Do you ever have those moments where you just have to laugh at yourself? This album is one of those moments, stretched over a couple good solid listens and some introspective digging into my feelings on acid and house music.

First of all, the title is just begging me to be a hypocrite. For those of you who have already read my review of Mark Farina's Fabric 40, you might have a little insight into where I’m going. A short recap for those that slept on it. I basically summarily trashed house and acid, by my perception of it in the rave/big desert party scene, which is to say that I was being honest and true to my self and tastes, but also a right bit ignorant. I had a narrow notion of acid and house based on that finite arena. Leave it to a Mexican producer to turn over a new leaf for me, as many have recently, with the likes of Murcof and Fax.
    
Cubenx’s Can’t Throw A Stone is decidedly steeped in house and acid, but reflects a flair for the more intricate and thoughtful music of the aforementioned Mexican contemporaries. While the constant thump of a four-on-the-floor beat is prevalent, it morphs and moves in waves of subtlety. The heavier bass drum even drops out and then back in on the title track, but almost without notice until you’ve gone back through for a second listen. Washes of digital foam and arpeggios of synth spray disguise the movements, much the way waves betray the true flow of current.

Then, about halfway through, the melodic chirps begin to sound like a peculiar summer occupation. Do you remember lying around, deflated from the heat, talking to a friend through the fan that is attempting to cool the room? Remember how that sounded? A sort of high speed dicing of your words and the sounds that constitute them. That is exactly the sound Cubenx arrives at and then, another shift, almost as if performing in one song what a DJ mix will do with numerous songs. What I love about the clickiness of “Firecrackers” is that it doesn’t give you that teeth-grinding feel you get from acid cut with too much strictnine. Again, it morphs into a much smoother sound with a synthesizer patch that reminds me of the old sci-fi flick The Black Hole and I’m being pursued by evil robots. And then there is the pulsing, pushing graininess of “Morning-After Glaze” that reminds me of the spacetime continuum travel which Spacemen Three were so handy.

I guess, what might be most important here is that, unlike a lot of club music I’ve such disdain for, this has so much more emotion and fluidity to it. It’s also a perfect soundtrack to mowing the lawn on a hot day. Really gets you moving behind that beast of a lawnmower that could possibly transform into those evil robots. It's a nice little EP effort for Cubenx to step onto the scene with.

-Gabriel Bogart