Starship Galactica by Cex (TRR71)

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Described as a ‘Baltimore IDM extrovert’ by his press office, a ‘rap geek’ by some of his fans (although there’s no rapping on this record) and an ‘arrogant shit’ by a reviewer of one of his UK gigs 22 year old Rjyan Kidwell aka DJ Cex is an original, if controversial, talent. Kidwell’s first album under the Cex moniker has just been re-released by the Temporary Residence label. It’s been 4 years since Starship Galactica first revealed this juvenile yet precocious talent to the world when it was released by 555 recordings, the then Leeds (UK) based label which has now relocated to Arizona (US) .

So what is Starship Galactica? It’s a bizarre mix of utterly beautiful, glitchy, machanistic hip hop and deep electronics interspersed with the occasional ‘jackass’ style musical joke revealing Cex to be a considerable talent and (possibly) a bit of a tosser. Having said that, my (definitely) under-developed sense of humour was tickled by most of the gags on this disc even if I couldn’t keep it up to the very end. And, to be honest this eclectic collection of moods is a refreshing change from the po-faced over-seriousness that accompanies this sort of stuff these days.

After Cex has introduced himself things kick off proper with 'Cal and Brady Style' (they’re baseball players for the Baltimore Orioles, I think). And if the 'Intro' had left me thinking “okaaaaayyyy…….” then this second track had my gob wide open in a “shit this is gooooood”, fly catching kind of way. It’s a slowly developing masterpiece cut from twitching drums, a filthy bassline, a deeper than deep groove and, I swear, the sound of a mutated Commodore 64 amongst other things. 'Tattoo of a Barcode' is 2 minutes of industrial ambience and fidgeting electronic percussion and, just to show that he can do it all, is followed by the laid back (but somehow always busy) hammock swinging groove and acoustic guitar of 'Get in Yr Squads'. 'Hi Scores' is a shagging and Playstation joke, if you can believe that one exists. 'Cex Can Kiss My Soft Sensuous Lips' is a trawl through everything imaginable that you can do to a drum loop in a 'Windowlicker' after-a-few-expressos style. 'The title of Your Handwriting When You Were a Child in the Winter' owes as much to Boards of Canada as the music does although its less fleeting and more developed then the majority of morsels that BOC come up with. The album proper finishes with the title track 'Starship Galactica' which is literally Cex and his mates, presumably shot to pieces, singing along with some sort of cheap Tandy keyboard. It’s funnier than it sounds, honest.

The three additional, previously unreleased, tracks that have been pasted onto the end of this release don’t quite match up to the quality or profundity of the other pieces here. And if I’d stumbled into the live rendition of 'Starship Galactica' which is the ‘hidden’ track at the very end of the disc I might have had the same opinion of Cex that the gig reviewer I mentioned at the start did.

That said, this is still an essential album. Not quite the sum of the moments of brilliance that crop up throughout, but definitely worth checking out all the same.