It’s not often that I hear a song that is as perfectly summed up by its title as Gently Brutal. Whilst the production work moves softly, it broods and menaces in equal measures, sinister exactly because it seethes as opposed to rages.
Gently Brutal is the second song to be released from Sad Cyborg, the debut EP from Berlin-based multi-instrumentalist, producer and singer-songwriter Lyhre. The EP is an exploration of identity, gender and humanity — envisioning the cyborg as post-gender figure for the future. Lyhre sees this as the inevitable solution in order to “smash patriarchal structures and consistently asymmetrical power relations”.
If it all sounds a little Westworld on the page, you wouldn’t be a million miles away from the existential dread that Lyhre constructs in the ear. Soft piano keys weave their melodies like a web, Lyhre’s haunting vocal manoeuvring like a spider in your mind, drums shuffling like the threat of plucked silk. It’s both beautiful and terrifying, particularly when she hits her repeated, breathless chorus, vocals leveraged like another instrument in Lyhre’s arsenal, both human and somehow… something else.