I saw Cex open for Mogwai in Las Vegas last summer. He played to a mostly
empty ballroom, completely abandoning the stage, ranging the entire room in a
futile effort to wring some participation, or at least enthusiasm, out of small
clusters of indie kids-insecurities tucked underneath their trucker caps,
watching warily behind thick, black glasses. Cex, in a black sleeveless shirt
and giant Kiss-style boots never relented-running, dancing, jumping, rapping—yet never succeeded. He deserves a medal.
This is not hip hop. This is not indie. This is not dance music. This is not
IDM. This is a ragged, mangy, wandering mongrel with no home. It's like the
Fresh Prince plus Nine Inch Nails plus Four Tet. Acoustic guitars, distorted
beats, loose structures that are far too effective to be haphazard, glued
together by his dense vocal delivery. It has the velocity of rap but not the
funk, nor the rhymes. It has the precise construction of post-industrial
electronica without the aggression. It has the intensely personal honesty of
homemade recordings without the shoddy, lo-fi aesthetic. It is pure freedom.
One drawback of Cex's delivery is that it is so fast and dense that it
obliterates everything else; one cannot turn one's attention away, he demands
it all. The immediate victim of this delivery style is his own backing
tracks. Fortunately, the fine folks at Temporary Residence have seen fit to
issue an instrumental version of the album. That said, however, once one is
familiar with what's going on in the background, the record plays like backing
tracks—not quite strong enough to stand wholly on their own (initially, I
really dug the instrumentals, but after a while, I clearly favor the vocal
versions).
The best thing about Cex is that one gets the sense that he is going to do what
he is going to do no matter what you or anyone else thinks about it and no
matter how you or anyone else responds to it. Stand there with your arms
folded tightly across your chest if you want to: snicker, sneer, whatever.
He'll just keep rockin' to his own beat. And, to paraphrase the man himself,
he'll probably write a party jam about it.
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