If there is one thing you can count on the internet for, it is to make possible things that are so confounding they'll leave you spiraling down a well of information so deep you will literally pass out from exhaustion before you hit bottom. If you are a hungry music lover such as myself, this is a wonderful feature of the internet. If you are a mature adult with adult ass obligations (also like me) this is a terrible thing if I want to be able to get up for work and maintain healthy relationships. I've spent way more time than I meant to while reading up on Aero Gros M's Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles- not because there is that much information about the artist available online (there isn't)- but because it is apparently representative of a divergent path in a web-born genre called HexD. Which, when I explain it, will definitely make you feel ready for retirement if you're over 25. And if you thought 100 Gecs was too much... This isn't for you. Nothing will be for you again. The world has changed and left you behind my friend. This isn't to say that I don't like what Aero Gros M and others are doing; it just is the byproduct of an internet culture that is very Gen Z. Take that how you will.
Anyway, HexD is the adopted manicure for a heavily distorted style of rap music that takes its cues from mid-'10s Soundcloud trap, and which has been produced to sound incredibly compressed and damaged, with high pitched and inaudible vocals, and many many many references to mid to late '00s internet and teen culture. Think sparkly gifs, Myspace profiles, and visual references to Puffy AmiyYmi's animated Cartoon Network sitcom. Yup, 2005 is back, and it has not been taking the medication its doctor has prescribed to it!
HexD as a style was born incidentally when a SoundCloud user going by Tomoe_theundying uploaded to the platform a remix of songs by the very memable rap collective Reptilian Club BOyz, titling the mix "Rare RCB hexD.mp3." The mix slapped very hard, primarily due to the innovation of running the RCB originals through bitcrusher, a process that increases distortion by reducing the resolution of digital audio data. It's supposed to make songs sound warmer, but in this case, just makes them sound unrecognizably fried. After that initial upload, the aesthetic pretty much took on a life of its own, eventually resulting in the creation of albums that were specifically recorded to sound bitcrushed into digital charcoal briskets.
Aero Gros M's Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles is one such album. It doesn't sound anything like the HexD RCB mix, or even one of the more respected artists in the genre right now, Fax Gang. That said, Aero Gros M do have a very familiar sound for those who have been paying attention to noisy underground internet phenoms like Black Dresses. In fact, I would venture as far as to say that Aero Gros M style is a bitcrushed version of noise pop, with fewer nods to the previous decade's SoundCloud stars, and more of an infatuation with 100 Gecs. I would argue this is true, even, despite the presence of Fax Gang's PK Shellboy guest verse on the track "snowangels," where the young MC is dropping bars like he should be riding shotgun in a hummer in a rap video that's landed in the #4 slot on TRL.
Overall, Aero Gros M feels unpredictable and sensational, exemplified by when they butcher and blend a Cardigan's cover for their track "&," which is otherwise one of the more caustic mixes on the entire album. They don't always sound like they are trying to blow out your speakers and melt your hard drive, though. Representative of the pop preoccupations of the group are the intro track "In Between a Mansion's Gates," which combines bubblegum funk with some particularly spacey pop R'nB bars, and the toasted and hyperactive j-pop condenser (amusingly titled) "FL€€T FOXES." The closest the album comes to straight-up trap is "KNOBB BO$$ RESCUE_NeT," which still has an easily discernable, pop melody, although one that is paired with ominous background effects, to give it a kind of neon-red, syrupy horrorcore feel.
As far as watchwords for Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles I'm going to have to toss up frantic, dramatic, deep-fried, and internety, as single word descriptions that each individually characterize the album as a whole, while hinting at the strange recess flows that babble just below the surface. The last of these descriptors is particularly applicable given the bizarre dialog samples that Aero Gros M inserts into their mixes, obviously culled from lo-fidelity anime dubs, and thereafter hopelessly mutilated during the production process. This album is peculiar even by the standards of present-day internet culture, but I can't deny its effect on me. Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles is a straight bop!
Buy Chocolate Hearts and Stag Beetles here.
