Another Electronic Musician

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What’s so good? So is he or isn’t he? I’ve found it generally bothersome that Jase Rex’s curious moniker seems to demand that reviewers and promoters passionately proclaim that, in fact (and often in less-than-clever wordplay), he is NOT merely another electronic musician. Perhaps then, it’s just been out of spite that I’ve never found Another Electronic Musician (or AEM) to be particularly exceptional. But his newest album, States of Space, has got me wondering if I’ve been wrong about Rex the entire time.

Rex’s IDM certainly isn’t for everyone, or even most. There are smatterings of house beats, and plenty of techno influence to go around, but happily this album features no bedroom recreations of Justice or Chromeo, probably to the chagrin of most Hype Machine followers. Instead, AEM is primarily artsy, he doesn’t get as weird or wild as Autechre or Aphex Twin, but his music does seem to be out of love for the beauty and emotion it can evoke.

I suppose AEM could still be considered a laptop producer, but his music is definitely a cut above the rest of the wannabes slicing up beats on Ableton or FL Studios. He plays with a host genres, getting dancey here, ambient there, and downright glitchy at other times. When he plays with house and techno I wish he would drop the beat just a little harder, and when he gets spacey–and he frequently does, note the title of the album–I can’t help but yearn for something just a touch more groundbreaking.

Overall this album is terrific and a must-listen for any IDM fan. For those partial to the booty grooving hits I still recommend this album; it is especially great for IDM newcomers because it avoids most of the experimenting and difficulty associated with this type of electronica. I suppose this is the part of review where I write a pun on AEM’s name, but instead I’ll just encourage you to listen to this album and come up with your own.

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Jase Rex ironically named his solo project Another Electronic Musician although a number of critics, including me, have pointed out that he is far from that. Maintaining the finest tradition of n5MD’s signature sound, Rex mixes tracks influenced by classic techno, house and electro and fuses them with his unique brand of ambient, rhythmic experimental electronic music with a dash of glitch work sparingly applied throughout. Rex releases States of Space, his fourth album for the imprint in five years, five if you include 2004’s Decompose on n5MD’s netlabel offshoot En:peg Digital.

Although his influences are recognizable throughout, Rex’s music goes beyond emulation by mixing his own music with his own take on classic electronic styles. Often incorporating flowing synth textures below bassy rhythmic elements, Rex creates a sound that features both absorbing ambience and enjoyable rhythms at the same time. At times, he explores the atmospheric direction of his music more; "Treading" is based around dark creeping synth textures with shifting bass, a tense piano key chiming like a heartbeat all combining to heighten the senses and create a tense immersive soundtrack. Album closer, "Venatici," on the other hand floods the senses with a distorted crescendo of synth waves oblivious to the throb of warning tone synths as undulating waves of texture rise and fall around it until they drown it out almost completely.

The mood of Rex’s music is generally upbeat, switching between styles from track to track but maintaining consistency through interpreting them in his own style. Always able to spot a good rhythm and loop, Rex produces another in a long run of consistently high quality releases for n5MD.

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Two years on from conservative cruncher Five, Jason Rex is back with a new full length to toy with the theme of expansion. Not that he’s expanding too far, mind you; Rex has always worked the more clinical end of n5MD’s Emotional Experiments in Music, and for his fourth LP he’s altered himself just enough to dream up this IDM cockleshell. A quick cupping of the tracks shows his dependably crisp sound is still ideal for jolting/having fits to, but a more investigative listen to States of Space unveils Rex now fluent in the one ingredient that fudged him: heart. Yes, whatever deep beanbag or close band of brothers Rex has gotten into has flooded his writing with passion, a passion determined not to be boxed in by business hours or etiquette in bed. His complex productions still reach out for the unconscious, their turbosleep storylines as brittle as a dream but awake with a slick, slinky jitter. Prepare to see your eyeballs twitch if you’re one of those people who tapes themselves all night sleeping.

So what’s behind the new AEM? A little bit of 1992 perhaps, but what States lacks in groundbreaking composition it makes up for in its crystal delivery and ends up sounding like someone making a perfect third Terminator film ten years after Arnie went political. Opener “Late Monday” is the picture’s first flexed muscle: dropping straight into a giant, calm, intestinal warmth, things are quickly established as less angular than Five with the melody now matching the drum chips. It may start out with a two-note build, but then all over all that breath and rustling Rex demonstrates what a difference a piano makes, the keys less Spartan and stabbing harder with every cycle. The Jim Cameron perfection peaks again on “Memetic,” another vague T2/1991 reference spitting tricky disco from its black galactic canvas. That’s about as far as Another Electronic Musician is expanding for now—he doesn’t want his states stretched any further or he’ll have to change his second name to Ambient.

That renaming happens largely on side B, where the chirpy clatter of the first five pieces gets considerably more dreamy and liquid. The percussive stunts Rex favours are still a firm factor; it’s just they’re slowly shifted to one side to make way for new indulgences, namely his prowess with all things tonal. The serene “Atheos” is so un-grumpy you have to stare hard at Rex’s press photo and wonder if this bloke resembling a Sharky & George thug can really make something so pearly: the cloudy chorals, the waterfall effect, a big bright aquarium bursting with proteins… there’s your wildlife factor, AI-phobics, and you’ve just lost the bet that you can’t dance while frozen in suspended animation. It’s precisely what I needed to melt into after seven days of 3 am starts, and the tune floats deeper than “Chicane for the skeptical” tag Rex has had to field in the past. Some of the tracks—the already-leaked “Inflationary” in particular—could quite conceivably chart if licensed to more enterprising labels, those pianos reinforced with bulb synths and driving keyboard auto-rhythms. It shows that States of Space isn’t just fifty minutes of murk that people with drum-deafness can fall asleep too, it’s a steady, yearning little adventure touching everything from Berlin to dub techno; a fine demonstration in modern composing and how to make it all sound relevant.