Album Review: hexed! by aya

'Where to begin? Where were we before?' asks Aya Sinclair - better known simply as aya - on I am the pipe I hit myself with, the opening track on new album hexed! 'I used to say some shit about shoes, and my heels digging in / Buried deep in some shit eating chagrin', she spouts; it's a call-back to the opening track of her debut im hole, a deeply personal record that explored the unravelling and reconstruction of her identity against a backdrop of brutal IDM-driven techno. Inhabiting the space where self-loathing and self-exploration collide, hexed! finds aya struggling to exorcise old demons while keeping new ones at bay. 'You've dropped your fucking gay card' she sneers on off to the ESSO, the combination of dry Yorkshire wit and bludgeoning beats a recurring motif throughout the album.

Full Review >>

"When it comes to trauma, I think you can see both sides of an event," explained DJ and producer Aya Sinclair, known mononymously as Aya, in an interview with tQ earlier this month. "You come around on the other side of something and then understand it as necessary for creating the person who you are." The trauma - and resulting perspective - in question is the subject of the London-based artist's challenging but thrilling second album hexed!, an abrasive mix of techno, UK bass, noise and industrial. Something of a re-examination of the nihilistic partying charted on her debut album im hole, hexed! sees Aya grabbing the tendrils of emptiness from her previous work and pulling them, shrieking, into an examining light.

Full Review >>