Aya played in Atlanta’s Masquerade, and by chance, I caught her listening to the opening acts at the back of the venue. Strangely, no one else recognized her, and so I pulled her outside and interviewed her. We covered her unique blend of dubstep, metalcore, and LA beat scene influences, sobriety, and how she has changed her songwriting process since she stopped getting high. 

At the time of her initial music awakening in 2007, DMZ and Hyperdub had been around for around seven years, she said. She was discovering most early dubstep second-hand, not living in London at the time. By using the internet and digging for records, she, like her labelmate Burial, got a hand-me-down education on UK dubstep. She was also an IDM head, citing Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Venetian Snares as important early artists to her. Outside of the UK, she also discovered the LA Beat scene. 

“I think I liked it because it was very textural,” said Aya. “There’s alot of lo-fi sampled stuff, and field recordings also found their way in. That whole Brainfeeder sound was pretty important to me, and since I’m a drummer, things they made felt human.”

Every interview Aya’s done has focused on the metal bands she was in, and I believe it. The fry screams she was letting rip during her performance, which surprised me even after she told me about her experience as a metal drummer.

I’ve heard it from plenty of artists I’ve spoken with that the technical aspects of sound must follow from an emotional or musical source. I asked Aya what her opinion on sound design as a practice was.

“Good sound design serves the purpose of the sound it should be,” she said. “You know what I’m saying?”

We both lost focus for a second as dispersed gabber laser kicks bellowed from the open door to the venue. The opening act, Techno Twink, was tearing up the decks. In a certain sense, divine providence or chance proved her point since the sound design in that track was purposeful and impactful. I knew what she was saying.

“You get a kind of technical display of virtuosity, and often I’m left in this place where I’m like, what do you think about the world? What does this tell me about your experience? What do I learn from hearing this? That can be embedded in sound design as well. The choice of a particular overdrive that someone will use has subconscious references. If you use the Ableton Amp Sim alot, your music is going to sound like Lingua Ignota.”

I often find that there’s a vulnerability in Aya’s music, a part of ourselves that exists that we wouldn’t want to put on a record. She said that one of her tracks was inspired by a panic attack on a train, feeling the anxiety and claustrophobia of the train car, and eyes peering at her.

“Queer people like body horror,” she quipped when I asked her about the album cover. Obviously, that was not going to be a sufficient answer for me, given she could have picked literally any other image for Hexed’s cover. 

“I think with the album cover, that was supposed to be the most disgusting thing imaginable. No, maybe not imaginable, but something that makes you think: isn’t this fucked? I think it’s funny because it was taken on my phone, and it’s supposed to feel like it’s the day after the party. You're scrolling through your phone. You find this, and ask, ‘When did this happen?’’’