aya’s track is a dizzying tunnel gadget of itchy scratches, whispered wants, fried zaps, and unsettling sounds so tactile they appear to just about puncture your eardrum. From time to time, the London-based experimental manufacturer’s debut, im hollow, resembled gothic ASMR, or an open-heart dissection of a DAW, the use of tiny scalpels to tug aside, pinch, and rearrange sound layers. aya’s first solo free up in over two years, Lip Turn, is a fundraiser for her facial feminization surgical treatment, nevertheless it’s additionally a birthday celebration. The place aya’s early tunes reimagined future-pop like SOPHIE as track for dissociation somewhat than dancing, this EP sounds constructed for a disorienting membership evening.
There’s a screwy buoyancy to those songs that makes Lip Turn really feel like a fusion of im hollow and her extra adrenalized 2023 collab EP with BFTT, the co-founder in their label YCO. aya’s substances frequently really feel so characterful and moderately selected as to appear anthropomorphic: shiny dings that appear to grin, metal synths winking like they’re enjoying patty cake. On “Essente!,” Ugandan rapper Ecko Bazz somersaults between flows and languages, his fierce power remodeling aya’s spasming beat right into a neon playground. The identify observe, which options her regulate ego LOFT, ratchets up rigidity with the tight pulse of a Two Shell tune after which explodes right into a barrage of abrasive but groovy low finish primed to jolt dancers into off-kilter motion.
The most important trade in this EP is the near-absence of aya’s voice, which acted as one of those phantom excursion information thru im hollow’s haunted manor area of deconstructed membership. Missing her characteristically surreal imagery and slurred rhymes, those tracks really feel moderately extra nameless, as even though any oddball with a knack for madcap sound buildings may just’ve patched them in combination. There’s additionally much less of the damaging house that made the hypnotically menacingsongs constructed round her creaky vocals and business bleeps sound like spoken-word poetry for a horrifying sport rating. With none kind of narrative to cohere round, Lip Turn every so often hits like a faceless flood of wonky sound shards—chipmunk gurgles and kawaii-ified chants on “Leftenant Keith,” clipped breaths and thudding drums at the identify reduce.
However even with its frenetically pristine sheen, the track continues to be cheekily bizarre, the rhythm at all times transferring. Just like the ’80s British band it’s named after, “Dexxy Is a Middle of the night Runner” is a tribute to an ADHD drugs: lisdexamfetamine (repeatedly referred to as Vyvanse, it sounds as if a favourite at the membership circuit in Australia, the place exhausting medicine are tricky to procure). However its lattices of paranoid plinks and step by step eerier cut-up vocals are nearly the inverse of Dexys’ interest pop. The general segment’s fusillade of rubbery percussion makes me image a unmarried tiny tablet sprinting at cartoonish pace like Loopy Frog. Whether or not the track is demented or danceable, aya’s killer ear for tone and texture makes each and every fragment sound hyperreal.
