With a loaded heart I played a deadly game
There is a moment in every experiment when the data begins to speak back. In Kill Shot, NYC artist Vexillary opens that moment wide, allowing tension, desire, and consequence to orbit one another with the patience of celestial bodies bound by gravity rather than will.
Kill Shot arrives as a transmission from the near future, polished yet perilous, built on precision and restraint. Its motion feels measured, as though every element has been placed with the care of a probe sent across vast distance: no excess weight, no wasted gesture. Beats advance with intent, then withdraw into stillness, creating space for anticipation to grow. In that space, meaning accumulates.
Vexillary’s background in chemistry lingers here like an invisible equation. Elements combine, react, and stabilize. Brooding electronics meet controlled force, yielding something sleek, deliberate, and quietly dangerous. The structure holds, even as emotion presses against its edges. This balance between desire and discipline, motion and pause, gives the piece its charge.
In this tense, EBM-driven song with a haunting female vocal from Baylee, a loaded heart plays a deadly game; letting inevitability do the heavy lifting. Hunter and h(a)unted exchange positions like planets swapping light and darkness along their paths. Triumph appears to be an acceptance that the pursuit itself can be the point, even when resolution remains out of reach. From our small position in the cosmos, we listen and recognize the pattern. Desire accelerates; risk sharpens focus; meaning forms where forces meet. Kill Shot offers a clear signal, sent with care, across the dark between intentions and outcomes.
There is also romance, although not the kind that promises safety. This is attraction under pressure, intimacy shaped by risk. Love and conflict share the same coordinates, their signals overlapping until separation becomes impossible. The track understands this overlap and leans into it, allowing tension to speak more clearly than release ever could. Thematically, it suggests that even in failure, there’s triumph, and that the pursuit itself may have always been the point.
In the self-directed video, the protagonist (played by Sarah Shattuck) embarks on a journey of self-discovery, only to destroy it once and for all. It serves as an allegory for self-sabotage, echoing the music’s fascination with the paradoxical joys of failure.
Watch the video for “Kill Shot” below:
Vexillary is the brainchild of New York–based producer Reza Seirafi, whose work is guided by a scientific approach to sound design and an enduring undercurrent of gloom. After releasing six EPs across independent labels over the course of a decade, Seirafi founded his own imprint, con:trace, in 2021. Its first full-length statement, Full Frontal Lunacy, arrived as a tightly focused concept album charting madness and collapse. The following year’s Crash and Yearn pushed further, sharpening its production and leaning into beat-driven emotional momentum as his voice continued to take shape.
That trajectory deepened in 2024 with Horror in Dub, a bass-heavy descent that explored fear and beauty through a dub-inflected techno frame. The album’s themes were later extended through Horror ReDubs, a companion remix release featuring Leon Switch, Blush Response, VHS Head, and others, broadening the record’s reach and resonance.
Now, in 2026, Vexillary prepares to unveil his most expansive work yet: Digital Suspiria. Fusing futuristic polish with harsher inherited forms, the album marks a decisive new phase, one where songwriting, vocal presence, and conceptual weight move firmly to the foreground. Polished yet raw, synthetic yet haunted, Digital Suspiria positions Vexillary at the forefront of the dark electronic underground.
In the wider arc of Digital Suspiria, Kill Shot functions like a star whose light reveals the shape of the system around it. It points toward a body of work concerned with proximity, consequence, and the strange beauty found when control is tested. Polished surfaces conceal volatile forces beneath, reminding us that order and danger often coexist.
Listen to Kill Shot below and order the single here.
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The post A Glitch in the Code of Love and War — NYC Electronic Music Artist Vexillary Releases Video for “Kill Shot” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
