In the relatively young world of electronic music, 20 years seems like an eternity. If I asked you to imagine what electronic music sounded like 20 years ago, you might harken back to one of those early Moog albums that you’ve probably seen in the dollar bin at your local record store. You would, of course, be wrong, but the point still stands: electronic music has changed quite a bit during the last 20 years. So it’s hard to believe that Autechre, a band that has had a profound influence on electronic musicians of today, has been around for more than 20 years.

Rob Brown and Sean Booth formed Autechre in 1987, in the Manchester suburb of Rochdale, and the duo has been creating consistently challenging experimental electronic music ever since. Known for their painstaking sequencing of loops, proclivity for complex rhythms and penchant for exploring multiple time signatures simultaneously, most of Autechre’s catalog cannot be described as “accessible.” Yet, the band was one of the driving forces behind Warp Records’ success in the mid-1990s and has influenced a wide range of artists, from like-minded contemporaries like Aphex Twin to rock acts like Radiohead, whose Thom Yorke has often cited Autechre as a major influence.