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Cex
MARYLAND MANSIONS
(Jade Tree)
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Twenty-two-year-old Baltimore resident Rjyan Kidwell started making records as Cex in the late ’90s as a way of voicing his frustration with a lap-top-techno scene that had come to prize manipulating software over engaging an audience. He fought back by spiking sine-wave plinks with booty-bass beats and performing live shows in his underwear to prove he wasn’t just checking his e-mail behind that glowing Apple logo. Maryland Mansions, Kidwell’s first release for the emo-associated Jade Tree label, suggests that he’s found himself attracted to another underground scene with its own set of unwritten rules and regulations. The tracks here layer chopped-up acoustic-guitar riffs over shuffling, eerie beats that occasionally create the high-goth drama hinted at by the title pun. The result imagines an alternate-universe Dashboard Confessional, with romantic yearning replaced by the existential crisis of a singer-songwriter. "The albums make it sound so easy," he sings over the downward-spiral crunch of "My Head," "Put your mouth to microphone and the pressure gets released/But it never sounds the same when you’re the one who’s screaming." (Cex headline a 2 p.m. all-ages show this Saturday, July 31, upstairs at the Middle East, 472 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square, with Make Believe and Certainly Sir; call 617-864-EAST.)
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