'Exai': Autechre

Some Context:

Autechre is the Rochdale-based duo Rob Brown and Sean Booth who, for an astonishing 26 years now, have gained a highly respected name as purveyors of uncompromising, left-field electronica.  Their extensive back-catalogue comprises ten previous albums and numerous E.P.s.  This eleventh album, 'Exai', is a double package, clocking in around the two-hour mark.  It suggests they don't plan to stem that prolific tide just yet.

Autechre.  Rob Brown (L.), Sean Booth (R.).

The Ae sound is famously obscure, complex and, at it's furthest edges, highly challenging.  As far as it can be divined, their M.O. leans heavily on current software but may also involve the sabotaging of both digital and analogue synthesizers, and the application of homegrown digital algorithms to pervert generated sounds into baffling mis-shapes.  There have been occasional geeky rumours of military hardware.  By the time of 2001's 'Confield', or 'Draft 7.30' in 2003, their music had become so abstruse that it seemed to mostly represent the effects of complex programming on beat patterns.  It's possible to imagine that some of this stuff was devised by writing code to specifically modify each bar or individual beat in a different way.  'Unquantized' doesn't get close; rhythms appeared programmed to metastize uncontrollably and progressively randomise themselves.  The music wasn't so much produced as subjected to invasive experimental procedures under lab conditions.

Despite all their difficult number crunching, Autechre themselves have always claimed to be old-school Hip-Hop and Electro enthusiasts at heart.  There has often been a sense that their pieces derive from a recognisable rhythm or even a tune, even if only Brown & Booth actually know where they buried it.  More recent recordings have seen a slight rounding out of their sound once more, with 2008's 'Quaristice' and 2010's 'Oversteps' leaning towards the atmospherics of their earliest work and the length 'Move of Ten', E.P. also from 2010, featuring beats you might actually dance to, (you still wouldn't pull, mind).  So where does that leave 'Exai', with its punning title, customarily opaque track labels and intimidating scale?  More to the point, do Autechre actually make me feel anything or did all those ones and zeros die in vain?

Rigourously Formal; Very Focussed; Tonally Varied; With Pure Sound
 At The Very Centre.  Says It All Really

Response:

Autechre hardly create 'Soul' music but I do find immense sensory stimulation within their work and it's from this that vivid imaginative connections and yes, - emotional responses, gradually emerge over repeated listens.  Here, instead of trying to encompass 'Exai' in its entirety, I'll respond to four specific tracks that have made a particular impression on me.

'Irlite’ (Get 0)' (1/2):  The album's second track is one of it's longest, at a smidge over ten minutes, and one that breaks in half around a distinct central lacuna.  After an opening moment of apparent chaos, the first passage establishes a bouncy forward momentum and a dialogue between an insistent, ticking rhythm and an ominous, rubbery sub-bass.  Throughout this opening movement the top end prevails.  The beats clack on through numerous patches of interference, becoming heavily embroidered by distorted Electro flourishes but retaining their regular metric identity.  I'm reminded of urban transit carriages traversing the dense, complex environment of a modern metropolis on clearly delineated tracks.  The music speaks of an earlier moment of optimistic techno-futurism, albeit one becoming somewhat confused by multiple distractions.  The metronomic rhythm counts time reassuringly and there's even a slight hint of Jazz-Funk about the shards of synthetic melody.

After pausing with a deep ambient sigh, the track proceeds, apparently in similar fashion, but a more forbidding mood emerges now.  The big, grumbling Dubstep bottom grows progressively dominant and washes of miasmic ambience create an increasing air of suspense.  Although the bright synths briefly coalesce into something almost resembling a tune, the beats degenerate into irregularity, fading from rhythmic foundation to mere embellishment.  I'm left reflecting on the relationship between the well-regulated machine ethic of older electronica and more organic dread-laden forms of recent years.  It parallels the ways that uncertainty and potential threat so often haunt the shadows of what remains of the Modernist 'future' and how reality and entropy must abrade any Utopia.

Ae Demonstrate Their Understanding Of The Importance of Beautifully
Packaged Artefacts...

