Listening to Montreal based musician Kaya Hoax, you’ll find yourself nodding your head with a high energy blend of mischief and passive indignation. Both urgent and celebratory, her music lives somewhere between hip hop and experimental pop, drawing inspiration from UK grime, dancehall and punk.
Over a clutter of hypnotic percussions, raw synth leads and rumbling 808s, Kaya Hoax spits verses that oscillate between fierce proclamations of independence and glimpses of utter vulnerability.
After a handful of remarkable shows around Quebec, including an incendiary set during POP Montreal (mentioned by CULT magazine as one of the festival’s top performances), Kaya Hoax is set to release her first EP “Baby Gear” on May 17th. With hyperactive hooks, infectious bass lines and earworm melodies, she presents a distinctive vision of digital bangers for irreverent femme vibes.
The next single to be unveiled from “Baby Gear” is “Kicker”. Built around chopped sample fragments of a previous version of the song, “Kicker” is carried by hypnotic percussions, layered handclaps (a warped attempt at flamenco palmas she says) and truly gigantic 808s. Squelches of synths merge with gooey samples that fly around the mix like insects, while her verses sway between playful kiss offs and fierce proclamations of self-reliance. “When writing Kicker I was drawing from conversations with women who all shared the same experience as me; being overly concerned with the needs of others and deprioritizing their own” says the artist. “I was fed up with being trapped in the role of caregiver. I wanted to flourish and not be held back by my tendency to nurture”. The chorus’ lyrics were inspired by an interrogation transcript she read while in Women’s Studies at Concordia University between a sneering police officer and a sexual assault survivor.
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