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Autechre and Electronic Music Fandom:Performing Knowledge Online throughTechno-Geek DiscoursesThomas BrettPublished online: 22 Oct 2014.

To cite this article: Thomas Brett (2015) Autechre and Electronic Music Fandom: PerformingKnowledge Online through Techno-Geek Discourses, Popular Music and Society, 38:1, 7-24, DOI:10.1080/03007766.2014.973763

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Autechre and Electronic MusicFandom: Performing KnowledgeOnline through Techno-GeekDiscoursesThomas Brett

This article approaches the English experimental electronic dance music group Autechrethrough the talk and music-making of its fans. I argue that Autechre fans are perceptivelisteners who perform their curiosity and knowledge online in a variety of ways. Drawingon two sets of case studies derived from music technology user forum discussions andamateur instructional videos on YouTube, I show how the techno-geek discourses andmusical products of Autechre fans help build understanding of the group’s sounds,equipment, and techniques. Contrary to Autechre’s insistence that its music is abstract andwithout any meaning, the work of its fans suggests that it is about the creative process itself.

We are absolutely not trying to represent or duplicate anything at all. (Sean Booth,Autechre (qtd in Stubbs)

Introduction

One of the defining characteristics of the English experimental electronic dance musicgroup Autechre is their insistence that their complex, austere, and often abstractmusic has no meaning. In interviews, Autechre’s members, Rob Brown and SeanBooth, maintain that their work takes its inspiration from nothing beyond theequipment and techniques they use to make it. This formalist claim for a kind ofabsolute or autonomous music (see Hanslick) that exists in its own self-created worldwithout any extra-musical meaning beyond its own sonic designs is reinforced by thegroup’s cryptic track titles, non-representational album-cover art, and theirperformances which take place in total darkness to prevent audiences from knowingthe specifics of their equipment and the ways it is used. Yet, contrary to Autechre’sinsistence that their music has no meaning, the talk and music-making of its fans

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Popular Music and Society, 2015Vol. 38, No. 1, 7–24, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03007766.2014.973763

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suggest otherwise. Indeed, Autechre’s sense of musical absolutism, autonomy, andsecrecy has inspired in its dedicated listeners what I call a techno-geek fandomoriented around electronic musical technologies and fuelled by speculative quests tounderstand how the group make their music as well as how to make music thatsounds similar to it.

This article approaches the sounds, equipment, and techniques of Autechrethrough the online discourses and musical products of Autechre fans, many of whomare musicians adept at probing the minutiae of electronic music—from soundproduction to matters of aesthetics and composition. The article has three parts. Thefirst part provides a brief history of Autechre and surveys their approach to makingmusic. The second introduces my own Autechre fandom and situates it within thecontext of media and musical fandom theory. The third considers the discourses andmusical products of Autechre fans through two sets of case studies: the first based onmusic technology and electronic music listserves and software forums, the second onYouTube instructional videos. I argue that the discourses and musical objects ofAutechre fans expand the textual boundaries of Autechre’s music through two means.First, on the listserve and software forums, fans enact a public performance of theirfandom by demonstrating to one another their knowledge of the group’s sounds,equipment, and techniques. Second, in the YouTube videos, fans remake originalAutechre musical texts with their own input, either by developing new works inspiredby Autechre’s work or by re-creating particular Autechre sounds. My case-studyfindings on the discourses and musical objects of techno-geek fandom show how aseemingly meaningless and autonomous experimental electronic dance music is infact in continual call and response dialogue with the activities of fans who performtheir knowledge of its creation and sounds. In sum, the meaning of Autechre’s musicresides in the endless ways of making electronic music and the creative process itself.

The Enigma of Autechre

Formed in Manchester in 1987 through their shared interest in electro, hip-hop, andtechno musics, Rob Brown and Sean Booth began working together by making mixtapes and collaborating on original tracks using a few pieces of cheap electronicmusical equipment (Holder). In the early 1990s, the group’s music came to theattention of Warp Records, an English label that would become an important outletfor experimental electronic dance music. Warp signed Autechre and in 1993 releasedtheir debut, Incunabula. It was during this time that electronic dance music had begunto splinter into various experimental forms, moving away from the “four-on-the-floor” rhythmic grid established by disco, electro, techno, and house musics in the late1970s and early 1980s. Using the conventional tools of electronic dance music such assynthesizers, samplers, and drum machines, Autechre and others began makingunconventional and less dance-oriented instrumental music by combining repetitiveyet complex beats, shifting textures, and atmospheric melodies and harmonies.1 Someof the labels used to describe this experimental turn that espouses “dark abstraction

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over sensual pleasure” (Gilbert and Pearson 76) include “electronic listening music,”“intelligent techno,” “ambient techno,” “IDM” or “intelligent dance music,” “post-techno” (Strachen) and “electronica.”2

