Jump to content
IGNORED

Exai - Track by track first impressions


thehauntingsoul

Recommended Posts

Guest Torchiest

"1 1 is" - Like you're a candied apple being dipped and swirled in electrohoney.

"nodezsh" - Somebody spilled their keyboard parts on the floor, then started crushing the pieces instead of picking them up, then they got into a zeppelin and floated away.

"runrepik" - A happy little robot got trapped in the closet and can't get out, keeps bumping into the walls, then some bigger robots come along and start teasing it.

"spl9" - The soundtrack for an extremely brutal cyborg olympics montage, with a really tough trainer shouting at the plucky upstart the whole time as he works out relentlessly.

"cloudline" - This would be the music if Chell from Portal had gotten stuck on the Moon.

"deco Loc" - The telescreen from Orwell's 1984 is stuttering and skipping between different programs while you hear Eastasian bombs dropping in the distance.

"recks on" - Flying over a junkyard and grabbing useful parts, fending off the occasional rabid dog.

"YJY UX" - You just plugged into the comsic consciousness and it's revealing all of its secrets to you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

ill repost mine for the first half:

 

alright, so Im really intently listening with some nice headphones....keep in mind this is all my opinion, first experiences pretty much, and Im not a GIGANTIC AE fan like some of you, so don't flip the fuck out if you disagree.

 

 

Fleure-

 

Really let down by this...sort of a crap intro honestly..reminds me a lot of Untilted which tbh is one of my least fave AE albums..though the last minute or so is amazing....."yes...this is the autechre Im expecting"...spooky and theatrical. Compared to r ess off Oversteps this intro is really underwhelming....for a 2cd opus you'd expect there to be a bit more "oomph" in the first track the listener hears.

 

Irlite(get 0)-

 

surprisingly accessible industrial/hip-hop beat, 1:30 synth is amazing...sounds like disjointed piano playing atop strings that are melting due to heat exposure or something. yup, this track is classic already. i can't say im a huge fan of when those "piano" stabs are whatever become overly distorted and sharp further in, but maybe I'll warm up to them. transition into spacey music at 4min is much much welcome. The midsection reminds me a lot of ICBYD's "Next Heap With", but I have no idea why...very Amon Tobin'ish low bass....beat comes back in (5:43 or so)!!! This is yummy and epic. Sounds like harpsichord/horn stabs over a pretty housey bass progression, and I really like it. Overall this is one of Autechre's best (maybe?) It's incredibly accessible as far as most mid to late era AE goes

 

prac-f -

 

Sounds a LOT like an LP5 groove in the beginning, and the pads/atmosphere are eerily reminiscent of Chiastic Slide and moments of EP7. I have a feeling this is going to be one of my overall favorites simply due to its minimalism, doesn't sound as chaotic as the earlier two tracks. Very menacing...some sort of delayed/flanged chorus in the background ooooh, reminds me of the sounds of the eels from The Princess Bride (please tell me someone else gets that reference) now around 2:10 jangly metallic noises come into the forefront overriding the earlier beat. The stuttering hi hats are very interesting, the entire atmosphere depicts a humanoid android or something shuffling along a factory floor while rusted bits of it fall away from the whole. Yeah, definitely my favorite track thus far.

 

jatavee-C-

 

I was lucky enough to hear this very very early around the time of the leak, and I still love it...VERY housey pads in the beginning...everytime the beginning of this track plays I gear up for a possible ambient/rave epic...then the hiphop beat comes in completely unexpected but certainly welcomed. Again, pleasantly surprised at how AE seems to be bridging the gap between accessibility and the more chaotic, randomized and dare I say "non-Euclidian" melodies and rhythmic geometry of some of the few earlier albums. The last minute and a half of this is absolutely sublime...loud penetrating bass and the crunch crackle of the machinery mechanics with those housey pads washing in and out. Not too much more to say about this one, very enjoyable. Another favorite.

 

PS. does anyone else want to hear an Autechre footwork/juke track after jamming to this?

