Ry “X” Cuming is an Australian singer with an unpleasing Hoxtonite beard. And he certainly gets about. He first came to prominence when he hooked up with former UK breakbeat DJ-producer kingpin Adam Freeland to form Californian band The Acid. Their output has mainly been ghostly minimalist, post-dubstep songs. It was when Cuming got together with Frank Wiedemann of successful dance music unit Âme as Howling that he came to this writer’s attention. Their debut album, Sacred Ground, was one of last year’s best, albeit very much in the ghostly minimalist post-dubstep vein. At a guess then, what style might we guess he'll choose for his second solo album? Yup, ghostly minimalist post-dubstep songs is the correct answer. Happily, he’s become pretty good at it by now.
A music journo’s confession: I have slowly grown to have huge issues with men singing in high-pitched voices. I so loathe the endless post-Radiohead/Coldplay/Damien Rice falsetto-means-vulnerable trend, that such dislike has become almost dogmatic and can blind me to the rare occasions on which these whiners do something passable. Hence I almost missed this album on first listen. Cuming has said in interviews that his most important musical touchstone is Jeff Buckley. And it's true, his singing style is closer to that everlasting well-spring of plaintive whimperers than most. Instead of an acoustic guitar, however, he goes down the James Blake route, laying his voice over delicate electronic soundscaping.
In fact, it’s everything I should hate. Cuming keens over laidback floaty effects, with opiated bass tones occasionally cuddling the ears, and subterranean house throbbing, as on the song “Deliverance”. Dawn, however, places this sound where it has a subtle, warm, appeal. Perhaps it’s because these songs are rather good and, overall, the ambience he develops during the course of the album is seductive, pulling the listener into a world that is at once human, forlorn and spacily futurist.