Today, 25 years after their formation, Autechre continue to compose and performmusic using a variety of techno-musical systems.3 These systems include hardware-based set-ups consisting of analog and digital synthesizers, drum machines, samplers,sequencers, effects units, and mixers, and software such as Logic, Digital Performer,and Max/MSP, a visual programming environment that is widely used byexperimental electronic musicians. Moreover, Autechre often modify or hack theirmusical hardware and software (cf. Collins) to further extend their capabilities. Thegroup’s longevity and popularity perhaps have something to do with their relentlessexperimentation and refusal to conform to musical trends. Indeed, by focusing on thecreative possibilities of their techno-musical systems, Autechre have carved out adistinctive niche in contemporary electronic dance music as serious anduncompromising sonic innovators whose recorded musical oeuvre on Warp Recordsis considerable: 11 full-length recordings and 13 EPs to date. Stylistically, the music onthese releases is diverse, ranging from hard acid techno and gentle ambient, to glitchand noise constructions, onto even more unclassifiable synthetic soundscapes.4

However, despite their productivity and the stylistic range of their musical output,Autechre explain very little about how they work. Over the years the group has beeneither relatively secretive or vague and obscurely technical regarding its equipmentand techniques. In the few substantial interviews they have given over the course oftheir career, Booth and Brownmention specific pieces of equipment but rarely divulgehow this technology is used or on what tracks.5 For example, in a 1997 interview inSound on Sound magazine, Booth discusses his affection for and use of the RolandMC-202 sequencer and the Casio RZ-1 sampling drum machine. On the 202 he says,“I like the 202 sequencer. It’s like playing dominoes or something.” On the Casio,“That’s really old school. The sampling quality is crap but it sounds awesome” (qtd inHolder). In a subsequent interview in the same magazine seven years later, Boothsimply states that Autechre use any and all audio software programs: “We useanything, man. I don’t have favorites, and I don’t want habits either” (qtd in Tingen).It is through this kind of non-specific commentary that Autechre create a sense ofmystery around their music-making. Booth and Brown’s obscure track titles (such as“VLetrmx21” and “Simm”), non-representational and abstract album artwork, andrepeated claims for musical autonomy reinforce this sense of mystery. As Brown putsit, “That’s the thing; we haven’t really got a subject, we’re just sort of doing it” (qtd inChamberlin). Finally, mystery plays out at Autechre’s live performances where thegroup’s hardware and software set-up is top-secret—their gear completely hidden ona darkened stage, bits of wires and boxes and blinking lights revealed only for aninstant when illuminated by the flash of fans’ cameras.6 In short, Autechre is a creativeenigma, inspiring its fans to wonder about how they use technology to makeelectronic music.

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Fandom and Musical Practice

Wanting to know more is at the heart of fandom, understood in its broadest sense as away of engaging in an activity in sympathy with other like-minded fellow fans. Fansoften share a fascination with the details of the object of their fandom—whether thatobject is a celebrity, a vintage collectible, an author, a musical style, or any other entityor experience around which our interest can coalesce. In its capacities for engagingwith cultural activities and objects of fascination (Penley; Jenkins, Textual Poachers,Convergence, and “Afterword”; Bacon-Smith), fandom is a “mode of participation”(Cavicchi 4) that acts as a mirror reflecting both the nature of its object and thesensibilities of the fans. Moreover, fans are often “excessive readers” (Fiske 116) whoascribe “new and original significance” to media texts such as books or TV shows thatextends beyond mere pleasure (Grossberg 52). Michel de Certeau calls thisinterpretive process “textual poaching” whereby media texts are actively engaged andindividualized by their audiences who are like “nomads poaching their way acrossfields they did not write” (174). Building on de Certeau in his work on Star Trekfandom, Henry Jenkins suggests that fans create new derivative texts “restructuredinto compressed narratives” that expand on details not in the original “poached” text(Textual Poachers 235). At stake here is what Matt Hills calls “the critical significanceof information” for fans and how they construct their objects of fandom (177). Fanspool their shared knowledge to form a “community of imagination” that “constitutesitself through a common affective engagement” (179). Using the example of fans ofthe 1990s television show The X-Files, Hills argues that this group uses onlinenewsgroups and forums to “perform its fan audiencehood, knowing that other fanswill act as a readership for speculations, observations and commentaries” (177).Hills’s work proposes online public performance of fandom as a locus for examiningthe affective resonances of the original media text.

Fandom is an increasingly studied perspective on musical practice, recognized as ameans of understanding the resonances of music’s affect “beyond formalist concerns”(Punathambekar 207) by way of the social lives of its fans who “form special,sustained attachments to musical performers or genres” (Cavicchi vii). Music fans areoften amateur musicians themselves, and Simon Frith observes that fandom is builtinto their “obsessive music listening” practices that guide learning about their craft(55). Similarly, Ruth Finnegan observes that amateur music-making is “the ‘hidden’practice of local music” that provides “the essential background for the more‘professional’ musical world” (18). Finnegan suggests that “music is engaged in andfought over and created and maintained by the many many unacclaimed localmusicians whose work both reveals them as creative and active human beings andserves to uphold the cultural traditions we take for granted” (341). Upholding musicaltraditions describes another role played by fans, as Mark Duffett describes in his workon heckling at live music performances. Heckling is a verbal critique and “an audibleintervention into the project of the artist,” illustrating how fandom can be a“responsive action: a counter-performance about a performance” (45). Heckling

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suggests that listeners “do not always get what they want and their responses can alterthe balance of musical performance,” blurring “the boundaries that define the objectof listening pleasure” by becoming an audible part of the performance itself (38).In this way, heckling also undermines the aura of well-known performers by revealinghow easy it is to alter the “symbolic economy” (41) that underlies the social valueascribed to them by their fans. In my case studies in the third part of this article, I drawon fandom theory to explain how Autechre fans perform their engagement with thegroup’s music-making. But first I turn to the roots of my own Autechre fandom.