 

T ess xi-

 

Sounds out sounding rather playful...perhaps its because of the bubbly percussion? Again, very surprised at how straightforward and relatively unmanipulated those housey chords are..reminds me of that one track off of Squarepusher's Numbers Lucent EP....beat kicks in WOW!!!!! First time in this album Im legitimately headbobbing to the beat...this is excellent. This is such an interesting blend of genres/styles and once again, accessibility with a lot of strange rhythmic experimentation...there seems to be this odd chalky sounding string put through a 1/4 step gate or something...you'd think it would be jarring but its oddly welcome within the rest of the song's parameters. The only complaint i have (and this is very minor) is how much better this would sound with a heavy thick sub bass wobbling underneath it. I do like how it progressively gets more intense and off-kilter towards the 3:30 mark..and there seems to be more bass bubbling/farting underneath which I really like...interesting and gorgeous decaying harpischord melody around the 4 min mark. The ending reverting back to the bubbly percussion is a great way to end it. Another favorite thus far on the album.

 

vekoS-

 

Sounds like a video game fiending for more crack cocaine or something....This is an incredibly dense atmosphere here...I'm not even sure I'm fast enough to process all the layers as they play out. Theres a very disturbing sound thats like a cross between a child wailing and the sound of wind rushing through a crack in an industrial building. Damn this might be yet another favorite. I like the rattling buffer-override percussion that seems to be speaking some sort of angry language..mechanical phonetics. This is like an automated warning or alarm for some sort of alien civilization's R&D department. Although there are certainly a lot of changes going on, it's not as grabbing or immediate as most of the aforementioned tracks...and Im not sure whether that's good or bad. Definitely the darkest track so far....possibly my favorite of all?

 

Flep-

 

Very interesting sounds going on here...like a monk doing some throat-percussion then cut up and bastardized/randomized by the AE crew? whoa the pad rhythms around 1:40 are insanely catchy. I might consider this one of the weaker tracks (though that's not really a bad thing persay), it remains fairly static....this would be better enjoyed in the background rather then subsuming my headspace demanding direct attention...a decent headnodder. Would be good for deskwork I'd imagine.

 

PS-Is it just me or was there a Funky Clavichord melody towards the end? Sounded exactly like a Stevie Wonder lick if it was shat out by some industrial caulking contraption.

 

 

tuinorizn-

 

some sort of deep flangey trumpet thing followed by a VERY interesting monosynth I think? This is very interesting....echoes of AFX's "Equation" or Analogue Bubblebath around here...even with oldskool claps rounding out the main beat! This is short but very sweet. One of the most "creative" tracks I think I've heard thus far. Some of the melodies are absolutely amazing and constantly morphing....to me this sounds like if FSOL-Dead Cities-era was a collaboration with the AE boys. Considering FSOL is probably my all-time favorite electronic group, this is fantastic.

 

 

and now we come to the epic everyone has been speaking of...I have not heard this one yet

 

bladelores-

 

Basic hiphop beat, lots of foggy echo...Im expecting some sort of melodic "monster" as it were to protrude from this haze...and the bass synth sounds fairly close to that. Ok, now the real downbeat has kicked in...this reminds me a LOT of Deus Ex for some reason...futuristic hacker soundtrack going on here.

 

around 2 min or so I almost barely hear a beautiful cascade of what sounds like choral voices/????? I wish it was just a bit louder because it sounds phenomenally gorgeous. ok..sounds like they are getting louder.....this track is rhythmically every basic compared to the earlier tracks but this is very transcendental. Its like the choral passages from Skyrim mixed with Silent Hill 2's percussion and hints of Oversteps arps. So far this is everything its hyped up to be....definitely my favorite thus far in the album...I just really, really wish those choral pads were a little clearer in the overall mix....I could probably just listen to them by themselves for 30 minutes. ooh 5min mark FINALLY just the pads!! Yes. This is very very Michael Stearns-ish now that I hear it clearly.....and once again Im dragged away back into the hazey echo beat....nice tease lads!

