Cex, with a blatant metaphorical name, is the band created by Rjyan Kidwell, known for his lengthy rants, naked dances and erratic behaviors on stage. A lanky, red-haired twentysomething from Baltimore, Kidwell is a prolific musician who has produced five full-length albums and stacks of vinyl singles while touring with bands such as Death Cab for Cutie, the Dismemberment Plan and Super Furry Animals. The wild man will tour through Bloomington on Friday, July 23 with a gig at the Second Story.\nBetween touring, Kidwell maintains a 480-plus page Web site full of sarcastic humor, with comments like, "I guess I could put a list of…songs with mp3.file excerpts, but if there's two things that are simply not tolerated on the Cex Web page, its redundancy and excess. So just go to the discovery page. And don't sigh like that, its not like you actually have to get up or walk anywhere."\nKidwell's unusual first name is the product of trying to be unique, which reflects throughout his music. "When I was in seventh grade, there were a lot of Ryans in my class," Kidwell told the Weekend during a recent phone interview. "I changed my name (to Rjyan), because I wanted to make sure people knew they were talking about me. It stuck with me after the end of the year."\nKidwell has a truly eclectic sound. "I can explore my interests because I am one person and not a group of four people with different lives," Kidwell says. "I want to exploit the advantages I have over a band. When I make a record I feel it is out of my system. I don't like the idea of settling into a niche."\nKidwell's 2003 release, Maryland Mansions, includes songs that range from electronica to hip-hop. Many of the songs have introspective lyrics with which teenagers would easily identify. "Drive off a Mountain" says "you call me, I'm not here" and in "Kill Me," he writes "things aren't getting any better, everything is only getting worse." Despite his gangsta aura in his hip-hop songs, Kidwell has a poetic way of crafting words. In "Stillnaut Rjyan," the lyrics, "I can't believe I once believed they once believed in me," are slipped between an energetic refrain. The track is a weird, intergalactic fantasy about an extraterrestrial mission gone awry with screeching beats and a rapid-fire call-and-response chorus.\n"The whole album is about leaving Baltimore, my home town," Kidwell says. "(Stillnaut Rjyan) is a metaphor for my experience of running away from home. I felt like an astronaut in space that was in a nightmarish situation and could not return home."\nIn "My Head," he sings about his experience in the entertainment industry with lyrics like, "There's a temporary sanity in this anorexic vanity business. Satisfaction can exist." Over a slow beat and hypnotic strings, he makes it clear that he wants to save himself from a life of stifling banality through music and, in the process, save music itself.\nMaryland Mansions is unusually full of lyrics, unlike many of the songs that can be downloaded from Kidwell's Web site, which are instrumentals with a distinct new age sound.\nKidwell's first album as Cex, Role Model, released in August 2000, has an almost industrial rock sound relying on mixed synthesizer chords, snare drum loops and vinyl scratching.\nEven Kidwell admits on his Web site that it he has an extremely varied sound. He writes, "If you're checking for something to give you any indication of 'what Cex sounds like'…Please let me know if you find out what it is." \nAaron Prellwitz helped mix the music, and Zach Hill drummed out the baseline in "Drive," "Pills" and "Maps." \nAccording to the Cex Web site, Kidwell started recording music with his friends at age 12 with his guitar, some drums and a one-track tape recorder with a condenser microphone. Two years later he was mixing tapes by himself using a computer and primitive Internet access through the public library. In keeping with Kidwell's balls-to-the-wall attitude, he credits help on his Maryland Mansions album, to "you know who you f**king are." Cex will perform at the Second Story with Make Believe and Sunday Night Cipher on Friday, July 23 at 10:30 p.m. Admission costs $4 for ages 21 and up.\n
A bit of 'Make Believe'\nMake Believe was last year's touring version of Joan of Arc. The band recently finished the "More is More Tour 2004," in which three months of touring solidified the group into a seasoned band. After the tour, the musicians returned home to write songs. But according to their PR company's Web site, the four-member band wanted their collaboration to be different from Joan of Arc. They brainstormed and came up with seven principles by which to operate the band. The primary one being the "sound palette limited to a classic rock band lineup to force new approaches to clichéd shapes." Unlike Joan of Arc, Make Believe relies on intricate guitar parts and heavy drumming with cacophonous noise and pop orchestration.\nMake Believe recently produced a self-titled CD with FlameShovel Records that is a mix of punk and hard rock. Vocalist Tim Kinsella screams out high-pitched polemics about life and society in the roughly 14-minute album.\nThe songs are fast-paced and the lyrics prolific. Make Believe's members seem to be just as talented at playing guitar, keyboards, drums or xylophone. "We Are All Going To Die" is a political song that asks if our way of life will survive after the events of 9-11. It has an energetic tambourine accompanying the drum line. With guitar runs and drone chords that sound like '70's hard rock, Sam Zurick's guitar moves "Witchcraft" along with the flood of lyrics that accompany the song. "Tempting as a Shaman" has a circus sound with Nate Kinsella on the Wurlitzer electric piano. The song has a nihilistic view of the world, in which everyone is the same with no idea of why we exist. Nate also plays the drums while Bobby Burg strums out the bass line.\nWorking over 40 hours a week in practice sessions, this band uses no effects pedals or over-dubs. According to the seven guiding principles they made, the group decided, "no one was getting in unless they were down for the long haul to maintain a constant line-up." They also decided "songs would speak for the collective, not the individual singer." The band is currently putting the finishing touches on another EP to be released this fall.
