Hausu Mountain – HAUSMO 91
RXM Reality is Chicago-based producer Mike Meegan. His futuristic strain
of detailed beat work jitters somewhere between the margins of kinetic
IDM, grimy industrial electronics, and intricately spatialized textural
collage. DEViL WORLD WiDE, his second release with Hausu Mountain,
builds on the precedent established by Panic Cycle (HAUSMO72, 2018), as
Meegan steers his hybrid rig of hardware samplers and software systems
through a series of rhythmic sketches that are as transfixing as they
are claustrophobic. While RXM Reality builds his tracks over a rough
grid that keeps one foot rooted in danceable rhythms, bursts of jagged
percussion counteract the groove while noise debris drips between
morphing synthetic elements. Individual synth voices serve as both
anti-melodic lead lines and rhythmic markers akin to drum patterns,
quivering their way through his tracks in various states of granular
disintegration. When he eases back on the level of density and allows
his sound sources to melt into swathes of silence, specters of beat
structures carry on in lurching, start-and-stop rhythms.
RXM Reality’s music draws inspiration from his urban surroundings in
Chicago as much as from a growing canon of dystopian audio and visual
touchstones that inch closer and closer to real life as time goes on.
DEViL WORLD WiDE’s fractal, continually splintered approach to sound
design recalls the work of modern luminaries like Arca and Actress, two
influences Meegan cited as formative to his expanding conceptions of
production and composition. Like fellow members of the Hausu Mountain
roster such as Fire-Toolz, Khaki Blazer, or Bonnie Baxter, the music of
RXM Reality toys with building blocks of dark humor and chaotic
irreverence, as tracks break into unexpected shifts in mood or shed any
semblance of legible rhythm on a dime to explode into the territory of
pure texture. A pummeling passage of breakbeats might slide into a patch
of 8-bit squelch, while a brief flash of bouncy, major-key melody might
herald the waves of feedback rushing in to wash out the mix. With track
titles that land between the diction of dependence (“The Enabler,”
“Addict”) and inner serenity (“Totally Stress Free,” “Prayers to Fall
Asleep in Perfect Peace”), DEViL WORLD WiDE offers hints at the
motivations that orbit Meegan’s art. In practice, RXM Reality’s tracks
transcend our mundane daily existence and transmute his internal turmoil
and composure into pulsing networks of sound as complex as the emotions
that inspired them.
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