  

'Bladelores' (1/9):  'Bladelores' is an even longer piece that gives the lie to the idea that Autechre only deal in cold, grey, hard-edged sounds.  It features laid-back Hip-hop style beats and a singularly squelchy bass line but the track's most notable characteristic is its vapourousness.  It's announced from the off by the clouds of fuzzy reverb applied to the percussion and prevails via washes of synthesizer and processed organ sound that evoke an ethereality far greater than Ae connoisseurs might normally expect.  The track's extended coda is just a gorgeous sheet of very subtly textured ambiance.

Mentally, I see a city skyline, - its architectural forms softened through a filter of dawn mist or polluted heat haze.  It gives me the feeling of delicious detachment one might get on observing the scene from a high vantage point and also the sense of immense possibilities experienced on a mid-summer morning with no duties to perform.

...And Of Standing Around In Bleak Industrial Locations

  

'Nodezsh' (2/2):  This track is a great combination of Autechre's typically frigid atmospherics and a rhythm pattern that threatens random breakdown but proves, perversely, to be more regular than expected.  It opens with stark synth stabs before settling into a stumbling pattern of punchy rhythms built from sputtering snares and dull metallic beats.  Threaded through this rickety structure are broad washes of echoing tone and repetitious, incomplete phrases of a higher, static-fuzzed timbre.  Many of the album's tracks have perfunctory, or even arbitrary endings but 'Nodezsh' dies away rather thoughtfully, receding into the distance under thickening blankets of reverb and muffled distortion.

This track first captured my imagination during a hurried drive through swirling snow between Leicester and Nottingham, establishing the sense-memory I now associate with it.  Peering through an increasingly dense interference pattern of wind-churned particles, my perceptions of both driving and music synchronized into an overall sensation of vulnerability and frustrated purpose in an entropic environment.  The unbalanced yet propulsive percussion clearly echoed the irregular buffeting being dealt my car but also suggested the mis-firing of failing machinery as Britain's infrastructure began to buckle and its landscapes became clogged by drifts of late-season snow.

‘Yjy Ux’ (2/8):  ‘Yjy Ux’ concludes the album and is another atmospheric mood piece.  Its general esthetic is pleasingly sparse and distinctly liquid as it proceeds with stately melancholy over a slow, irregular beat.  It seems to tap into Ae’s origins in a rain-soaked Lancastrian landscape of industrial architecture decaying into grimy dereliction.  The most dynamic elements are the percussive splashes that pepper the track like heavy water droplets shed from rusted girders into murky puddles.  In the sparsest passages, certain note clusters resemble the rattle of corrugated sheeting stirring in the wind.

The track’s position on the album can be no accident.  Throughout it’s duration it threatens to run out of momentum and its whole function seems to be to mark the passing of activity.  Eventually, it sputters to rest as if the incessant rain has penetrated the last circuit, shorting everything out once and for all.

Certain reviewers have pigeonholed ‘Exai’ as an over-long grab bag of random sound files lacking any unifying theme or overall identity.  Others claim that it plays to Ae’s comfortable strengths without breaking any new ground.  Perhaps it’s just a function of my middle-aged attention span and comfort with the album format generally, but I have happily listened to the whole thing right through on numerous occasions now, and find these criticisms to be rather short sighted.

In doing so I’ve detected various recurring motifs, most noticeably the playing-out of struggles between conflicting elements within individual tracks, and the sense of structures progressively succumbing to the forces of entropy and decay.  As already mentioned, many pieces here also create a palpable sense of atmosphere and environment.  It would also be wrong to ignore how adeptly Brown & Booth incorporate newer sonic elements, such as wobbly sub-bass), into their existing toolbox.  Even if ‘Exai’ is primarily a monument to their established strengths, it’s still a fascinating edifice to wander around inside.

Further Listening:

‘Oversteps’, Autechre

‘Noisette’, Soft Machine

‘Amazing Grace’, Spiritualized

‘Technicolour’, Disco Inferno

‘Ufabulum’, Squarepusher

‘Somer’, Deepchord

‘Stand Down Margaret’, The Beat

‘St. Dominic’s Preview’, Van Morrison

‘Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!’, Godspeed You! Black Emperor

‘All This Useless Beauty’, Elvis Costello & The Attractions