Strategies of Personal Fandom: Writing an Autechre Ventrilo-Dialogue

In their review of musical ethnographies from 1976 to 2002, Jesse D. Ruskin andTimothy Rice cite the increasing fragmentation and deterritorialization of musiccultures as a reason for the “ethnomusicological study of individuals” (318). They alsonote how “[t]he ethnographer, too, speaks with multiple voices—the scholarly voice,the experiential voice, and the conversational voice, among others” (315). To thesevoices I add the voice of the musical ethnographer as fan—a voice of criticaladmiration that is inspired by enthusiasm for a particular musician, music teacher,musical instrument, musical style, or some combination of these loci of musicalfandom. Indeed, being a fan of experimental electronic music has guided my researchinterests for the past 12 years. I first learned about Autechre around 2002, drawn in bymy affection for the group’s sound design, their complex beats, and by their secretiveuse of technology. I was curious about what I perceived as Autechre’s creativeintegrity—how Booth and Brown did not seem constrained by the passing musicalfads of the electronic musical moment, choosing instead to continue theirexperimentation like scientists doing intuitive research on sound. As I listened toAutechre over the years, I wanted to know more about their music and searchedonline for clues about the group’s equipment and techniques; I even composed myown computer music.7 In short, becoming an Autechre fan enculturated me into theways of serious fandom (Cavicchi 42) and initiated a journey of learning aboutelectronic music. This journey eventually led to my writing a series of animatedfictional conversations with musicians and composers I call Ventrilo-Dialogues.Produced with animation software and showcased on my blog, these dialogues consistof a series of questions and answers informed by my reading of previously publishedinterviews and my own adventurous speculation.8

One Ventrilo-Dialogue (Figure 1) features a conversation with Autechre that takesplace in a futuristic, spaceship setting. In this video, Autechre’s Booth and Brown,represented by a robot (pictured on the right), answer a series of questions fromanother non-human character named Preset (pictured on the left) who represents me.Drawing on my experience listening to Autechre, reading about them, and attendingone of their performances, Preset asks Autechre about their approach to composingand live improvisation. In contrast to their real world interviews, Autechre offer Presetcandid answers that explain their philosophy of music-making. As an example of fan

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behavior stemming from “a mixture of fascination and frustration” (Jenkins,“Afterword” 362) regarding Autechre’s public inaccessibility, my Ventrilo-Dialoguefunctions simultaneously as a homage and as an earnest attempt to articulatequestions about the group’s work. Working as an ethnographer-fan in the virtualworld, the dialogue helped me think through issues concerning how Autechre maketheir music and how their fans perceive and consume it. These issues in turn shapedmy subsequent research presented in the case studies below. What follows is dividedinto three sections, each of which reflects different aspects of Autechre fandom. Thefirst two sections examine discussion on listserves and software forums to explore thegroup’s equipment and techniques, and the last considers Autechre fandom expressedthrough YouTube videos.

Listserve and Software Forums: Querying Musical Equipment, Technique, andAuthenticity

What does it mean to be a fan of Autechre’s experimental electronic dance music? Forsome fans, it means listening closely, asking questions and trading information withother fans, and even trying to make similar-sounding music. On electronic musiclistserves and music technology user forums, listeners of varying levels of experienceinteract with one another through shared interests in particular electronic musicians,pieces of equipment, or musical styles. Connected through their shared interests, fansengage in technology-oriented question and answer dialogues that voice the concernsof novice musicians who want to knowmore about Autechre and voice the insight andadvice of more experienced musicians who provide tips based on their own music-making and listening practices. Discussion threads often begin with a question abouttechniques for producing a specific type of sound, equipment recommendations, orhow to trouble-shoot technical problems. These questions receive nuanced replies thatillustrate how fans pay close attention to the work of renowned artists such as Autechre.

Figure 1 Ventrilo-Dialogue: A Conversation with Autechre (Brett, “Ventrilo-Dialogue”).

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Narratives of Speculation and Information: Making Autechre-Style Beats

On the Ableton Live Forum, an online discussion bulletin board for registered users ofAbleton Live software, musicians talk to one another about how to go about makingunusual and complex beats in the style of Autechre. For example, an Ableton usernamed Boyinabox initiates a discussion thread about beat-making by asking: “Anyone know how to do Autechre style beats within Live or with use of other instrumentsor plugins?” (10 Aug. 2005, accessed 1 May 2012). Boyinabox’s question receivesnumerous answers. A musician named Noisetonepause references what was at thetime of Boyinabox’s query a recent Autechre interview in Sound on Sound magazine(Tingen) to point out that the group had most likely used Max/MSP software to makeits beats. Perhaps referring to Autechre’s 2005 recording Untilted, Noisetonepause alsonotes that the group’s beats “do sound quite generic Pluggo-ish to me at times” (20Aug. 2005, accessed 1 May 2012). Pluggo is the name of a set of sound-processingeffects by the company Cycling ’74 that can be used within digital audio software suchas Ableton Live.