 

Amazing track BUT, Im somewhat let down by the last 5 minutes of it....the pads become less defined and just amorphously overwhelming...sounds like a TON of brickwall compression and while it certainly creates a unique atmosphere it really pales in comparison to the choral sounds in the first half....this could have definitely been edited into a much more cohesive 8 minute version....I mean, I like the long extended ambient wash at the end, but its nothing terribly unique or exciting, and would be rather easy to make in fruity loops by layering a ton of pads and on top of that throwing tons of compression over the master effects track. Still, the first 6 minutes of this are up there in my top AE moments ever.

 

Overall Id say thus far these are the tracks that made the biggest impression on me (not necessarily my favorites, but some of the most notable parts on first listen):

 

Prac-f

Tess XI

vekoS

tuinorizn

bladelores (or the first 6-7 minutes of it at least)

 

hope people read this and enjoy it, I dunno, I spent an hour writing stream of consciousness.

 

But my overall impression of the first half, EXAI thus far: pretty damn good album.....I think I still like Oversteps better simply because it caters to my more ambient sensibilities, but one thing I definitely give credit to this album is that it seems to be the perfect hybridity of all of AE's past 7-8 albums. Im hearing echoes of all the great AE moments from Tri Repetae onward....to me this is like an AE greatest hits album then recut and fucked with/remixed and reprocessed a few hundred times to make a completely new AND old amalgamation.

 

I gotta say since having written this, Ive listened to the vinyl on headphones very loudly and while I still think Fleure is one of the weakest tracks on the album, its much better on vinyl with headphones than the 320mp3s i was listening to...maybe they just weren't loud enough?

 

1/1 is a classic Autechre banger. Might be my overall favorite.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Torchiest

"FLeure" - This starts out like a barbed wire fence to keep out the uninitiated, then a tunnel descending into the secret underground base.

"jatevee C" - a spaceship crashed on a beach in Jamaica, and it's slowly being submerged by the tide coming in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest theSun

nice review sr4

 

especially the bits about tess, vekos and bladelores

 

i can't help but find tess really annoying, but it seems most people really dig it.

 

i agree with everything you said about bladelores. i want to LOVE it, but i just like it. the arrangement is a little lacking. those pads are really something else on the first listen tho.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest theSun

Don't want to burst your bubble theSun but time signatures aren't a feel. They are explicitly defined and runrepik is 4/4. :cisfor:

 

i can only hear this in 5s still u faggots so suck it

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Chogg

 

Don't want to burst your bubble theSun but time signatures aren't a feel. They are explicitly defined and runrepik is 4/4. :cisfor:

 

i can only hear this in 5s still u faggots so suck it

 

 

:facepalm:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

Don't want to burst your bubble theSun but time signatures aren't a feel. They are explicitly defined and runrepik is 4/4. :cisfor:

 

i can only hear this in 5s still u faggots so suck it

 

 

:facepalm:

 

I can't see how you'd count that in 5's unless you're counting the number of bass hits, which are not equally spaced. You do know that you can't count time signatures like that right? The beats have to have equal spacing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest theSun

it is not a perfect 5 but that's how it feels to me. the bass and the snare are on 1 and 2

 

what is the tempo of this at 4/4?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

t is not a perfect 5 but that's how it feels to me. the bass and the snare are on 1 and 2

 

what is the tempo of this at 4/4?

 

Yeah but if you use the bass and snare you're actually counting 6/4. Just because it's you, I've taken the liberty of superimposing a 4/4 metronome at 164 bpm so you can see how it's a 4/4 track. If you still don't think it's 4/4 you should try doing the same thing and see how impossible it is to get 5/4 to line up with the beat.

 

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/3372365/runrepik%20with%20metronome.mp3

 

EDIT: bad quality recording but you get the idea.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Stupid lush:

 

bladelores

irlite (get 0)

cloudline

jatevee C

 

Lush:

 

prac-f

tuinorizn
recks on
YJY UX
T ess xi
spl9
Decent:

 

1 1 is

vekoS

nodezs

deco Loc

 

Meh:
FLeure
Flep
runrepik
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 7 years later...

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.