Audiopile Review: Deconstructed club has been a hard-to-define puzzle of a genre—yet when it comes to aya, it’s hard to think of a better umbrella term for her singular, unconventional sound. While her previous release, 2021’s im hole, was shrouded in stark production and mystery, hexed! rips away the cloak, leaving behind something raw, unfiltered, and mercilessly visceral. It often feels like a high-speed collision—techno, hardcore, nu-metal, and industrial clashing, the shrapnel coalescing into new and electrifying forms. Hexed! plays like the club’s answer to Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition, an album so thrilling in its depiction of the tumultuous highs and crushing lows of addiction, unfolding like a rollercoaster destined to derail. The dry, clanging beats evoke the pummelling force of The Bug—hitting hard, threatening to knock the wind out of listeners—while aya’s explosive vocals finish the job. Sound design heads will surely dig into the layers of revving synths, buzzing drones, and razor-sharp percussion, but beyond the technical brilliance, there’s something profoundly human in the passion aya conveys. At times, her delivery channels the no-holds-barred poetics of Moor Mother; elsewhere, it careens into an eccentric post-punk fervor. This isn’t necessarily club music—it’s techno-punk, industrial anarchy, an auditory barrage where lasers cut through the din and every beat feels like a detonation. If im hole lured us in with its eerie allure, hexed! throws us headfirst into the storm. We couldn’t recommend hexed! more—and for those looking to get the full experience, you’re in luck: im hole has just been pressed for the first time.

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hexed!, aya’s second album, confronts the desperation and dysfunction of addiction. Internalised phobias and suppressed traumas, haunt the corridors and golden hours once romanticised on 2021’s im hole; daymares concealed by nocturnal afters-hopping and key bag circles. Opener ‘I am the pipe I hit myself with’ exposes the gray portrait secreted somewhere between the 8th and 9th floors of her previous record. ‘I used to say some shit for sure’, ‘I used to say it when I was me-less’. hexed! is about what happens when aya turns the lights on.