Autechre - Exai (CD, Vinyl LP box set)

Electronica legends Rob Brown and Sean Booth are back with their 11th long player and an extremely “long player” it is; clocking in at over two and a half hours it’s a pretty heavy listen! Over the last twenty years or so they have churned out some interesting works, some good and some not so good but this is real winner from start to finish in my mind.

‘Exai’ is a mix of dark and light, ranging from pure Aphex acid ‘irlite (get 0)’ to deep dubstep ‘jatevee C’ and beyond, the duo’s interplay with varying tempo and sound is pure genius, there’s lots of nods toward past releases here, ‘T ess xi’ is like something straight from ‘Incunabula’ with its deep house sound and ‘Flep’ a typical AU glitch like the now classic album ‘LP5’, a real standout track from disc one is ‘bladelores’ a lolloping hip-hop beat which eventually builds to a melodic drone that hypnotises you for its entire 12 minutes!

Disc two and I’m not even remotely bored yet, while a lot of Autechre releases feel like hard work (‘EP7’ I’m talking about you!) this is not like that at all, the boys have put the tunes back in places where it really needed it and slapped on the dub like on ‘nodezsh’, there’s some good old fashioned glitch for the fans out there like ‘spl9’ which feels like it could get so fast as to melt your brain and there’s even a bit of classic breakbeat on ‘recks on’. ‘Exai’ is a marvelous return from Autechre with never a dull moment and don’t be put off by its length, you certainly get your moneys worth!