19-year-old Ryan Kidwell suffers from a textbook Jekyll-and-Hyde complex. By day, mild-mannered Mr Kidwell leads a typical adolescent lifestyle, attending college classes, interacting with his peers, and exhibiting a healthy level of comfort with members of the opposite sex. Ryan earns good grades, gets along with his parents and enjoys making music. Weird music. Enter the alter-ego, Cex.
Cex is a trash-talking IDM superstar who does funny dances. Cex is the self-proclaimed Number One Electronic Musician in the world. Cex removes his clothes on stage. Cex once remixed the Dismemberment Plan. Cex writes battle raps for the haters that criticize his style. Cex posts MP3s of these raps on his website. Cex co-runs his own label, Tigerbeat6. Cex flames other labels on their own bulletin boards. Cex once appeared in an Urb magazine article profiling America's best new electronic artists. Cex takes every available opportunity to remind others of his appearance in Urb magazine. Cex has been quoted as saying, "Snoop Dogg has his shit together. I think he and I would get along really well if we hung out at the MTV Beach House." Cex is pronounced "sex." And the list goes on.
It's a strange duality, indeed. At times, Kidwell comes off as a quintessential bedroom composer-- the alienated, frail-looking but lovable nerd we see pictured against a backdrop of flames on the cover of his latest EP, Starship Galactica. Cex's early records took on a similar personality: reserved, cerebral and typically inaccessible.
These days it's different. Catch him at one of his live shows, in which he scarcely plays any of his released material, and he's a raving savage. He spends most of his airtime at the mic, either freestyling to the crowd, or decrying the pretenses of the IDM scene. Cex accuses other musicians of cloaking their music in a false sense of mysticism-- building up a cult of personality by shutting themselves off from their fans, keeping their interviews terse and periodically issuing press photos of themselves in cryptic chin-stroking postures.
On a mission to subvert the scene that spawned him, Cex lays himself bare on his website, recording his thoughts in a daily journal that he keeps on public display. This diary has grown into a 12-month catalog of Cex's preposterous bragging and Ryan's self-aware, insecure rants; it often feels as if the two are fighting for control of the same body. It's juvenile, humorous, endearing and admirable all at once. It also leads me to conclude that Cex has established a unique persona of his own. He's a geeky teenager with an ear for music and an identity crisis; he's been thrust into the spotlight and doesn't quite know how to cope.
A departure from his previous studio efforts, the latest Cex release sees Kidwell reconciling some of the disparities between his various selves. Starship Galactica presents us with his most accessible yet accomplished output to date, interspersed with amateurish comedy skits that take cues from Big Pun and Outkast.
The musical offerings on this platter run the stylistic gamut, from the squelchy electro of "Cal and Brady Style," to the organic and acoustic Kraut-rock leanings of "Get in Yr Squads." The pieces never stray too far from their influences; and though no individual song pushes the envelope, it's uncommon to find such a motley array of mastered styles on the same album.
Starship Galactica matches the instant, flamboyant appeal of Cex's live show with the quirkiness and complexity of his early releases. The charm of his new material reaches beyond novelty, and the sublime innocence of songs like "Your Handwriting When You Were a Child in the Winter" profits from each successive listen.
"Tattoo of a Barcode" and "Cex Can Kiss My Soft Sensuous Lips" (the name is a play on the infamously titled Kid606 song "Luke Vibert Can Kiss My Indiepunk Whiteboy Ass") hearken back to the Cex sound of old, breaking from the conventional pop logic that the rest of the record follows. Both are brilliant, and their presence on this release indicates that Kidwell might think twice before he abandons his upbringing as an avant-garde laptop jockey. Cex maintains that he's an entertainer, not an artist. But the rounded feel of Starship Galactica suggests that, against all his protestations, he's thankfully still a bit of both.
