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May 06, 2021 By Caleb Campbell

CUTWORM is the pseudonym of Denver-based musician David L. Small. Taking cues from industrial, hip hop, noise music, and film scores, Small has been constructing his darkly cinematic take on electronic music since 2015, most recently returning in February of this year with his latest album Ouster. As Small describes, “The album is a direct response to watching the world around us further deteriorate and devolve. It’s a bleak response. It’s confrontational. Every track has been directly affected by the events of 2020.”

Now CUTWORM is back, sharing the video for “Insulate,” premiering with Under the Radar.

“Insulate” is a particularly heavy take on CUTWORM’s sound, pushing his industrial influences to the forefront with dense blasts of guitar and synthetic percussion. Sparse lyrics and vocal samples break up the towering instrumental, but the track largely focuses on crushingly loud electronica delivered at an insistent march. Already a particularly heavy take on CUTWORM’s sound, the video for “Insulate” takes a similarly dark path, casting the performers in faceless outfits, grim lighting, disorienting flashing lights. If you’re sensitive to strobing, best sit this video out.

Small explains of the song, “‘Insulate’ is just a raw purge of emotions that built up for me in response to this past year. It all had reached a boiling point within me, and this was the healthiest way I could expel that energy. It’s a very personal song.

“For the video, I wanted to create an atmosphere similar to THX 1138 and Beyond the Back Rainbow, something that when you see it, you recognize the images, they’re familiar, but there is also something unsettling and alien about it.” Check out the song and video below. Ouster is out now.