In contrast to Noisetonepause’s Pluggo effects speculation, a musician namedJah4life references a quote from the same Sound on Sound interview mentioned byNoisetonepause to suggest that Autechre might have made their beats by simplermeans:

I read an interview once . . . in which Sean Booth said if he were locked in a roomfor the rest of his life and he could only have 1 piece of software and 1 piece ofhardware (besides the computer on which to run the software) he’d take DigitalPerformer and a Microphone.

Jah4life also speculates on the musical process behind the sounds on early Autechrerecordings such as Confield (2001), observing: “I hear some percussion sounds likekicks and such sped way up to create melodies” (26 Oct. 2008, accessed 1 May 2012).A musician named dj superflat then contributes to the discussion by referencing aninterview with Booth on the website for Elektron, an electronic musical equipmentcompany, noting that Autechre circa 2008 had been using Elektron drum machinesand sequencers in their live set up. dj superflat advises Noisetonepause to purchase anElektron drummachine himself “to cut out the middleman” (26 Oct. 2008, accessed 1May 2012). In doing so, dj superflat echoes Booth’s product endorsement from hisElektron interview: “I think people should play on these things because that’s the onlyway you can have any idea. Extremely capable machines and we’re still finding stuff todo in there after two years of heavy use” (Martensson). Finally, a musician nameddavethedrummer contributes some historical perspective by recalling having seenAutechre perform at Glastonbury, UK, in the late 1990s and noticing that the groupsequenced their beats on a Roland R-8 MKII drum machine. He points out that theRoland R-8 has a “real time humanize function” which allows users to “record apattern then select pads whilst recording and record wild changes in pitch and decayetc etc.” Based on this first-hand knowledge of the Roland drum machine (having

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owned one himself) as well as his close observation of Autechre in performance (itselfa feat, considering that the group plays in total darkness), Davethedrummer explainsAutechre’s techniques for live beat-making in the late 1990s:

autechre used this [real time humanize] function a lot! they would take a relativelysimple electro pattern and start wildly pitching the hi hats which made them soundlike metal gongs or crashing dustbins and pitch the snares up till they were soundinglike hi hats etc. very easy to do this on the r8 and really effective. (27 Oct. 2008,accessed 1 May 2012)

This online discussion illustrates what Hills (2002) describes as a shared interest inspecific narratives that “remain constitutive” of a fan community (180). In this case,the discussion thread initiated by Boyinabox and contributed to by Noisetonepause,Jah4life, dj superflat, and davethedrummer articulates narratives of speculation andinformation (ibid.) by providing insight into the sounds and techniques of Autechre.As with other discussion threads on the website, Boyinabox’s simple question initiatesa variety of helpful responses that range from conjectural to observational perspectiveson Autechre’s work. Considered together, the responses exemplify how Autechreinspires its fans to pool their knowledge and think through how the group makes itsmusic. Other fan community narratives emerge in other online contexts.

Narratives of Detection and Authenticity: Hearing Preset Sounds

As illustrated in the examples above, fans listen closely to Autechre’s sounds. Indeed,the example of Noisetonepause noticing what he believes to be the “generic” sounds ofa Pluggo sound-processing effect suggests that underpinning fans’ talk about how tocreate Autechre-like sounds is a concern with musical authenticity. This concern isforegrounded in other online discussions in which fans recognize specific factory-made or “preset” sound timbres on Autechre recordings. For example, in onediscussion thread on the website We Are the Music Makers, fans discuss the sounds onAutechre’sOversteps (2010). A fan named Kcinsu from California observes that he/shehears what sounds like a certain type of synthesizer, noting how “I was surprised, that Icould actually recognize the timbres!” (25 Feb. 2010, accessed 11 June, 2012). Anotherfan named antiwatmm from the UK observes that he/she hears a number of presetsounds from Ableton Live, Apple Logic, and Native Instruments’ Reaktor software:

Here are the things i recognize or think that i recognize on this album (all software):Logic Audio’s plugin ‘Sculpture’ specifically the preset ‘marble on a glass table’ onKrylonAbleton Live’s TensionAbleton Live’s ColliderReaktor patch MetalloReaktor patch SteampipeTassman. (18 Feb. 2010, accessed 11 June 2012)

