Exai

Two hours long and unrepentant about it, Exai is Autechre insisting that machine music can be as sprawling and self-questioning as a double album by a rock band.

The sheer duration changes what the tracks do to you: a piece like "bladelores" runs past eleven minutes, letting a beat mutate and stall and recover until you stop waiting for a drop and start hearing the drift as the point. Sean Booth and Rob Brown built these from software processes that generate more than they dictate, so a track like "prac-f" feels less composed than caught mid-decision, rhythms colliding and correcting in real time. Nothing here reaches for a hook, and nothing apologizes for that. By the time "YJY UX" closes it, the length has done its work — you've been made to live inside a logic that never once softened to meet you halfway.