BEXX
Burn It Down and Hold Tight
Independent
Imagine being an electronic producer during the time of COVID-19, unable to intimate a live crowd’s instant connection with their latest creation. Imagine being a DJ under a strict lockdown, unable to feel the rise and fall of an audience’s pulse as they curate the soundtrack to their night. Lucky, then, that BEXX is a Perth producer and she got to unveil her two new singles – Hold Tight and Burn It Down – last Saturday at The Bird, complete with a live band.
It’s lucky because these songs need to be danced to, quality foot-shuffling and body-swaying electro-pop as they are. BEXX, otherwise known as Bec Price, only started DJing in 2018 but it’s been a swift love affair since then. She graduated from WAAPA with a Bachelor of Performance Making which makes sense upon listening to her songs. There’s a theatricality to the structure, both in the way she builds her stories and spits out the words with confidence. Her voice is forceful on Burn It Down, the track bubbling with energy. The lyrics discuss another person BEXX is infatuated with, perhaps an ex: “But I still hold your hand/ And I call you my friend/ Yes I will hold your hand/ As you burn down where I stand.”
Burn It Down is a familiar refrain in music, with artists as ludicrously varied as Linkin Park, Avenged Sevenfold, and Dexys Midnight Runners wielding it. BEXX uses it for choral moments of impassioned release: “Burn it down/ I love it when you do/ Burn it down/ If it means I still have you,” she shouts. It’s when the simmering tension of the song unfurls into towering euphoria; she may be hinting at a fraught relationship continuing on its fragile course, but it’s difficult not to be swept up regardless. This is down to BEXX’s precise control of the production’s tempo, always knowing when to play it cool before burning with volcanic eruptions of beats.
Hold Tight features the fizzier production at first. Her beats are louder, funner, more fiery, for a continuous two minutes. Then the temperature drops significantly, the rhythm hushed and breathless. BEXX then unleashes one more onrushing dreamy house climax, reminiscent of Rüfüs Du Sol (someone BEXX has confessed to admiring). There’s still time left in the year for BEXX to release a long-awaited EP. Keep an eye out for that, or otherwise catch her next gig at Mojo’s on Saturday, October 31 if you can.
CONOR LOCHRIE
