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HOT CEX
"I'm bringing back crowd surfing in a big way."
Who doesn't love CEX? Only those who haven't heard this
performer's own fresh brand of ever-morphing laptop electro-punk.
Almost more exciting than his music is the fact that this former
Baltimore native conjures an entire career from a small laptop PC, a
cordless mic, and fistfuls of attitude. Riyan spoke to me via phone
from under the "dismal" skys of LA while out on tour. Though currently
based in Oakland, he feels more like of a nomad. "Maybe I should give
up on the idea of a home for a while and just kind of go wherever I
can," he said. Riyan has the unique privilege of doing just that right
now thanks to massive word-of-mouth PR and touring.
His interest in music began in the mid '90's on his parents "big old
desktop" in the basement. Not having many friend s that lived near
him, he would frequently crawl down into his little hole and start
putting weird sounds together.
"It was just kind of a natural thing," Riyan said. He took what he
made from downloaded samples and called it a song.
"I was like, 'look at this, this is a song.' But you know, it wasn't.
But I said it was. I was doing weird shit. I was using like one track
recordings and just putting them on top of each other. Kind of making
weird Negativeland kind of sounding stuff." His first live gig as "Cex"
was either at a basement or at a church, he couldn't quite recall. In
1998 he made contact with Kid606 and the rest is history in the
making.
"I was about 17. And I didn't know anything about electronic music
really, or about putting out your own records. I’d just been making
this weird shit and I was like, 'Well if anyone else out there is
going to have anything in common with me it's probably this guy.' So I
sent him a record and he was into it and we ended up touring. Like
doing one of the first ever laptop tours, kind of D.I.Y. laptop tours
in summer of ’99. And Apple.com did a little article about it and we
thought we were the shit. Like we thought we were the pioneers here,
this kind of punk electronic thing. We played two record stores, a
diner, a rave, a rock club, an art gallery."
Riyan bought his first laptop in '99. "That was right before the tour.
That's why I got it. To do that tour. And it was really cruddy, it was
a piece of shit. It was like a $800 PC laptop." He wrote the music for
later releases on the laptop in his bedroom in Baltimore.
On his web site we noticed that Jacksonville was mentioned as a tour
stop on his wish list. I asked him why. "Uh, I don't know. I guess I
had been there when I was a little kid," Riyan said. "My aunt lived
there. My father's sister married an Air Force guy and I don't know if
there is a base or something there. We went and visited them. It's
just a city that stuck out in my mind."
He's played in front of huge audiences to small gatherings, but with
CEX is seems size does matter. "I'm always trying to talk to the crowd
and do like a conversational intimate thing. When you have a thousand
people, you say something, and all you get back is 'ROOOAAAAAAAR!'
They just become a blob, like one giant organism."
Riyan has found a way to help counteract that problem. "I've
eliminated stages from my shows, I don't play on stages anymore, and I
got a really nice wireless microphone. So it's much much easier to
take apart a thousand person crowd and make it seem kind of intimate,
or at least driven in that direction."
His recent success hasn't affected him too hard yet. "It's hard to
tell because my publicist will call and be like, 'You're blowing up!'
And I’ll be like, 'I am? I feel like I'm still in Subway, eating a
Subway sandwich. You should come look at me and then tell me that.'
The biggest thing for me has been that the reviews have been taking it
so much more seriously than the other records. And then also
pretending like they've always taken me seriously :::laughs::: Which
has been gratifying."
Thus far, CEX is a rarity amongst other artists who contribute to the
the ever-decreasing quality of the music industry. Riyan lays claim to
his own brand of street beats, where string sections mix with layers
of samples and are topped off with face first lyrics. His music has an
edge that hints at CEX's potential for staying power.
After his tour of Europe in September and the release of his new
record, Riyan plans on taking the rest of the year off to write a new
full-length record. The next CEX release is set for sometime this fall
and will be cleverly titled Maryland Mansions. What can we expect this
time around?
"It’s all about running away and having a negative bank balance. It’s
kind of agro."
livecex
Kicking yourself for having missed cex with The Dismemberment Plan?
Read the review to help you live vicariously. |
