The last couple of years have been busy ones for Autechre. Exai was an album of staggering scope, made even more audacious by the fact that it was uniformly good. Not many musical acts in any genre can still turn out solid material with such consistency three decades into their career.
The group has always been known for its live shows, but they’ve never seemed keen on releasing recordings of them. Then, without notice or fanfare, they released nine different live sets on the same day.
The marketing and distribution were interesting. No physical copies are available. The music can be downloaded off their website. Grab whichever sets you want; they’ve said there’s no specific order in which they’re to be digested, and the sum of them is 8 hours of listening.
Needless to say, it was a huge surfeit of material. Most artists would be content to sit back a couple of years while the audience digests that much. Continued...