RXM Reality No. 1 In The World

Chicago-based producer/composer Mike Meegan makes music under the moniker RXM Reality. Over the course of four albums on Hausu Mountain since 2018, Meegan refined a strain of electronic production that unites facets of breakcore, techno, grime, noise, and countless other styles into detailed composites that attest to his omnivorous tastes and bottomless technical acumen as a producer. While his live performances over the past few years and 2022’s Sick For You found him experimenting with his own lead vocals for the first time, pushing the dial somewhere closer to mutated-pop-music injected with distorted roars in the digital hardcore tradition, his new album No. 1 in the World (his fifth on HausMo) dives into the song-oriented branch of his work more than ever before. The album’s hour-long program spans twenty-four shorter tracks that highlight Meegan as the frontman and singer/songwriter of his own morphing one-person ensemble, without sacrificing any of the complex and unpredictable production decisions that animate his music. Acknowledging the influence of rock, punk, and pop music on his work, and embracing his desire to shine as a more legible human presence within his cybernetic-spreads of electronics, RXM Reality treats us to a vision of his music equally focused on concise songcraft and ballistic rave energy, all the while pushing his sound into a state of mind-bending total overload.

As RXM Reality cherrypicks and recombines signifiers from a deep history of experimental electronic vocabularies, one might worry that Meegan’s production runs the risk of collapsing under its own weight, yet it speaks to his experience as a producer that every juxtaposed element hits the mix with a stunning degree of clarity and separation. No. 1 isegues through far-flung genres and styles without ever losing a sense of cohesion, rooted in Meegan’s palpable presence at the center of each track.