15 Best Albums Of The Decade (So Far)

5. Autechre - Exai

Autechre set out their stall as the forerunners of electronic music production way back in the late 1980s and have remained among the most prominent acts on the esteemed label Warp Records ever since.

Exai isn't an album for easy listening, as anyone familiar with Autechre's output would expect. There's something alien-like about the sounds and textures explored by Rob Brown and Sean Booth in the hefty two hour running time, as if the duo had climbed into the bowels of a UFO and started tampering with the mechanics, feeding them through synthesizers and samplers and seeing what happened.

Experimentation has always made Autechre an exciting proposition, and in this respect Exai can at first seem impenetrable. Give it time, however, and the stuttering loops, grumbling basslines and seemingly indeterminate melodies coalesce into a meticulously crafted electronic opus.