GESCOM.Autechre's debut album, Incunabula, was released in November 1993. Its' multi layered sleeve, a monochrome abstraction of typography and geometry, seemed as close to a description of the music contained within as any words. An artfully designed work, ascetic yet aesthetic, fluid yet angular, it was clearly greater than the sum of its' intricately constructed parts. Descriptions and comparisons were becoming meaningless. Rob and Sean started describing their music simply as "Autechre". It's still the only truly accurate word to use. The Shape of a Sound. Manchester duo Sean Booth and Rob Brown met one another through a mutual friend in 1987, the year electro's death throes gave birth to hip hop and the musical map changed forever. Fifteen and seventeen year olds respectively, they discovered they had virtually identical record collections, a mutual love of breakdancing and a shared history of BMX biking. They immersed themselves in the burgeoning hip hop culture and ran with the local graffiti gangs - Manchester, Rochdale and the surrounding areas still bear the marks of their tagging skills. Then they began to switch off hip hop and onto early acid before embracing the more industrial sounds of Meat Beat Manifesto and Renegade Soundwave. It was here that they discovered what had been missing from hip hop: the electronic sound. So they bought a drum machine and began filling in the gaps themselves - plugging the holes in their collective imagination with strange musical shapesBoth had been experimenting with sound since they were young, especially Sean, whose grandfather had given him an old reel-to-reel, on which he'd cut up TV recordings. At the time they met, he'd progressed onto a cheap Casio sampler and Rob had a Roland 606. Neither of them were interested in conventional music as such. They had these strange sounds swimming through their subconscious's; what they wanted to do was give them solid form. The last of Warp's Artificial Intelligence artist albums, and the pinnacle of the series, Incunabula entered the UK Indie charts at Number 1, as did the 10" box set of Basscadet remixes, which followed a few months later (the only occasion on which the duo have taken an album track for single release). Gradually, they started to make a name for themselves, and an interview on a local pirate radio station gave them a chance to host their own radio show - something they still do now with the weekly Disengage on Manchester's Kiss 102 FM. Amongst their favourite records - Unique 3, DHS, early Radioactive Lamb - they'd slip in one of their own tentative experiments and wait for the feedback. Suitably encouraged by the reception, they released a single, Cavity Job, under the name M.Y.S.L.B. Productions in late 1991. It did well enough but unfortunately, as with so many others at the time, the duo fell foul of record company rip-offs. Bloodied but unbowed, however, and inspired by the success of LFO from neighbouring Leeds, they sent a demo tape to Warp Records. Within twelve months, they found themselves alongside such luminaries as The Black Dog and Aphex Twin on the seminal Artificial Intelligence compilation, released towards the end of 1992. Even amidst such distinguished company, however, Sean and Rob stood out. Side-stepping such traditional influences as Kraftwerk, Detroit and Eno, and name checking instead Mantronix, Afrika Bambaata and the Miami Bass scene, their two tracks, The Egg and Crystel, seemed to contain no external reference points whatsoever. Those internal sounds were beginning to take shape in the outside world.