Falling Down the Autechre Rabbit Hole

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what music would sound like if composed by a sentient fax machine experiencing existential dread inside a collapsing geometry engine—congratulations, your ears are ready for Autechre.

Formed by Rob Brown and Sean Booth in the late ’80s, Autechre isn’t so much a band as it is an interdimensional math experiment gone delightfully rogue. They came up through Warp Records in the golden age of intelligent dance music (IDM)—a genre name so pompous it practically apologizes for making you dance—but unlike many of their label mates, Autechre never stopped evolving. They just went full cyborg.

A Sonic Language for the Digitally Deranged
To listen to Autechre is to willingly lose your footing. It’s like listening to techno translated into an extinct dialect, then filtered through the wiring of an interstellar weather balloon. Rhythms start and collapse like failed architectural projects. Melodies? Occasionally. Sometimes. Maybe. But more often than not, you’ll be head-nodding to something that sounds like an R2-D2 panic attack recorded on reel-to-reel.

And yet… there’s groove. There’s soul. You just have to let go of gravity first.

The Algorithm Will See You Now
Their later work (we’re talking post-Confield, 2001 and beyond) dives deep into generative composition. Think custom-built software, self-evolving patches, and music that often surprises even them. Autechre doesn’t program songs—they build ecosystems and then press “record” as the machines mutate into something glitchy, glorious, and possibly sentient.

Albums like Exai, NTS Sessions 1–4, or the infamous elseq series aren’t so much collections of tracks as entire weather systems. You’re not meant to memorize them. You’re supposed to get caught in them like a sonic blizzard with metallic snowflakes and broken VCRs instead of sleigh bells.

Live Shows Like Alien Séances
Seeing Autechre live is like being blindfolded inside a speaker cabinet during an earthquake inside an asteroid. Since around 2005, they’ve performed in complete darkness. Not metaphorically. Literally. No visuals, no strobes, no laptop glowing like a nerdy beacon—just full blackout and audio chaos. You hear them like you’re inside a dream designed by HAL 9000 after a philosophy degree.

Are They Even Human?
Yes. Sort of. Interviewed, Booth and Brown are dry-witted, casually brilliant Mancunians who sound like guys you’d split a pint with at a pub that also sells modular synth components. They’re not pretentious—just far, far ahead.

They also love hip-hop. Seriously. Dig deep into the DNA of their sound, and you’ll find warped echoes of Public Enemy, electro, and boom-bap breakbeats buried beneath the binary swirl. It’s the ghost of the street still haunting the machine.

How to Listen (Or Surrender): A Quick Guide

• Beginner: Amber (dreamy), Tri Repetae (robot jazz), Chiastic Slide (gritty evolution)

• Intermediate: Confield (begin glitch initiation), Draft 7.30 (time falls apart)

• Advanced: NTS Sessions (8 hours, bring snacks), elseq 1–5 (pray to your router)

Or just press play and stop trying to “get it.” Let it get you instead.

Techno’s Cryptographers
Autechre is what happens when rave culture falls into a black hole and emerges as pure abstract art. They make music that dares you to keep up, that breaks apart the binary and reassembles it as emotional code. Listening is an act of surrender. A test of patience. A gift to your inner glitch.

Or maybe it’s just two Mancs making bangers with alien machinery.

Either way, Peluche Brutale bassist Gianni Papa once called it “the sound of a drum machine having a nervous breakdown at an art gallery”—and he meant it as a compliment.