Our obsession with Shortout Kid seems to grow with every listen. We last featured the visionary artist for blurring industrial rock and experimental innovation on cerebral and cinematic single, Toy Shop, so when we found out he was back with Lamb, we were extremely curious and couldn’t wait to spotlight the track.
Lamb opens with astral arpeggios and a choral vocal synth expanding into reversed textures before Shortout Kid shares cerebral prose with a philosophical message. The production is progressive and cinematic. We vibe with the concept of the song, which essentially explores the tension between beauty and brutality, innocence and destruction, and the sacred and the profane.
There is an almost ritualistic quality to the choral textures, creating a celestial atmosphere that is gradually unsettled by the track’s abrasive and subversive industrial edge. The songwriting is intelligent and metaphorical with a zeitgeist edge, delivered at a time when we need it the most.
The artist describes Lamb as “tricked out choral grit”, which feels apt and a contrast that is precisely what makes the track so compelling. Imagine Depeche Mode meeting Nirvana, Thom Yorke crossing paths with Martin Garrix, and The Smashing Pumpkins colliding with The Prodigy. These are not just reference points, but they help convey the hella unique dimensionality of a sound.
What makes Shortout Kid especially intriguing is the instrument at the heart of his creative world: the so-called razor belt, a radical invention that fuses the appearance and fury of a chainsaw with the expressive possibilities of an electric guitar. After years spent developing the instrument in seclusion, followed by a further three years mastering it, the visionary artist has cultivated a sonic identity that feels genuinely unconventional.
Cinematically, we can imagine the track inhabiting the unsettling worlds of Mandy, Annihilation, Under the Skin, Suspiria, The Matrix and Blade Runner 2049. On television, it could land a sync placement in the new Carrie series, Severance, Black Mirror, Dark, Westworld and The OA.
Naturally, we are obsessed, and have added Lamb to our New Music Spotlight playlist, and our TIMELESS and TRIPPY playlists, whilst we continue to stream the growing discography of Shortout Kid, and anticipate future releases.