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The observations of antiwatmm regarding preset sounds and software instrumentsdemonstrate the depth of understanding some Autechre fans have of digital musicaltools. In fact, antiwatmm’s list of preset sounds suggests that he/she has likely spentconsiderable time with the sounds and used that understanding to inform his/herAutechre listening. Moreover, since some of these sounds (such as Logic’s “Krylon”preset) are buried deep within software instrument sound libraries, antiwatmm’sidentifying preset sounds audible in Autechre’s music points to the labor of a fan whohas both explored and recalled sounds in the endless byways of music software.9 Theobservation also suggests how “fan practices carry their own distinctive criteria ofrelevance” (Hills 179), guiding other fellow fans towards what is significant to knowabout their shared object of fandom. In this case, antiwatmm’s belief that he/she hearspreset sounds performs narratives of detection and authenticity by holding upAutechre to the group’s own high standards of sonic craftsmanship and integrity.While in theory it should not matter where an electronic musician’s sounds comefrom or how they are created, for both Autechre and their fans a sound’s source issignificant.10 Moreover, when a fan recognizes a sound preset they puncture some ofAutechre’s aura that depends on listeners not knowing how the group creates theirsounds, for, as Duffett argues, the aura of a well-known performer “depends on theaudience’s knowledge of both his performance in its widest sense and how famous hehas become for having it” (43). On the one hand then, when antiwatmm detects presetsounds in Autechre’s music his/her observation removes some of the mystery aroundthe group, weakening their aura of being uncompromisingly innovative. On the otherhand, recognizing sounds also empowers Autechre fans to re-evaluate the group’smusic in light of new understandings that “celebrate and validate the fan’s knowledge”(Hills 181). This recognition-as-empowerment is a counter-performance (Duffett 45)that reassures fans that perhaps the distance between their own musical work andsensibilities and that of Autechre is not so great after all. In this way, detecting soundsin the way antiwatmm does enables fans to assert their cultural capital (Bourdieu) byengaging their knowledge of electronic music-making that is grounded in their own,often substantial, experience.

In sum, electronic music listserve and software forum discussions around the topicsof musical equipment, musical process, and preset sounds are spaces forunderstanding the thinking that guides Autechre fans’ listening and music making.Linking the work of Autechre with the thinking of its fans, these discussions“continually blur the boundaries that define the object of listening pleasure” (Duffett40). Boyinabox initiated a narrative of speculation by asking his fellow Ableton Forummembers “how to do Autechre style beats.” The various responses he received revealthat there is much opinion but little consensus on how Autechre work: Does the groupuse Cycling ’74’s Pluggo effects to make beats as Noisetonepause suggests? Have theymoved back to their roots in electro and techno, as DJ superflat says based on hisreading of one interview, by using hardware equipment by Elektron? Or shouldBoyinabox perhaps pay close attention to davethedrummer’s recollection of havingobserved the group up close as they manipulated percussion sounds on a vintage

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Roland R-8 drum machine? Other Autechre fans such as Kcinsu and antiwatmm heara number of sounds they can identify in Autechre. In the case of antiwatmm, his/herknowledge of numerous software instruments and their sound presets led to an auralsleuthing that performs narratives of detection and authenticity by revealing a “seriesof known and regular routes” or musical pathways (Finnegan 305) through whichAutechre may (or may not) have traveled to make their music. As with fan speculationon Autechre’s beat-making strategies, antiwatmm’s informed detection of presetsounds inspires further thinking about the construction of authenticity inexperimental electronic music.

YouTube Videos: Demonstrating Autechre-Style Musical Techniques

On YouTube, fans query and deconstruct Autechre’s music through self-producedvideos of computer software used to make Autechre-style sounds. In this section Idraw on e-mail interviews to examine the work of three Autechre fans whose videosdemonstrate Max/MSP and Ableton Live software. These videos exemplify how thetechnology of computer music production has enabled fans to become producers-composers-performers (Moorefield; Theberge). Fans use YouTube as a space forteaching and learning about musical practice, posting instructional videos of theirmusic-production skills to share with others in a mediated relationship of reciprocalsharing Kiri Miller calls “amateur-to-amateur” (184). These videos express electronicmusic fandom through creative activity that effectively mimics Autechre’s techniquesand sounds.

The first video that I will discuss is Jordan’s “autechre max msp fun drummachine.”Jordan is a 30-year old musician, composer, and sound designer from Texas who hasposted 17 electronic music-making videos on YouTube under the moniker midinerd.His work has 193 subscribers and has garnered over 90,000 page views. Jordan firstbecame interested in electronic music through the videogames he played as a childand discovered Autechre in the late 1990s via the documentary film Modulations.Inspired by the film, Jordan began listening to Autechre’s music, especially materialfrom their middle period recordings EP7 (1999) and Confield (2001) that he describesas “frenetic stuff with dense patterns” (pers. comm. 24 May 2012). Over the years,Jordan has used his Autechre fandom as a way to learn about electronic music. His go-to technique is to listen to a track and try to determine the processes the group used tocreate its sounds. Jordan says he has “a vocabulary for reverse-engineering [music]”and the deeply technological aspect of Autechre has drawn him into thinking moreabout creativity. For example, Autechre inspired Jordan to learn how to programpatches in Max/MSP. With his “autechre max msp fun drum machine” video postedon YouTube in 2009 (Figure 2), Jordan “wasn’t trying to emulate anything aboutAutechre specifically.” Instead, the “dense patterns” in the group’s work simplyinspired him to experiment with programming his own Max/MSP patches.

