Not every bruised and bastardized trap mashup and dance mix transcends its humble origins, but 999 Heartake Sabileye's A Boy Named Hexd comes much closer than most. The album is the experimental hip-hop producer's first full EP of original material. They have released a full deck of singles, live albums, and remix albums prior to this, but A Boy Named Hexd is seemingly their first attempt at applying their talents to a slate of coherent and interlocking songs, and the results are a gripping conveyance to the tattered rim of itinerant sonic perception. On this album, 999 manages to make these seven tracks flow together like the plot of a lucid dream- inscrutable and blurry around the edges, but with a clear narrative thrust that makes perfect sense while you're in it. You might not recall all of the details once you manage to rub the sleep from your eyes, but you'll never rid yourself of the impressions and emotions that the psychic pilgrimage impressed on your interior self. The impact of A Boy Named Hexd seems at least partially attributable to a combination of undermixed melodies with the muscle of toasted, boxer-grade trap beats. The soft distortion of the vocal hook on opener "godspeed" and the way it is pressed into malleable, grey synth tones deceptively lulls you to a state of whimsy only to be periodically shocked back to life by the rough massage of a brutish, Memphis beat and a pushy, bracing trap flow. It's kind of like a daydream you're having in the park interrupted when a shoebill lands on your shoulders and attempts to open the top of your skull like a can of tuna. The other open secret of the album's mix is the extent to which it is bitcrushed to oblivion. At any given time there are three of four tightly sequenced rhythms in the cut, and all of them have been claustrophobically compressed into a mosaic of tonally intricate grooves. You can try to follow any one strand, but you'll get tripped up by another and end up spinning like a top attempting to keep either straight. It's best to just enjoy the strange momentum of it all rather than attempt to unravel its mysteries. At least that's what I tell myself while I'm being rolled over like a speedbump and wound up like a slinky by the breakbeat influenced trap torrent "Online Third Impact: Hype Incarnate." and the downpressing drum and bass of "SoundCloud." In my humble opinion, there are few curses worse than missing out on A Boy Named Hexd.
