Scott Morrow is ALARM’s music editor. Patrick Hajduch is a very important lawyer. Each week they debate the merits of a different album.
Cex: Evargreaz casette EP (Automation, 12/7/10)
Cex: “Ily”
[audio:https://alarm-magazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Cex_Ily.mp3|titles=Cex: “Ily”]
Morrow: Rjyan Claybrook Kidwell has already spent more than a dozen years recording as Cex, his prolific electronic/IDM project. Begun in his teenage years, the music has been intellectual yet inconsistent, jumping from guitar-topped glitch beats to nasally, half-sung vocals and raps.
Regardless of the vocals, which some view as a distraction, Kidwell has always made great music. Whether it’s the purely electronic beginnings of 2000 album Role Model or the acoustically infused 2003 album Being Ridden, Cex has channeled the best of pioneering labels like Warp and Planet Mu.
Evargreaz is a four-track EP that was released in December. (We’d note that it’s in advance of another full-length album, but he’s already since released another EP [Megamuse] that’s a preview of said full-length on Tigerbeat6 [Tiny Creature].) It backs away from some of the dance elements of Bataille Royale, his 2009 album, instead offering more ambient IDM with overlapping time signatures and a solid blend of timbres.