Jordan’s deliberately blurred video shows a Max/MSP patch consisting of a series ofmodules, each of which controls or creates a different component of the music. As the

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video plays, we see Jordan’s cursor hovering over the Max patch, moving from onemodule to another and altering the numerical values of various parameters to subtlychange the patch’s sound output. The sound is something like the pattering of ananalog drum machine yet it is constantly shifting—not unlike something Autechremight have made circa EP7 or Confield. Much of the feedback on Jordan’s video hasbeen positive and viewers have left comments of praise. For example, a viewer namedolofschroder enthuses, “This is awesome sounding! Keep the [Max/MSP] patchingalive” (June 2012). Another viewer named Mondriantestpattern shares a sense ofbeing inspired by the patch: “I’m a hardware freak. I don’t know why just works forme though this [video] makes me want to evolve. Thanks for sharing” (Oct. 2011).Moreover, Jordan says that many viewers got in touch with him directly to ask him forhis patch, even though it was not necessarily intended “to be legible by someone else”(hence the deliberately blurred screenshot).11 Inspired by Autechre, Jordan posted hisexperiment online merely to show other musicians and fellow Autechre fans how hisMax/MSP patch sounds.

A second case study is Cameron’s “Max/MSP Fractal” video. Cameron is a 20-yearold American college student who has posted six electronic music making videos onYouTube under the moniker unpuercofeo. His work has ten subscribers and hasgarnered 30,000 page views. Cameron has been listening to Autechre since 2006when hewas in high school and first became interested in electronic music production.Cameron’s favorite Autechre recordings are early releases such asTri Repetae (1995) andChiastic Slide (1997) and he enjoys how this music “blurs the line between hip hop andglitch/IDM [intelligent dance music]” and “soundsmechanical but organic at the sametime...simple while being texturally and timbrally rich” (pers. comm. 27 May 2012).

When Cameron began listening to Autechre he had no idea how they created theirsounds. But over the years he read online listserves such as idmforums.com to pick uptips on how to make electronic music, and, like Jordan, his Autechre-inspired musicalcuriosity led him to experiment with building his own Max/MSP patches. One ofthese experiments is documented in Cameron’s Autechre-esque “Max/MSP Fractal”

Figure 2 Jordan’s “autechre max msp fun drum machine” video (midinerd).

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video in which he “alters certain parameters occasionally” to demonstrate how thepatch can algorithmically generate numerous melodies and drum patterns (Figure 3).

While Cameron posted his YouTube video to document a school project, viewershave commented positively on his work. For example, a viewer named Hoerentoepenthuses “this sounds like a malfunctioning glitch vst [synthesizer plug-in] lol,impressive!” (April 2012), and a viewer named cuallito praises the video for howclosely its sounds resemble those of Autechre, noting with relief, as if a puzzle has beensolved, “so that’s how autechre does it” (March 2012). Cameron says that his videoalso inspired a debate among several viewers (one of whomwas Jordan, aka midinerd)about the design aesthetics of creating “clean versus messy-looking Max/MSPpatches.” In learning about electronic music by listening to Autechre andexperimenting with Max/MSP, Cameron figured out how to “deconstruct whilelistening and apply the same techniques” to his own music. Yet understanding how tomake electronic music is an ongoing process, and Cameron notes that even with hisMax/MSP programming knowledge some of Autechre’s sonic mystery remainsbeyond the reach of his fandom: “There are Autechre songs I listen to” he says, “whereI still have no idea how the fuck they made it.”

A third case study is Abletondaily’s “#33 Bouncing Ball” video. In addition to thework of Jordan and Cameron, there are numerous Autechre-style instructional videoson YouTube posted by musicians with whom I was not able to correspond directly.One video mentioned by both Jordan and Cameron is “#33 Bouncing Ball:: AbletonLive:: Aphex Twin / Autechre” posted by a musician named Mark at Abletondaily inDecember 2010. Abletondaily has posted 45 videos, all of which concern techniquesfor using Ableton Live. His YouTube channel has almost 6,000 subscribers and345,000 views. Abletondaily’s “#33 Bouncing Ball” video (Figure 4) demonstrates howto create the so-called bouncing ball percussive sound in which a single drum soundstrikes, repeats at an accelerating rate of speed until it becomes a sonic blur, and thengradually slows down again. The bouncing ball sound can be heard on the Autechretrack “Fold4, Wrap5” from LP5 (1998).12

Figure 3 Cameron’s “Max/MSP Fractal” video (Shimmin).

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In this video, Mark narrates the moves of his onscreen cursor to bring the viewerthrough a series of steps using Ableton’s virtual sampler and processing effects. Nearthe end of the video (at 6:44), the screenshot changes to show a new Ableton file titled“Autechre” while Mark’s voiceover comments on the connection between his tutorialand Autechre’s music: “When I originally created the bouncing ball [sound], itreminded me of a sound I heard in one of the new Autechre albums. And so this is thesound that I’ve made here.”13 With this introduction, Mark creates a second bouncingball effect that uses the sound of a balloon popping, noting “for those Autechre fansout there, I’m sure you’ll love it” (accessed 1 July 2012).

