Cex : Actual Fucking

Rjyan Kidwell, aka Cex, has never really acknowledged the obvious connotations that arise when trying to pronounce his alias in English. He’s left little innuendos in titles every once in a while, but has never just come out and recognized what every is thinking when they pick up one of his albums. His newest album, Actual Fucking, doesn’t even require me to finish this sentence properly for you to figure out where I’m going with this thought.

Cex is a musical project that, while Kidwell is pretty much at the steering wheel, he does pick up random hitchhikers every once in a while and include them in the Cex van. He started on his own in high school with songs more akin to IDM, and eventually met up with Kid 606 to form the Tigerbeat6 label, providing some of the most innovative electronic music ever to be released. Within the next couple of years, Cex aspired to be “#1 Entertainer” and went all out, adding lyrics and becoming a full on showman, having interactions that went as far as peep shows or even as cordial as a polite conversation. He has released an impressive amount of material for the eight years he’s been active, and Actual Fucking, he has said, “is easily the most subversive sounding Cex record ever.”

Actual Fucking is an album Cex made to make people feel in power again, or maybe just even the members of Cex themselves. Cex has coupled their highly erratic and uncompromising eight tracks with eight stories of sexual escapades. For this album, Cex expressed the philosophy of, “following your boner,” to find out what is really necessary for each person. The idea that desire is something purely individual gives people the power to get past all of the millions of possibilities and figure out what is really important for each of them. All people have to do is follow that desire—their boner. This is how Cex went about making this album, clearly evidenced by the complete disregard for genre and style. Each one of the songs also may take drastic turns or flips like an acrobat in mid air who is ignoring gravity for a little bit to do something really spectacular. To go along with the motif of sex in the album, there are often times lyrical duets that come up with nothing but roses. The stories in the album booklet, while unabashedly explicit, in some ways may prepare the listener to dispense of any conventions or expectations that might cage them when engaged in Cex, a little bit of foreplay before the Actual Fucking.

Actual Fucking is an album that will only be appreciated if people let themselves get past blind, thoughtless morality and preconceived notions. To think and feel and decide for your own self, not anyone else’s, what is good for you is the key to Actual Fucking. Of course, not everyone can be pleased, and that’s cool, but only if they themselves aren’t pleased.

Similar Albums:
Peeping Tom – Peeping Tom
Gold Chains – Young Miss America
Peaches – Fatherfucker

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