as Autechre (which isn't very famous actually), then you are going to have to deal with many more people that want a piece of your time than you can possibly satisfy. Trainspotters wanting to know which distortion pedal they use are just a subgenus of all those people. It's primarily a waste of time for them to even bother; and in the interviews I've seen it seemed like they didn't really feel like it was worth spending any time on.