The YouTube videos of Jordan, Cameron, and Abletondaily serve a number ofpurposes. First, they provide a sense of how Autechre’s music resonates with its fansby inspiring them to experiment with software and create their own music. In the caseof Jordan and Cameron, Autechre is the primary reason they learned how to programin Max/MSP. In the case of Abletondaily, Mark was inspired to create a tutorialfocused on a single Autechre-style sound. Whether or not this fan-created musicsounds exactly like Autechre is perhaps less important than the fact that it registerstraces of the group’s influence. An Autechre fan like Jordan or Cameron has clearlylearned from his fandom, influenced by Brown and Booth to expand his ownknowledge of electronic music making and share it with others. Second, the videosfunction as real-time tutorials for using Max/MSP and Ableton Live software. Seeingand hearing how Jordan, Cameron, or Abletondaily create their sounds is helpful forother Autechre fans who are curious to learn about how the group’s sounds can becreated. In this way, the videos reinforce fans’ public “community of imagination”that coalesces around Autechre and its music (Hills 179).

The videos also illustrate the thin dividing line between being a musical consumerand a musical producer. Indeed, the type of active sound design on display in thesevideos goes well beyond the notion of a passive musical consumption “that does notpossess the force of production” put forth by Theodor Adorno (131). On the onehand, the videos differ from de Certeau’s and Jenkins’ (Textual Poachers) notions of

Figure 4 Abletondaily’s “#33 Bouncing Ball” video (Abletondaily).

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textual poaching, since in this case the original Autechre musical texts are ostensiblywithout any semiotic meanings to poach or appropriate. On the other hand, thevideos are not electronic music remixes or mash-ups either. Instead, they function ascreative homages to Autechre’s soundworld: experiments enacted by inspired fans thatapproach some of the sounds and designs of the group’s music. These experiments areperhaps analogous to the “modding” work of video game fans who make designchanges to games, demonstrating a “case where participatory culture seeks toreprogram the code so as to enable new kinds of interactions with the game” (Jenkins,Convergence 167). As with videogames, so too with electronic music. For, whileJordan, Cameron, and Abletondaily do not alter Autechre’s music per se, their amateurexperimental homages provide “essential background” to the practices ofprofessionals (Finnegan 18) and invite further interaction with Autechre by revealingtheir work as a style—what Jenkins calls a “code”—that can be deconstructed,replicated, and in the case of Abletondaily, even explained step by step. Finally, andperhaps not insignificantly, the combined page views of the videos by Jordan,Cameron, and Abletondaily number in the hundreds of thousands, a figure perhapsfar in excess of the numbers of Autechre’s actual listenership. The public accessibilityof this fan-created work suggests that traces of Autechre’s musical texts circulate inmutated form as instructional videos that introduce sounds, software, and techniquesto new audiences who might not otherwise have ever been listeners and fans of thegroup in the first place.

Conclusion

This article has examined two sets of fan responses to the music of Autechre. In mycase studies I have shown how electronic music fandom is expressed in discursive andmusical activity that engages the equipment, techniques, and sounds of Autechre.In talking about Autechre on music technology and electronic music forums, fansperform their fandom by sharing stories with one another about how the groupcreates its music. Sharing these stories enables fans to teach one another aboutelectronic musical technologies and their multifold relationships to musical style.Moreover, while these fan stories may not ultimately explain Autechre, theynevertheless help illustrate the ongoing open-endedness of experimental music-making and the many ways to create and manipulate sound. The talk of Autechre fansis also expressed in YouTube instructional videos by Jordan and Cameron thatdemonstrate complex Max/MSP patches used to produce Autechre-style music.Despite these videos being somewhat incomprehensible to viewers without a priorknowledge of the software, they nonetheless show how intricate soundscapes can begenerated through programming techniques. Other videos such as Abletondaily’s“#33 Bouncing Ball” are more explanatory, guiding the viewer through steps forcreating a specific sound in Ableton Live. All of these videos show how some Autechrefans have extended their consumption through musical production, taking Autechre’smusical texts as a starting point for further creative work.

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Needless to say, the Autechre fans discussed in this article think deeply about whatthey listen to, probing creative minutiae concerning sound, equipment, techniques,and musical design. This critical and creative activity “does not only celebrate andvalidate the fan’s knowledge, it also mirrors the fan’s attachment back to him or her,validating this affective experience itself” (Hills 181). Moreover, by engaging in theaffective experiences of talking about Autechre and making Autechre-inspired music,fans extend the textual boundaries of the group’s work by opening a space for queryinghow it ismade. In sum, contrary to Autechre’s insistence that itsmusic has nomeaning,the activity of its fans suggests otherwise: that what it means has everything to do withcreativity itself and the myriad ways to make electronic music. Ultimately, it is thissense of endlessness that animates Autechre fans as they engage with the group’s everchanging sounds, uses of technology, and musical imagination. As for my ownfandom, I continue listening to Autechre, thinking about their work, and creating myown textual andmusical responses to the possibilities of experimental electronic dancemusic. As Sean Booth encourages us, “We don’t know anything about music, we stilldon’t understand what music is really for” (qtd in Holder).

