Artist Spotlights: Fax Gang Is Blazing A New Bitcrushed Trail In Hip-Hop
Fax Gang’s unconventional take on cloud rap provides the perfect soundtrack to navigating the alienation and hopelessness of modern-day life.
Artist Spotlights introduces you to artists that may not be on your radar yet, but should be. With recently cancelled tours and income loss for small artists, there’s no time like the present to find new talent to support.
Written by Joshua Troncoso
Image courtesy of Fax Gang
Recommended if you like: Black Dresses, Drain Gang, Default Genders
Fax Gang is a multinational cloud rap group that formed in 2019 and consists of lead vocalist PK Shellboy from the Phillipines and producers Blacklight, GLACIERbaby, and maknaeslayer from Australia, the United States, and Great Britain respectively. Communicating through email and Discord servers, the group has managed to remotely collaborate on several projects that have garnered acclaim in several circles on the internet. On Spotify and Apple Music, Fax Gang's music is categorized as hip-hop, but online forums have referred to the group’s music as cloud rap, experimental electronica, and even more avant-garde and niche genres, such as surge or hexD. Labels aside, Fax Gang draws from all corners of the musical matrix to create their own unique sound. In an interview with Rate Your Music, members of the group cited Midwest emo, shoegaze, witch house, and artists like LOONA, Speaker Knockerz, and Jeff Rosenstock as musical influences. Although it started as a semi-serious Filipino brand of the popular Swedish cloud rap collective sad boys, Fax Gang has evolved into a cutting-edge group at the forefront of the underground music scene.
The group’s 2020 EP, FxG3000, earned the attention of listeners with the standout tracks “Breathe2 (In/Out)” and “Jeopardy.” The latter features a GLACIERbaby-produced heavily distorted and airy cloud rap beat packed with pitched-up vocal samples, suffocating bass, and a fuzzy static that eventually consumes the song. PK Shellboy’s rapping is playful and jaunty as they reference the late host of "Jeopardy" with lines like, “I got no questions, no Jeopardy / Got answers, Alex Trebek on me.” Other clever bars appear in “Soaked,” where PK compares himself to J.K. Simmons: “Fit is soaked / Give you whiplash, feel like J.K. Simmons.” FxG3000 is home to a handful of musical gems that brought the group into the spotlight, but only marks the beginning of Fax Gang's greater potential.
On New Year's Day, the group dropped its debut album, Aethernet, where Fax Gang showcases its most polished work yet with a wider emotional range and further-fleshed out sound. On this project, they delve into topics like insecurity and self-hatred with great emotional dexterity in both lyrics and beats that feel more thematically connected to the song’s concept. One of the album's strongest tracks is opener “Anything to Gain/Nothing to Lose.” The song opens with PK Shellboy's angsty, regretful lyrics and Blacklight's driving chiptune beat. As the track picks up steam, so do the singer’s anxieties as they sing, “We’re not destined to be what we wanted to be / Maybe we’re doomed to be common, not free.” "Anything to Gain/Nothing to Lose" reaches a low point as the beat dissipates and PK Shellboy sounds like they’ve hit rock bottom, but a renewed marching tempo slowly sends the track in the opposite direction. They begin their gradual, determined ascent to acceptance with a fresh outlook as they rap, “Perhaps satisfaction will always elude me / But so help me God I’ll still see this shit through.” PK's songwriting ability and the dense yet delicately assembled production on many of Fax Gang's songs are just a fraction of what sets the group apart from other cloud rappers.
Image courtesy of No Agreements
Fax Gang’s signature vocals and unique production style are its most identifiable musical qualities. The group utilizes the audio effect known as bitcrushing, which alters both the vocals and the production through lowering the quality of the audio.The processing of the vocals is reminiscent of Kanye West’s vocoder outro on his magnum opus, “Runaway,” and Fax Gang achieves the same awe-inspiring effect. Though the heavy bitcrushing and deliberate decomposition may lower the quality of the vocals, the alterations add to the powerful feeling of detachment that Fax Gang strives to capture in much of their work. The song “Mirrored” exemplifies this effort with a despondent chorus that examines a dissociative train of thought: “I’ll consider, I’ll consider, I’ll consider if I want to see my face / In the mirror, in the mirror, in the mirror, and I ask, has it always been this way?” Nearly every Fax Gang song sounds as if it was recorded during the eruption of an 8-bit volcano, complete with molten pixels raining down from the sky and melting everything in sight. That is to say, the vocals are not the only aspect of the music that has been carefully manipulated to achieve the group's desired depressing yet barbarous sound. The mixing of the song also reinforces the feeling of alienation by dulling several aspects of the production, creating a numbing sensation that is closely associated with the self-hatred and despair that the song embodies. PK Shellboy has described the mixing process on Aethernet as “crushed and destroyed, but still full-bodied,” as he and the other members meticulously experiment with how dull and inundated they make the production while still hitting hard in all the right places.
Fax Gang’s most recent output, Fractalize, is a short collaboration between the group and the up-and-coming hyperpop adjacent artist and producer blackwinterwells. Despite being only six tracks long, this project packs a glitchy punch. blackwinterwells shines as a producer on the final song, “Signal (Outro),” with a tranquil, retro video game-esque beat that perfectly pairs with PK’s timid verse as they long for a distant relationship with lyrics like, “Someone I wanna make happy, well I found one / You’re always on my mind, though I’m not with you right now / Send an SOS and I find you, my lighthouse.” On the other hand, “Causation” is an icy group cut that features crisp, almost crystallized, drum patterns. PK delivers an excruciating chorus about the pain that he’s caused someone, while blackwinterwells and featured artist Rural Internet handle the verses. Fractalize is a testament to Fax Gang’s collaborative abilities and shows that the group has not let their foot off the gas on their takeoff into stardom.
Like many groups in the underground cloud rap, nightcore, and surge scenes, artists like Fax Gang owe some of their aesthetic to the likes of Drain Gang, Lil B, and even the eccentric and prolific Viper. The very same late '90s and ’00s nostalgia that can be found in those artists’ aesthetics are in the work of Fax Gang and others in the underground. The revival of this aesthetic is a new kind of retrofuturism that replaces the old '40s and '50s art deco view of the future with the 21st century’s pop culture and early Internet aesthetic. Gone are the blimps and flying cars, replacing them are the fax machines and compressed JPEGs that defined the 2000s. Whether it is simply nostalgia-based or commentary on the disappointingly dystopian future that humanity currently inhabits, it is yet another weapon in Fax Gang’s arsenal that showcases their distinct style.
Fax Gang is only one group from a larger underground scene of burgeoning experimental hip-hop artists that will help define the evolution of the genre. Despite being relatively new to the music industry, Fax Gang has already set itself apart from the crowd as a group who challenges hip-hop conventions and pushes the envelope in a new, bitcrushed direction.