Exai

Exai Artist Autechre Released 7 February 2013 (Digital) 4 March 2013 (LP/CD) Label Warp Records (WARP234)

Move Of Ten (2010) Exai L-event (2013)

Exai is the eleventh studio album by Autechre released on Warp Records. It was originally released on February 7th, 2013.

History

Exai was made using much of the same setup and process that were used for Oversteps -- mostly made in Max either as a planned composition or a live jam that later got edited down. Many of the tracks on Exai were from trial runs of The System they were building for live shows.

The tracks were initially grouped together into a series of 12-inch records, but then when the main record was being compiled, one of those records split off and became L-event. However, Sean noted that they saw that EP "as interchangeable with any of the 12"s in exai (which we see as a box of four 12"s)".

Exai was finished around late-2011, before Max 6 was released. Sean noted in a 2016 interview that "everything was two or three years old when [Exai] came out."

On September 22, 2012, The Designers Republic posted an announcement that they were starting design work on the new Autechre album. The album was properly announced on December 13, 2012 to be released March 5th, 2013. However, the album unexpectedly released early as a digital download on February 7th, 2013. The deluxe vinyl and CD would come out as per the original announced date. The initial plan was for L-event to be released before Exai, however Warp switched around the release dates. Alongside the release were two 10-hour Mixlr webcasts that were streamed on March 2nd and 3rd respectively.

Design

The cover artwork is a heavily stylized/pixelated rendering of the text “Exai”. It is also exactly 11 by 11 pixels large, furthering the "eleven" motif in the album. Ian Anderson described the design as "abstracted E, X, A and I letterforms as redacted architectural plans or elevations. Or maybe maps. The inners are simply A to F as typo­graphical ruins."

Tracks

FLeure

• The original titling is "FLeure", however Bleep and other streaming services unintentionally changed the capitalisation to "Fleure" with a lowercase l.
• FLeure was fully done in Max/MSP.

T ess xi

• The sequencing in "T ess xi" was mostly done in Logic as opposed to Max.
• The first track on Hanalgig is "T ess xi" with a longer outro which was cut off on Exai. When asked about details, Sean noted that it was made in 2011.
• Despite the title similarities to "r ess" from Oversteps, Rob noted in the WATMM Ask Autechre Anything that they don't share meaning.
• The main harmonic progression of the track consists of a 16 bar progression which is repeated twice, after which every repetition moves the entire progression one semitone down from the previous loop.

tuinorizn

• An early version of "tuinorizn" appeared in the Oversteps tour (example)
• A common interpretation of the title is that it is phonetically pronounced like "twin horizons".
• Rob mentioned that there's "glottal shit on the bas[s]line".

bladelores

• In a Pitchfork Interview in August 2018, Autechre noted that they had a 2011 jam that later became "bladelores"
• The reverb sound at the end of the track reappeared later on "splesh" and "all end" from NTS Sessions 1-4.
• Part of the name likely comes from lores~, a resonant lowpass filter max module.

1 1 is

• "1 1 is" was done by Sean.

runrepik

• "runrepik" appeared in the Oversteps tour.

deco Loc

• The sample manipulations are achieved via a video-cut up patch made around 2005-2006 by Rob where Sean then took the patch and then "did some hip hop type stuff with it." Sean noted the percussion he added was just samples of "wood and rubber." One of the samples for "deco Loc" was found to be from a Bols liqueurs ad, which was uncovered via one of the 4utechre's streams.. The other sample is still unknown.
• "deco" may refer to the assembly command of the same name for "decimal output".

recks on

• "recks on" uses drum samples from a factory disk (either ZD611 "Rock Drums 1" or ZD612 "Rock Kit") for the Emu SP-12.

18 (keyosc)

• The 18 is likely in reference to it being the 18th track on the Japanese issue of Exai. keyosc (which can be read as key oscillator) was also speculated to be a jab at WATMM predicting the new Autechre album would be called Kiosk, which Autechre did not confirm nor deny.

Tracklist

#	Title	Length
1	FLeure	4:51
2	irlite (get 0)	10:01
3	prac-f	4:20
4	jatevee C	4:14
5	T ess xi	6:43
6	vekoS	6:42
7	Flep	6:43
8	tuinorizn	3:40
9	bladelores	12:19
10	1 1 is	7:18
11	nodezsh	8:40
12	runrepik	4:35
13	spl9	7:06
14	cloudline	10:13
15	deco Loc	5:27
16	recks on	9:21
17	YJY UX	8:24
		2:00:39
18	18 (keyosc) [Japanese CD exclusive]	8:57
Total		2:09:36

Trivia

• A major theme of the record is the number 11, corresponding to the place in its discography. The album name itself is a phonetic spelling of “XI”, the roman numeral for eleven, as well as being an anagram of “AE XI”, meaning “Autechre eleven”, or “Autechre’s eleventh album”.

Links

• AE_STORE
• Apple Music
• Bandcamp
• Bleep
• Discogs
• Soundcloud
• Spotify

Credits

• Autechre (production)
• Rob Brown (writer)
• Sean Booth (writer)
• Noel Summerville (mastering engineer)
• The Designers Republic (design)