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Jun 4, 2013Longtime fans will be pleased to hear that not all of Exai is a mature, intellectual exploration of the possibilities of electronic music.
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Mar 26, 2013Listening to the record as a whole is sort of like meandering through an exhibit of miniature, spasming wire sculptures.
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Under The RadarMar 22, 2013It's a challenging record. [Mar-Apr 2013, p.97]
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MagnetMar 15, 2013Autechre's are notions are studied as they are transportive and on Exai, the duo fairly dares us not to lose ourselves. [No. 96, p.53]
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Mar 11, 2013A tangled and glorious mess of aggressive glitches and clipped synths and stuttering beats and hints, shadows, and fragments of tunefulness.
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Mar 8, 2013Not always easy, but definitely worth it.
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MojoMar 7, 2013150 minutes of challenging, organic electronica. [Apr 2013, p.95]
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Mar 7, 2013While it still remains potentially unwieldy and awkward for a casual listener, it brings an order of chaos to a chaotic sound, representing the best of all Autechre’s work in a cohesive distillation. For devotees who are willing to gaze into the digital abyss, Exai holds unfathomable depths.
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Mar 7, 2013For those of us in between, it's like that aforementioned jigsaw puzzle: confounding, occasionally satisfying, and forever keeping you guessing as to what image its shapes are trying to form.
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Mar 5, 2013It's one of those hard to grasp music forms--listen to it on headphones and the acuity of it improves, listen to it on speakers and another side is revealed.
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Mar 5, 2013They may no longer be cutting edge (who is these days?), but Autechre's intricately psychedelic pieces are still chock-full of detail, intrigue, wit, intensity and poise.
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Mar 5, 2013Exai operates within a comfort zone--one that’s dazzling, but given the sheer length of this thing, also far from easy to stomach as a whole.
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Mar 5, 2013As always, it's a lot to take in; even after a dozen listens, the album's too oblique to really register in the memory. That slipperiness does nothing to diminish the moments when things really stick, though.
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Mar 4, 2013The album could have been pared down a bit, yet it's a drop in a bucket for Booth and Brown. Prior to this, their discography clocked in at 18 hours or so. What's another two hours?
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Mar 4, 2013As a body of music Exai lividly pulses, possessed by a half-life of disturbing magnitude.
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Mar 4, 2013Exai represents a career-spanning work, one that encapsulates almost every phase of their evolving aesthetic, and whether you're a fan of their early work or their recent output, it stands as a remarkable synthesis that coheres only through the deftness of its sonic architects.
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UncutMar 1, 2013This two-hour epic very occasionally rests on its laurels by using sounds from past palettes, but is characteristically rich and adventurous. [Apr 2013, p.67]
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Mar 1, 2013Exai shows they still occupy a special position in the current generation of forward-thinkers, producing music that couldn’t have been made at any other time other than now, unostentatiously trailblazing a path for others to follow in.
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The WireFeb 28, 2013With Exai they've created a work which reveals renewed faith in their own identity and which should act as compass in years to come. [Mar 2013, p.57]
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Feb 27, 2013The two hours of Exai is something else. This is Autechre operating at their highest level since 1998’s LP5.
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Feb 27, 2013Fans certainly won't be bowled over by the innovation on offer, but as a refinement of their sound it is the ne plus ultra Autechre album, honed and executed to perfection with only a few drifty moments that suggest it could have been cut down to a single LP.
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Feb 27, 2013Booth and Brown are old hands these days, their territory firmly staked out. It’s gratifying to see, if only briefly, that they haven’t lost the element of surprise.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 32 out of 36
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Mixed: 2 out of 36
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Negative: 2 out of 36
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Sep 27, 2013
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Oct 18, 2016
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Jul 16, 2013