Cex – Role Model

August 2000 • Tigerbeat6

I can't claim to be anywhere near an aficionado of electronic music (despite reviewing a lot of it lately), so sometimes I have to admit when I've been bested by an album. When I first listened to Cex back in 2008, I hated this album. I can't say why—probably because I wasn't much into electronic music then—but today I can say that I've changed my mind, and I have to give Role Model some credit.

This probably has to do somewhat with my newfound appreciation for Aphex Twin, an artist by whom this album sounds like it could have been influenced. Like a lot of Aphex Twin's material, Role Model is a slightly mixed bag but consists of mostly relaxed IDM. It's very rhythmic music, but is also full of melodies bouncing off one another on some tracks, and heavy glitches on others. The result is a very pleasing, though light, dancy sound. There is a really nice mix of textures and sounds on each track too, keeping things interesting and preventing the album from getting stale: some noise samples, lots of different synth voices, things like that.

I do with the album was a bit more cohesive; the IDM bits don't jive as well with the glitch bits and the album feels like a very randomized collection of individual tracks rather than a full, well-defined album. I'm not going to say that's necessarily a bad thing—it's not a good thing, but in this case I feel like it's easy to overlook because there aren't many weak tracks and there is a fair bit of segueing to help glue things together.

I'm glad I decided to give Role Model another shot, because it really is worth it if IDM is your thing. Sure, it may not be as good as the Aphex Twin albums it reminds me of, but that's not really fair anyway. It stands pretty well on its own and is worthy of a few listens.

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