Rjyan Kidwell has been releasing records and performing as Cex in and around Baltimore for roughly a decade now. And while there was a period, running from 2002′s Tall, Dark and Handcuffed through 2006′s Actual Fucking, that he operated primarily as a vocalist, creating music that was a vehicle for his singing or rapping, the majority of his work before and since then has been instrumental, driven by programmed beats. As closely associated with the IDM scene as he’s always been, though, there’s long been a thread of appreciation for less “intelligent” dance music running through Cex’s catalog. And his latest release, Bataille Royale, is his most overt attempt at incorporating the sounds of some of those other genres, particular Baltimore club music, into his own murky, proggy aesthetic.

Baltimore club, the mutant hybrid of hip hop and house music that’s slowly bubbled from a local flavor to an internationally recognized sound over the past two decades, has recently begun to penetrate mass consciousness and even the pop charts with its insistent rhythms and catchy chants. But Cex, who’s long incorporated it into his performances and DJ sets, uses the raw materials of Baltimore club as a departure point on Bataille Royale to head off in the opposite direction. Here, the dusty breakbeats of club music form the backbone of longer, more densely textured compositions that aren’t too far off, in structure if not in sound, from his 2000 debut album, Role Model. It’s hard to imagine a dancefloor going nuts for these tracks as is, but still easier than with almost any previous Cex record. Midway through the album, some tracks do flirt with a more direct Baltimore club sound — the dirty minded vocal loop of “Freq” or the cruising, Odell’s-friendly groove of “1i” — but for the most part the album only bears the most vestigial reminders of its inspiration.

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In double 12″ vinyl form, Bataille Royale is an hour long and split into eight tracks, although a forthcoming digital release will feature a bonus track, the spacey 18-minute epic “Criticality.” The proper double LP, however, closes with perhaps the best song of the whole set, “Brains Out,” which sets the familiar rickety snares and tambourines of club music breaks to an entirely new pattern, while a flanged organ riff and an unhinged vocal sample lend the track an uneasy, almost alien energy. As a whole, the album spreads a handful of such epiphanies over a long, spacious sonic expanse. But even without listening closely for such moments, or to decode its subtle tapestry of influence and homage, Bataille Royale should clearly stand out as one of Cex’s best and most fully realized albums to date.