On this ruminative album, the artist explores the anxieties and vulnerability underneath the joyful innocence suggested by her stage name. Hong Kong native Merry Lamb Lamb (Woon Yan Fung) discovered her musical calling while studying visual arts in Toronto. Teaching herself production online, she first pinged the indie-pop radar with the quirky 2015 single “Pity Party” and established her brand of eclectic electronic music in an appearance on the Chinese talent competition Rave Now in 2018. On her 2022 debut album Genesis, the artist chronicles her personal growth from self-doubt to self-affirmation and religious awakening, mining the inherent tension between danceable beats and rueful lyrics. This album finds her moving beyond the primary-coloured synths of her earlier work, adopting a larger, darker palette more aligned with bedroom producer contemporaries like Grimes, Clairo and Yaeji. Techno banger “Told You So” undulates to throbbing bass and auto-tune, “Sympathy” pulses with groovy house rhythms and “Fading Flowers” marries the lyricism and delicate melodic lines of classic Cantopop to the sparse, reverb-heavy drums of ’80s pop. Slipping smoothly between Cantonese and English and alternating spare melodic arrangements with spoken-word poetry, Merry Lamb Lamb traverses the full spectrum of emotions before ending with a deep exhale of deliverance on “Lights”. Genesis marks two points on the artist’s journey: a summation of her idiosyncratic electronic style, and a point of origin for her as a self-confident creative force.