Notes

[1] This music can be heard on Warp Records’ Artificial Intelligence compilations, which featurethe early music of Autechre, Aphex Twin, and other artists who would become innovators in1990s experimental electronic dance music. The cover art for 1992’s Artificial Intelligence,Vol.1 reinforced the intended seriousness of this musical idiom by depicting a cyborg figurenot dancing but rather sitting in a living-room armchair, listening to a stereo, with vinylrecord sleeves lying about the floor.

[2] In his article on digital electronic music, Diedrich Diederichsen suggests that musicians andcritics who adopted the term “electronica” did so “to re-describe a unity and a shared historyof all musical styles emerging from techno and house” (32). Joanna Demers definesexperimental music “as anything that has departed significantly from the norms of the time”(7). For a comprehensive discussion of experimental electronic music, see Holmes.

[3] Three ethnographic case studies of techno-musical systems used in experimental electronicmusic are discussed in Brett (“Minds and Machines” 231–84). For a discussion of theconstraints of composing and performing with digital musical systems, see Magnusson. Foran evocative essay on the use of the laptop computer as a musical system, see Bach. For adiscussion of the uses of a single technology (the Roland MC-303 Groovebox) in electronicdance music production, see Tjora.

[4] For a compelling textual response to Autechre’s soundworld, see Norman (157). For anoverview of how Autechre’s music sounds to its fans, consider the numerous recordingreviews at amazon.com. Many of these reviews provide precise formalist descriptions ofAutechre’s musical techniques and timbres, as well as imaginative and evocative descriptionsof the music’s affect.

[5] Interviews include those conducted by Christopher Holder, Erin Hutton, Ze Pequeno, DavidStubbs, Paul Tingen, Mark Weidenbaum, and Rob Young.

[6] For example, in YouTube concert footage of Autechre performing in Dublin, Ireland in 2005,the group is in complete darkness, illuminated for a fraction of a second every few momentsby camera flashes (see Spectac). For a discussion of the object of performativity incontemporary laptop-based music, see Stewart and also Turner.

[7] On the value of learning to perform as a component of ethnomusicological field research, seeBaily.

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[8] To create the animation I used the (now defunct) website http://www.xtranormal.com. Theblog web address is http://www.brettworks.com.

[9] Having listened to and used many of the instruments and presets listed by antiwatmm, I canattest to the difficulty and time required to remember them by name and sound. Indeed, theonly way to familiarize oneself with sound presets in software programs is to go through themmethodically —selecting one at a time, pressing a key on the keyboard to trigger it, and thenlistening closely. This listening can be a captivating experience because of the possibility ofdiscovering hitherto hidden sounds, yet it is also time-consuming and tedious. Also, a singlesoftware instrument often contains many different preset sounds. For example, the“Steampipe” Reaktor instrument mentioned by antiwatmm is in fact two instruments(Steampipe I and II), the first of which contains 44 different presets, and the second 87.Moreover, the “Metallo” instrument is a user-created Reaktor instrument available fordownload only through the Native Instruments User Library. Generally speaking, onlyadventurous and advanced musicians in search of unusual sounds download and share user-created software instruments.

[10] Indeed, many electronic musicians believe that a serious musician is one who labors to buildhis or her own sounds from scratch—or at least customizes preset sounds beyond easyrecognition by adding effects processing. One argument for the practice of creating one’s ownsounds concerns musical and technical authenticity. Given that even a complete novice canuse a preset sound to quickly create music, building one’s own sounds is a way to stand apartand make something sonically unique. Building sounds is also a matter of demonstratingskill, since it is by constructing a complex timbre out of several elements that one shows one’sgrasp of electronic sound design fundamentals. In short, in the ears of attentive fans andfellow electronic musicians, developing a unique and original sound is a sure path to beingheard as musically authentic.

[11] Max/MSP patches, like other software file types, can be shared as long as each user has theMax/MSP software.

[12] The bouncing ball sound has also been referred to as the “Bucephalus Bouncing Ball” after theAphex Twin track of the same name on his 1997 recordingCome to Daddy. Rob Young describesthe sound as the “most celebrated operation in IDM circles . . . an algorithm . . . that speedsup a pulse as if it was an object bouncing on a table, subject to the force of gravity” (53).

[13] Mark is likely referring to Autechre’s recordingsOversteps orMove of Ten, which were releasedin March and July of 2010, respectively.

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Notes on Contributor

Dr Thomas Brett is an ethnomusicologist and musician whose research interestsinclude electronic music, technoculture, and creativity. He earned his PhD inethnomusicology from New York University where he wrote his dissertation onposthuman aesthetics in electronic musical idioms. He has taught at NYU, EmmanuelCollege, and Bard High School Early College, and his work has appeared in PopularMusic and Society and The Grove Dictionary of American Music. His current projectsinclude articles on soundscape app listening for The Oxford Handbook of Music andVirtuality, a history of electronic percussion for The Cambridge Guide to Percussion,and an ethnography about playing percussion, memory, and perception. Hispercussion compositions have been recorded on Eroica Records, and he has releasedthree collections of electronic music, including music for singing bowls. Since 1997Thomas has performed as a percussionist on Broadway and blogs about music, sound,and culture at brettworks.com.

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