Autechre as Post-Postmodern

Previously I noted some interesting ideas that Sean Booth of Autechre has expressed in interviews. Read a bunch of those interviews, and a consistent theme arises: for Booth and Autechre, the medium is decidedly not the message. Professional music journalists consistently ask if Autechre’s complex, almost alien compositions are machine generated; amateur experimental electronic zine interviewers ask what software they use. Both breeds of journalist see the fact that computers and algorithms are employed in Autechre’s creative process as being the key to understanding their music, just as postmodern and cultural studies thinkers see the gender, race, social class, and similar surface factors of an artist or thinker as being more important and telling than the works themselves.

The medium is by no means Autechre’s message. Booth desperately tries to convey in interview after interview that generative and algorithmic music doesn’t mean that the computer makes the decisions, aesthetic or otherwise. Booth frustratedly tries to get interviewers to understand that one can manipulate the constraints and maths of an algorithm just like you groove on a drum kit or guitar. In essence, the machine is just an instrument, a medium, and to get hung up on its message is to simply not understand why people make music, or any creative work. Those frustrated with identity-centered deconstruction are trying to get the message across that identity doesn’t have to define a work: just as a novel by a black man isn’t necessarily about the black male experience, a song composed with a computer isn’t necessarily about technology. This is an idea that, at one time, would have been considered obvious. But in these sorry days where identity obsession reigns, it’s reassuring to see creative individuals willing to fight for the intrinsic aesthetic worth of their creations.