Honed on ОРУЖИЕ’s own back catalog of industrial house meditations and ambient fizz, the girl who stepped on yr shadow provides a much-needed fresh take on emo trap, post-Peep. The Canadian producer-turned-rapper captures Gothboiclique’s autotuned malaise through a lo-fi techno lens, firing an endless stream of fried filters and samples at mumbled vocals that just barely register.
On a Polaroid found beneath the underpass, buried beneath now-dead foliage, you can make out the outline of a soul in egress. A translucent head protrudes from a sallow chest. There’s nothing round or tangible about this little figment caught on film. Its shape is implied: it’s a bubble blown on the fabric of existence itself, more likely to implode than pop. No eyes; no lips; no boyish shag. Just the ballooning question mark of a profile.
Out of the four tracks that make up the EP, “lighthouse world” is the most playlist-worthy. ОРУЖИЕ flickers pitched-up high-hats through a babbling stream of synths, singing in yelpy sibilance as a groove fades into being. In another life, the song could’ve been a misty aside on Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot It in People or a Dean Blunt deep cut. In this world, it’s an eerie cavern in the Cloud: a distress signal found too late.