Exo

Exo is the first studio album of Chicago-based electronic duo Gatekeeper, consisting of musicians Aaron David Ross and Matthew Arkell. It was released on July 17, 2012, on the label Hippos in Tanks. The EBM, IDM and acid techno album departs from the synth-heavy style of Gatekeeper's past releases, in that most of the melodies are performed by a sampler with a sound palette of high-definition Hollywood film sound effects. Gatekeeper was inspired to follow this HD aesthetic from an experience at World Heritage Sites which made them feel "really spiritual and charged up" to create the first track on the album, "IMAX." Exo was promoted with a visual exploration video game with environments designed by Internet artist Tabor Robak using the game engine Unity. Reviews for Exo from music journalists were favorable in general, holding an aggregate 70 out of 100 on Metacritic as of February 2017. Background and HD concept While on the last day of touring in the United Kingdom in the summer of 2011, Aaron David Ross and Matthew Arkell viewed World Heritage Sites which made them feel "really spiritual and charged up." In the winter of 2012, they moved back into their homes feeling inspired from these sites to create the first track the duo made which used high definition sounds. The track was titled "IMAX," and they used recordings from movie sound effect libraries. With the two feeling an "extra depth" in the quality of the sounds used for the track, the experience would later become the inspiration for a high definition aesthetic of the music of Exo and a visual gaming environment for it by Internet artist Tabor Robak; Gatekeeper and Robak described it as "HDIY." Gatekeeper and Thomas Robak said that works with an HDIY style look or sound professionally made despite being created in a quick amount of time with non-professional material. Robak claimed the HD part of it was “a commitment to quality and a level of detail” as well as a "response" to the heavy prominence of lo-fi music that was going on at the time. In fact, Exo, which is entirely made out of very high-quality sounds, examines the high amount of presence of high-definition video content in everyday life and how HD technology can lead to unthinkable possibilities.