Part of a small crowd of experimental DJ/producers who emerged on the Warp Records label in the early 1990s and started taking dance music into new ambient, mind-bending realms, Rochdale duo Autechre remain one of electronic music's most influential, cult sonic outsiders.
Sean Booth and Robert Brown became friends through a mutual love of graffiti and the rave scene and started making tape-edited mixes and DJ-ing together at warehouse parties in Manchester and on pirate radio shows, before releasing their first studio EP under the name Lego Feet in 1991. They were featured on Warp Records' landmark compilation 'Artificial Intelligence' which introduced a new generation of post-rave, avant-garde dance producers and positioned Autechre alongside the likes of Aphex Twin, Squarepusher and Alex Peterson.
Despite being seen as obscure, musical renegades lost in a world of alien sounds, their album 'Incunabula' was a surprise success, reaching number one on the Independent UK Charts in 1993 and they went on to experiment with all sorts of skull drilling, drum & bass tirades, serene electro bliss and shadowy, cracked dancefloor soundscapes on follow-ups 'Amber' and 'Tri Repetae'. They were at their most gnawing and metallic on 1997's 'Chiastitic Slide' and their 1999 and 2000 sessions for Radio 1 DJ John Peel were more favourite moments for the duo as they crossed over to wider audiences with remixes for Tortoise, Stereolab and Saint Etienne.
Their boundless, relentless output continued to amass great angular adventures with synths, tempo, loops and hooks, and they drifted into melodic, accessible, stuttering robotics on 'Overstep' in 2010, released the giant, jaw-dropping double album 'Exai' in 2013 and the five-part, four-hour ambient dream 'elseq 1-5' in 2015. However wild, brutal and sensory they become, an underlying, hypnotic beauty remained in their work, and in 2018 they compiled their shows for London Radio station NTS into an eight-hour box-set entitled 'NTS Sessions 1-4'.
