In a Music Scene Where Every Project Is Supposed to Be a “Statement,” i connect with beats more than humans Is Content Being a Snapshot

There’s a specific moment in every underground music fan’s life where you discover a new micro-scene online and immediately fall down a rabbit hole. One minute you’re listening to whatever your usual rotation is, the next minute you’re six producers deep into some hyper-specific SoundCloud tag like “plug rage ambient trapcore” wondering how you got here.

i connect with beats more than humans, the latest project from CXBIS, feels exactly like that moment. Technically, it’s being presented as an album. Realistically, it behaves more like a short EP or a loose compilation of experiments; eight tracks that run quickly, hit hard, and leave before they’ve had time to overthink themselves. And that’s not a criticism. In fact, it’s kind of the entire point.

The project exists because CXBIS recently discovered the plug sound and decided to see what would happen if he leaned into those abrasive bass textures and weirdly groovy melodic loops for a while. The result is something that sits comfortably in the same chaotic neighborhood as Yeat and Playboi Carti’s rage-era experiments: blown-out bass, slightly surreal atmosphere, and a general sense that structure is more of a suggestion than a rule.

Tracks like “ill breaking your fucking neck (anybody)”, immediately tells you what kind of project this is going to be. First of all, the title alone feels like it was typed at 2:37 a.m. while someone was extremely confident about something. But more importantly, the production comes in loud, distorted, and impatient. The bass doesn’t gently introduce itself; it kicks the door down. It’s the sort of opener that works less like a traditional “first track” and more like someone hitting play halfway through a mosh pit.

Then “ONI” follows up by leaning into the eerie side of the plug aesthetic. The beat has this slightly ominous quality, like something lurking behind the distortion. The melodies drift around in that oddly hypnotic way plug beats tend to do, where you’re not entirely sure why the loop works, but your brain is absolutely locked into it anyway.

“ISEE” slows things down just enough to reveal what CXBIS probably liked most about the sound in the first place: the groove. Underneath all the distorted bass and chaotic textures, there’s actually a pretty strong sense of rhythm running through the track. Plug beats often hide their catchiness under layers of noise, but when the rhythm settles in, it becomes weirdly addictive.

Who Knows? sits near the center of the project and kind of sums up the entire vibe. The name itself almost feels like an explanation for the project’s creative approach: try things, see what sticks, move on. The production mixes abrasive bass with a bouncing rhythm that lands somewhere between hypnotic and slightly unhinged — which, to be fair, is exactly where the rage scene tends to live anyway.

Then we get “piss stain,” which continues the project’s commitment to embracing rawness over polish. It’s messy in a deliberate way, the kind of track that feels like it was built quickly and confidently rather than meticulously engineered. And honestly, that spontaneity works in its favor.

“Whatever (right)” offers one of the project’s few moments of relative calm. The bass is still there, obviously; this is still a rage-adjacent project after all, but the pacing relaxes slightly, giving the groove a chance to breathe. It’s a small change, but it helps keep the project from turning into eight consecutive minutes of sonic demolition. Then “bands to make her dance” pushes the energy back up again with a beat that feels built almost entirely around movement. The rhythm here is the star of the show; less chaotic, more propulsive. It’s the sort of track that feels engineered for speakers rather than headphones.

CXBIS has been pretty upfront that this project came from stumbling across the plug sound and deciding to try it out. It’s not trying to redefine the genre, and it’s not pretending to be some grand artistic manifesto. It’s a quick, curious dive into a style that caught the artist’s attention. And there’s something refreshing about that honesty. In a music scene where every project is supposed to be a “statement,” i connect with beats more than humans is content being a snapshot; a moment where an artist tried something outside their usual sound just to see how it felt.

Sometimes those experiments lead to entirely new directions Sometimes they just make for a fun eight-track detour. In this case… well… who knows?

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About the Author

Ian Ureta

A tenured media critic known working as a ghost writer, freelance critic for various publications around the world, the former lead writer of review blogspace Atop The Treehouse and content creator for Manila Bulletin.

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