I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: October 26, 2025] Autechre

I have one Autechre album and I don’t really listen to it.  But when they announced this American tour (their first time playing here in ten years), I asked my friend Lar, who had seen them if I should go.  He told me an amusing story about how he liked the show but he took his significant other to the show and she almost broke up with him because of it.

But when I dove a little more deeply into the show it sounded like a unique experience that I’d like to try.

I arrived at the show knowing that this would be the case, but I loved seeing this in print on a flyer at the door:

autechre

will  perform in darkness.

For their set all lights in the venue will be off.

Please plan on being in one place for the performance and do not move unnecessarily until it has finished when the lights will come back on again.

Please do not shine any lights at the stage or ar0und the room during the performance unless you require assistance.

…

If you are uncomforatble with the idea of spending around 80 minutes in the dark while Autechre play, please see venue staff before the performance starts.

Autechre are an English electronic music duo consisting of Sean Booth and Rob Brown, formed in 1987.  After the two openers did their set, the lights dimmed, with only red lights on the stage.  Some ambient music played for, frankly, longer than was necessary.  It was so long, that the music stopped and they had to start it again.

But soon enough, the lights went out and all you could see were the DJs from the lights of their laptops (and the EXIT signs of course.

Oh, and the guy next to me who kept looking at his phone (!!??!!).  His phone screen was all the way down, but it was SO BRIGHT in this dark room that I can’t believe no one else said anything.  I ultimately wound up just putting my shirt over the left side of my head so I wouldn’t be distracted by him.

So what is it like to sit in the dark listening to noisy electronic music?  It’s pretty wild.  Your brain kind of travels with the sound and then you snap out of it and get sucked back in.

Because the music is nonstop changes and shifts it’s pretty impossible to recap it.  The sounds were noisy and weird, electronic and glitchy.  I couldn’t tell you anything about what the two guys were doing up there–if they were sampling bits from thir records or just making things up as they went along.

I found a video of the first seven minutes of my show.  And in this clip you can hear that it starts off spacey and ambient and after about 3 minutes the complicated and noisy percussion kicks in. And that’s really the overall vibe–different kinds of percussive sounds creating music that is very busy.

It was surreal to close my eyes and try to focus on the music and then to open them and still be in darkness.

This kind of show is clearly not for everyone (not for most people probably), but everyone who was there was really into it.  After 30 minutes or so my eyes adjusted to the minimal lights and I could see that people were indeed dancing (as much as you can dance when you can’t see).

But for the first time at Union Transfer, I called ahead for an ADA seat.  I mean I figured I don’t want to stand in the dark for 3 hours.  And it was a good call, because I was able to kick back and fully immerse myself in this expereience.

Would I do it again?  Sure.  Is it likely that that will happen?  I doubt it.