Autolux

Lore & Background

Autolux formed in 2001 when Carla Azar and Eugene Goreshter met while working on a project together. Azar later met Greg Edwards while on tour with his band Failure. The trio made their live debut in August 2001 at The Fold in Silverlake Lounge, and released a self-released EP, Demonstration, in 2002, recorded on an 8-track in their rehearsal space. T-Bone Burnett signed them to DMZ, a label he created with the Coen Brothers.

The band recorded their debut album Future Perfect from November 2002 to January 2003, with Burnett aiming to capture their live sound. The album was released September 21, 2004, to critical praise. They toured extensively in 2005, opening for Nine Inch Nails, Queens of the Stone Age, and playing festivals including Coachella and All Tomorrow's Parties. In 2006 they performed on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and contributed a piece to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County exhibit 'Sonic Scenery'.

Their second album Transit Transit was released August 3, 2010, self-produced with Edwards as engineer. The third album Pussy's Dead, produced by Boots, was released April 1, 2016, on Danger Mouse's 30th Century Records. In 2020 Goreshter was sentenced to a two-year federal prison term for attempting to import cocaine from Mexico; the band confirmed in a 2023 interview that he had not been a member since 2016.

Reader's Guide

Autolux occupies a distinctive niche in 2000s alternative rock, merging post-punk angularity with electronic textures and krautrock repetition. Their debut Future Perfect earned critical acclaim and led to high-profile tours with Nine Inch Nails, The White Stripes, and Beck, as well as festival appearances at Coachella and All Tomorrow's Parties. The band's collaborative reach extended to Unkle, for whom they contributed tracks, and to Thom Yorke's Atoms for Peace. Their second album Transit Transit saw them self-produce and tour extensively, while the third album Pussy's Dead marked a shift with producer Boots. The band's legacy is complicated by Goreshter's 2020 conviction for drug importation, which effectively ended the trio's original lineup. Despite this, Autolux remains a reference point for experimental rock acts blending live instrumentation with electronic production.

Did You Know?

• The band's debut album Future Perfect was recorded with producer T-Bone Burnett, who signed them to his label DMZ, co-founded with the Coen Brothers.
• Autolux contributed the song 'Persons & Machinery' to Unkle's 2007 album War Stories.
• Bassist Eugene Goreshter was sentenced to a two-year federal prison term in 2020 for attempting to import cocaine from Mexico.

Formation and the Silver Lake Web

Autolux came together in Los Angeles in 2001 through a web of musical connections that reflected the city's dense creative scene. Drummer-vocalist Carla Azar first crossed paths with bassist-vocalist Eugene Goreshter while the two were collaborating on a score for Dario Fo's play Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Azar's meeting with guitarist-vocalist Greg Edwards came through a different route: she was on tour with his band, Failure, when the two connected. By August 2001, the trio had played their live debut at The Fold in Silver Lake, and that March they had already pressed a self-released EP called Demonstration, capturing five songs on an 8-track recorder in their rehearsal space. The band's early trajectory was shaped by T-Bone Burnett, who signed them to DMZ, a small label he co-founded with the Coen Brothers, and who actively nurtured their development during those formative years.

Future Perfect and the Breakthrough Touring Gauntlet

The recording of Future Perfect marked a deliberate shift in the band's approach. Burnett wanted to capture the group's live energy rather than the lo-fi 8-track method of their debut EP, so primary tracking took place in the studio from November 2002 through January 2003. The trio then returned to Space 23, their rehearsal-room studio, to overdub and flesh out the material; the track "Asleep at the Trigger" was built entirely in that space. Dave Sardy mixed the record in early 2003, and it arrived on September 21, 2004, to broad critical praise. The album's touring cycle in 2005 and 2006 was a career-defining gauntlet: Autolux shared stages with Clinic, Broadcast, The White Stripes, Shellac, Deerhoof, and Beck; opened for Trent Reznor's Nine Inch Nails on the With Teeth tour; closed out the year supporting Queens of the Stone Age at the Wiltern; appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!; played Coachella; and performed multiple All Tomorrow's Parties festivals curated by Vincent Gallo, Portishead, and My Bloody Valentine.

Transit Transit and the Self-Produced Era

By the time Transit Transit arrived in August 2010, Autolux had grown into a band that preferred to take control of its own sound. Edwards served as engineer, and the group produced the record themselves, laying down most of it at Space 23. A handful of drum tracks, on "Highchair," "Spots," and "The Science of Imaginary Solutions," came from an earlier session with engineer John Goodmanson. The album was released on ATP Recordings internationally and TBD Records in North America, and the band supported it with tours across the US, Canada, Mexico, and their first European run in December 2010. This period also saw Autolux reissue Future Perfect on vinyl under their own imprint, Autolux Music Entertainment, after the original had gone out of print. Collaborations continued to flow: the band contributed "Persons & Machinery" to Unkle's War Stories and later appeared on "Joy Factory" from Where Did the Night Fall. In 2010, Thom Yorke invited them to open for Atoms for Peace at the Santa Barbara Bowl, and in 2011 they played an ATP festival in Tokyo.

Pussy's Dead and Life After the Trio

The gap between Transit Transit and Pussy's Dead stretched six years, and the band's third album landed on a very different label landscape. Released April 1, 2016, on Danger Mouse's 30th Century Records in partnership with Columbia, the record was produced by Boots, a name known for work with Run the Jewels, FKA Twigs, and Beyoncé. Autolux headlined Coachella that same year, and the "Soft Scene" single had teased the album back in November 2015. Yet the band's story took a darker turn in 2020, when Goreshter was sentenced to a two-year federal prison term for attempting to import cocaine from Mexico. In a 2023 interview, the remaining members addressed the situation and revealed that Goreshter had not been an active member of Autolux since 2016. The trio that formed in a Silver Lake rehearsal room in 2001 had, by that point, become something else entirely.