sick for you (SILVER CASSETTE) [Cassette]

Chicago-based producer Mike Meegan records music under the moniker RXM Reality. Meegan’s three previous albums on Hausu Mountain sketch out an evolving trajectory of omni-electronic rhythmic music that warps elements of grime, dubstep, mutated techno, hyperpop, and noise into unpredictable compositions overloaded with synthetic textures and fast-scrolling beat structures.

With the new album sick for you, Meegan pushes the RXM Reality project into brand new zones along multiple intersecting spectrums. For the first time, he incorporates his voice into his work, employing a series of contrasting vocal styles that complement productions which shine with more finely-crafted details and narrative hairpin turns than ever before. The album feels more progressive and overwhelming than any prior output with its pointillistic beat mosaics and melodic arrangements, taking a few steps closer to some vision of contemporary pop music soaked in adrenaline and ballistic energy. RXM Reality’s production thrives on drama, conveyed in mammoth bursts of overlapped drum elements planted over quick-cycling snippets of software synthesis and MIDI guitar. The percussive contours and chest-beating energies of sick for you can sound at times like festival-ready EDM or dubstep (even “brostep”) refracted through a funhouse mirror, maintaining a sense of swaggering confidence and bombast even as shards of disembodied beats and synths melt into putty around the edges of the mix.