Autechre - Exai (What do you think?)

cubistking1906 · Post by **cubistking1906** » Sun Sep 01, 2013 9:10 pm

I bought Exai a few months ago and I've been slowly getting into it more and more. At first it sounded like mostly random noise to me save for a few tracks, but I feel like the more I listen to it the more shape it takes. I'm actually starting to love it.

I really respect Autechre for having the courage to go into such avant garde territory with their material and I find it to be pretty inspirational to my synth and production techniques. I know many probably don't like this stuff or can't understand it, but I think this is really cutting edge stuff for the genre.

My picks so far:

Jatevee C:
Bladelores:

What do you all think of the album?

The Telepathic Kid · Post by **The Telepathic Kid** » Mon Sep 02, 2013 12:14 am

there's probably an existing thread to post about this somewhere.

But I'll post my RYM review here (it got front page'd!);

Exai is Autechre's best in a few years, but it still doesn't live up to the duo's highs due to one little thing, the amount of material.

Exai's length and ambition works against it as a wholistic piece. Sitting through an hour of Autechre's electronic fuckery is testing at the best of times, but when it's 2 hours and 2 discs, this makes The Knife's Shaking the Habitual look like a 30 minute pop record you put on in the car.

There's a lot to love in this, such as the aggression and vigour coming back in their pieces, with tracks like the opener Fleure and deco Loc bringing back the hard hitting techno flavour of Autechre's more interesting works, and sly hip hop influences sneaking into tracks like recks on and T ess xi. They also marry in some newer styles of electronic, as runrepik and jatevee C both sound like the duo's take on footwork and juke.

But even these points don't hide the fact that there's way too much music here to really comprehend as a structured work, and Autechre's music over the decade has slowly been losing character as they bury inside themselves. It's Autechre, sure, but what track am I listening to? And what does it bring to the table that Autechre hasn't done on a previous record? Creatively, they've hit a brick wall and can't go anywhere.

They're still fascinating as fuck, but Autechre really needs to cut all their losses and start fresh under a new moniker.
Maybe they can start becoming figure heads in electronic music again instead of being the grandfathers who just do their own thing in the corner while everyone is outside.

There's only so many ways you can make the sound of a machine breaking down.

Cupz · Post by **Cupz** » Mon Sep 02, 2013 1:13 am

I think exai is their best work to date. Such spiritual, yet technically unnerving music. It helped me come to turns with AI and how music still has a function in a world reaching singularity. Some parts sound like organs of a machine. Its not produced by AI but actually creating it, making it live.

re-phaelam-ed · Post by **re-phaelam-ed** » Mon Sep 02, 2013 7:31 am

Awesome

Distant Nebulus · Post by **Distant Nebulus** » Tue Sep 03, 2013 2:23 pm

Love it! Both Discs. Each Track. Love em all.

crazygoji · Post by **crazygoji** » Wed Sep 04, 2013 11:57 pm

i listened to the whole album straight through once on spotify earlier on in the year and alot of it was just your average ae fucking-around-everywhere-with-beats-yness to me, but HOLY SHIT T ess xi and bladelores are beautiful and probably some of my favorite tracks of the year. jatevee C is awesome and lush too

cubistking1906 · Post by **cubistking1906** » Sun Sep 08, 2013 3:14 pm

Distant Nebulus wrote:Love it! Both Discs. Each Track. Love em all.

Good attitude.

I find the stuff to be extremely challenging but very rewarding once you listen to it enough to wrap your head around it. It's like a puzzle which you have to struggle to unlock, which may be intended considering the artwork consists of puzzle pieces. Above all I definitely get the feeling with this that Autechre really knows what they're doing even though it can seem so damn random at times. It seems to be an exercise in controlled randomness.

aperture · Post by **aperture** » Sun Sep 08, 2013 5:14 pm

Didn't someone decode the cover art at some point? I remember it being some binary expression of the catalog number going horizontally and the release date reading vertically, or maybe the opposite.
Love this album. It sounds like the latest watershed moment for them.

euue · Post by **euue** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 7:05 pm

the release date was 2013/03/04

cubistking1906 · Post by **cubistking1906** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 8:18 pm

euue wrote:

the release date was 2013/03/04

Awesome. Pure awesome.

re-phaelam-ed · Post by **re-phaelam-ed** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 8:51 pm

very cool

Noumenon · Post by **Noumenon** » Mon Sep 09, 2013 10:35 pm

euue wrote:

the release date was 2013/03/04

Not only that, but the columns in binary sum to 11234, 11 being the album number and 234 being the catalogue number (WARP234). Here's a different spreadsheet.

I think Exai is some of their best work to date.

orazioblur · Post by **orazioblur** » Mon Nov 04, 2013 8:55 pm

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/81109-aaa- ... -on-watmm/

They're (Autechre) answering to any fan's questions until 7 november.. It's your chance to speak to them

Cupz · Post by **Cupz** » Tue Nov 05, 2013 1:20 am

orazioblur wrote:http://forum.watmm.com/topic/81109-aaa- ... -on-watmm/

They're (Autechre) answering to any fan's questions until 7 november.. It's your chance to speak to them

There goes my spare time

Betterthanyourkids · Post by **Betterthanyourkids** » Tue Nov 05, 2013 4:07 am

Welp, I may actually have to go and get a WATMM account now. EXCITED

re-phaelam-ed · Post by **re-phaelam-ed** » Tue Nov 05, 2013 6:23 pm

been following the thread.....awesome.

euue · Post by **euue** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 7:24 am

aw man, i am so not gonna pay to get an account on that board, but i have always had a hunch that there's a sample of a diving board in "recury" and i wanted to confirm

love hearing that sean loves ween, too

euue · Post by **euue** » Thu Nov 07, 2013 8:17 am

also check it out, thru the magic of twitter i exchanged words with ian anderson of the designers republic and he revealed that the cover of chiastic slide is the brooklyn bridge (similar to how envane has frank lloyd wright's fallingwater on it)

that's been kinda eating at me since 1997. i mean chiastic's cover is way more abstracted than envane's is but STILL

MAXIMUS MISCHIEF · Post by **MAXIMUS MISCHIEF** » Sat Nov 09, 2013 12:02 pm

its the frigging best

rick7487 · Post by **rick7487** » Sun Dec 01, 2013 4:28 am

Exai for me is an album that needs to grow on you over time. Yea it can be easily dismissed because of how long it is, but I think there is some merit to its length. It reminds me in some ways to Quaristice but unedited. I find it to be deeper than Quaristice because there is a lot more buried sounds and muddiness to all of the songs. Everything sounds Brown. It reminds me of minecraft sometimes, a certain part in one of the songs makes me think of the zombies banging on the door.

Also: For all of you who got the record, try playing it at 45. I hear different things at that speed.