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Autechre’s Oversteps 2012 album was fundamentally…

Autechre’s Oversteps 2012 album was fundamentally algorithmic. I’ve aggregated extracts from interviews that mention this. I love how one extract hints at a system of multiple algorithms tracking and responding to each other. 

Source: How much do algorithms figure into your compositions as of late? : “Quite a lot. Algorithms are a great way of compressing your style… It has always been important to us to be able to reduce something that happened manually into something that is contained in an algorithm. Then the algorithm allows us to add a bit more flair or a bit more deviation that we would also do ourselves in a little script. Just a few slight tweaks can spin it out into all sorts of recreations. It’s a great way to spawn yourself if you like (laughs), and spawn your actions. It’s an addictive way to work. Programs like Max allow you to reduce these ideas to collections of numbers and scenarios that are recallable, cascade-able, even nest-able.”

Other source: “You’ve got a system. And you are listening to what the output from that system is. Much of the system involves talking to each other and listening to each other to see where they are and they say, ‘If you are doing THAT then I’ll do THIS, and if THIS happens then THIS action will happen.’ We’ve been programming stuff like this for twelve years.”

…we made our own midi-sync algorithm this year which worked perfectly and it’s way tighter than the one you’re supposed to use. And it’s unique to our system. It was a major major thing. We made it using trial and error, it took about two weeks but most of it we did in one day.”

“Then,” Rob adds, “there were a few hours of disbelief – ‘Is this actually working as we see it?'”