Dancey brawn + philosopher’s brain
Who He?
Once the creative force behind the well-regarded but short-lived experimental post-rock act Sian Alice Group, London-based CVX’s Rupert Clervaux is one of those under-the-radar types who’s worked with the likes of Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor, Beatrice Dillon and This Heat’s Charles Hayward. Oh and also, he’s drummed for Jason Spaceman. The CVX moniker is new though, and his current release ‘Zibaldone’ showcases his searching, percussive, cerebrally electronic experimentalism to bravura effect.
Why CVX?
If you like a bit of swirling, out-of-time intellectual substance to underpin your electronic poison, then ‘Zibaldone’ will excite a part of your brain that other releases might struggle to reach. Clervaux explores the foggy borderland between authorial re-appropriation and bare-faced plagiarism. Among other things, he asks – in an easy age of convenience for digital music composition – some long-overdue questions about creative originality.
Tell Us More
Previous release ‘Chthonic 97’ references Clervaux’s more distant creative past, when in 1997 he and his then-collaborator K1 self-released a long-player with the help of the FatCat shop in London’s Covent Garden, dispersing any remaining copies to passing DJs playing at Steve Bicknell’s legendary LOST nights, which the pair attended with devotional fervour. It’s worth hunting down and, helpfully, it was reissued last year from the original vinyl and released on Amsterdam’s Lobby Boy label. You might even get away with calling the tunes intelligent bangers.
‘Zibaldone’ is out on Laura Lies In
