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Baby Gear is the debut EP from Montreal artist Kaya Hoax. Crafted in bedrooms and makeshift studios over a period of three years, the project is a collection of brash, electronic bangers, the culmination of her complex fascination with maternity. “I’m not a parent myself, but my whole life I’ve had this visceral urge toward nurturing” she says. “I wanted to celebrate fertility and it’s sacredness, but also expose the darker, unwholesome facets of my fantasy to create life as a means of healing myself.” Over the course of six tracks, she sways between mothering and estrangement, bravado and self-defeat, creation and destruction. These dichotomies are apparent in the record’s lyrical content : strange vignettes of aggression, emancipation, and total vulnerability. On tracks like “Hot Water”, she burns through self-deprecating metaphors at breakneck speed. On “Break it Off”, a love prospect is snuffed out over a melee of alarm bell synths and gooey samples. The beats on Baby Gear are colossal, the digital instrumentation raw and incisive. With contributions from producers INFOPOLICE, Funkywhat and Loxley, the music lives somewhere between hip hop and pop experimentalism, drawing from UK grime, dancehall and punk. With hyperactive hooks, booty-shaking bass and earworms melodies, Baby Gear is hot music for hot summer days.