London-based producer Lexxi’s “Red Eyez” served as the closer on Elysia Crampton’s excellent July release Demon City. Crisp and determined, the track did the tough work of providing resolution to Crampton’s thematically and sonically sprawling album, setting the listener in a dark-but-hopeful present. A version of “Red Eyez” reappears on Lexxi’s debut EP 5STARBOI—this time, weighted down by the introduction of blown-out bass—linking the two projects; Crampton herself tweeted that Demon City “is really just an advertisement for Lexxi’s *5TARBO1 *EP, a poem and captivating accomplishment in its own right.”
The succinctness of “Red Eyez” carries throughout the five tracks that comprise 5STARBOI. Where their collaborations on Demon City embraced collage, Lexxi’s solo material is notably direct. “Pared-down” might be an overstatement, as his compositions are still generously adorned, hissing and crackling at the seams, but if Demon City stretched to encompass both past and future, *5TARBOI *takes place in a single wide-eyed moment.
The EP opens with an anarchic deluge of synth noise, which swiftly gives way to the sort of icy, winding phrase Lexxi is particularly skilled at making. His melodies, which are generally quite simple and will reiterate for the length of a track, bring to mind a less-elastic Arca. Bookended by squalls of texture and undergirded by stuttering grime-inflected beats, this music is certainly aggressive (angry, even) but by no means relentless. On “$ever0” (whose title references severo, a style pioneered by Lexxi, Crampton, and their friends: “an accumulation or accretion, an ongoing process of becoming-with,” as Crampton recently described it to Resident Advisor), a creeping rhythm is met with ambient tones and metallic echoes—pacing that’s far from the club. It brings to mind a somewhat-more-contemporary version of the sort of affected London sound in Zomby and Burial’s saddest tracks; similarly, this is music that is very much marked by urban space.
What differentiates this set of tracks from such UK forebears, and draws it even closer to associates like Chino Amobi, Lotic, and Crampton, is its nuanced emotional tenor. *5TARBOI *feels balefully of-the-moment, acutely aware of its surroundings. At its heart, it’s a statement of youth, a coming-of-age record, even. And, tinged with sadness, this coming-of-age can be as much a mourning as it is a celebration. Any moody restraint sustained elsewhere on the release is cast aside on closer “Up Top,” an anthem with both crushing and delicate elements. Its melancholic climax winds across octaves, while an errant synth screeches uncomfortably close to atonal territory; the track finishes on an unresolved note. Lexxi captures a feeling of cathartic dissolution, a moment when coming into being means coming undone.
