Melbourne artist Sui Zhen has had an incredible 2015, including the release of her gorgeous LP Secretly Susan, following on from earlier EPs Female Basic and Body Reset. She’s also performed at Bigsound, Strawberry Fields and more. We wanted to get to know the music behind the magic, so we asked her to share three albums that have made an impact on her life and music. Enjoy!
Sade, Diamond Life
I’ve been talking about Sade pretty regularly since I started DJing. Diamond Life is impeccably smooth. In a climate of self-producing ‘electronic’ artists, bedroom pop and a dominance of software tools and interfaces and, in my mind, an undervaluing of live performing musicians and artists and instrumental skill… I really look to an album like Diamond Life as something to celebrate. To make recordings like that now, with beautiful live performances in the mix is very expensive and untenable for many musicians who may aspire to do so… not for all, but for the vast majority. My favourite track on this album is When Am I Going To Make A Living.
Mariah, Utakata no Hibi
Another album I’ve been spruiking for a while now, increasingly since NYC label Palto Flats reissued this cult masterpiece and made it available to own for less than AU$300 (which I’ve seen the original come up for less than a handful of times on Discogs). Without overhyping this release, I’ll say a few words about it. One of the main producers and composers, Yasuaki Shimizu produced some really interesting music throughout the 80s. His interests were varied including Southeast Asian music, new wave and punk scenes, an eclectic mix of genres carried into the music. There are moments of ecstatic emotional release, hypnotic darker contemplative moods and upbeat celebratory percussive moments. I’m greatly inspired by this music and strive to always push myself to experiment and challenge myself into making better compositions with each release.
I chose different tracks to the cult classic Shinzo no Tobira to showcase the diversity of the album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4xdyQAq6rs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuqDRyvIhss
Julia Holter, Have You in my Wilderness
This is a nice bridge between the two albums above. Julia Holter makes the kind of music that will stay relevant for years to come. She’s an incredibly talented composer and producer and this, being her fourth album, demonstrates her lyrical skill and talent for storytelling through song and arrangement. Each track is cinematic in narrative style, in that there are many phrases. It’s dynamic and entrancing with its peaks and plateaus. I had the pleasure of supporting her Melbourne show at Howler and felt it could have been better suited to a concert hall so the audience could sit and close their eyes. It was otherworldly and dreamlike, and carried us all away into Julia’s sublime world. It takes patience and commitment to make music like this, which demands patience and attention from its listeners too. Very happy that this exists in my world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OERixQR-hxY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2JgMniIpRM
If you want to catch Sui Zhen in the flesh, head to OFFtheGRID festival on December 22 at the Acca Forecourt in Melbourne. She’ll be performing alongside Cut Copy DJs, Banoffee, Tornado Wallace, Silent Jay + Jace XL, Prequel, Wax’o and Paradiso. Full details here.
Sui Zhen is the moniker of the Melbourne-based artist Becky Sui Zhen. Before Secretly Susan, Sui Zhen had released two EPs on Tokyo Labels in 2014, Female Basic and Body Reset. Secretly Susan is a watery submersion, a wading through shallow rock pools, a soaking in sea salt and foam, all in pastels. Basically, Sui Zhen manages to synthesise a sound that is the auditory equivalent of a stream and its cobalt fabric and nacreous whirls. It is, however, not any kind of stream. It is the online stream, the digital ocean, in which we all hopelessly swim, or drown. As a personification of our pixellated water-world, Sui Zhen figures Susan into existence a “vision of digital anxieties people have of the world, like a culmination of visual data and all of this stuff that exists on Instagram and Facebook.” The LP is full of surreal but soft soundscapes that will have you flung to some far off, extraterrestrial paradise.
Hangin’ On is an awesome song. It begins with this pop-inflected coo, and then bright synths (which must have been sampled from a bleating pedestrian signal on Shibuya intersection) rise and gently flap their technicolour wings. For some reason, the song evokes images of a iridescent hummingbird darting in its frenetic but calculated way. Sui Zhen is a very clever experimenter, she builds this minimal down-tempo groove by scattering wooden beats and controlled-clatter, and layers it with nectar-sweet, but never too present digital chiming. This adds an 80s electro-bossanova dimension, which is leavened by Sui Zhen’s sparse, but carefully located vocals. It all works in this disjointed and ghostly way that feels pillowy and nectarous, rather than alien.
Infinity Street is a masterful post-pop piece. Eerie reverb and obscure synths follow Susan’s walk down infinity street, a world licked by the pastel greens of nuclear fallout (at least that is what I imagine). The bent pentatonic missteps of Japanese-lounge sit comfortably in stripped down samba soundscapes. Sui Zhen’s voice carefully slides in the gaps and lilts in its minimal yet powerful way, “It’s killing me”. The following song, Safari, is wide and yawning. Long-stretched synths are danced upon by distorted whistles and bleeps as she her layered voice huffs and puffs and whispers. It honestly feels like the type of song that would be performed at a martian funeral. I can see balloon-headed ghosts hovering above their space-rock tombstones.
The final track, Alter-ego, has this dark mystique. It starts with the star-light glitter of an off-centre guitar melody. Susan’s FX-disfigured voice proclaims, “I felt the sand, I heard the sea.” Sui Zhen croons like a lost siren as echoing samples of bird-song quaver in the background. Susan (Sui Zhen’s constructed persona for this project) gradually dissipates, her voice inaudible and muted amongst the rising diegesis. The ending song is the quietus, the coup de grace, of an incredibly conceptual and genre-bending sonic-tableau of pop and Susan. SO do yourself a favour, and give this LP a serious and careful listen. It will have you dreaming.
Surprise! Normally these video round-ups aren’t posted until the end of the week, but there’s SO many great new videos already, and it’s only Wednesday! So we thought we’d include a few of the best ones here. Stay tuned for new music videos from Everything Everything, Sui Zhen, Tempesst and Patrick James. Enjoy, and check back at the end of the week for the usual list.
Everything Everything – Spring/ Sun/ Winter/ Dread
I have found a new favourite in Everything Everything. After reading our review of their Splendour set, I knew they’d be good. Their pop-rock charm took over and I found that I had been watching more of their video, some of them repeatedly, for about half an hour. Their newest video is to blame for starting my addiction. As stated in our coverage of their single Spring/ Sun/ Winter/ Dread, “their refrain ‘Spring Sun, Winter Dread, I don’t want to get older’ will no doubt ring out like an instant anthem”. I couldn’t agree more. That part of the song has been stuck in my head all day.
The video has the boys dressed in astronaut suits, performing the song on, what I guess is, the moon. The use of Ultra-Violet and Infra-Red cameras gave the video a cool filter that make them look almost alien-like. Jonathan Higgs explains their interesting reason for doing this. “The song talks about seasons passing and getting older, so we wanted to concentrate on the Sun and make it into a kind of oppressive force – positive and life-giving but also burning and destructive.”
Sui Zhen – Take It All Back
Ready to release her album Secretly Susan at the end of the month, Sui Zhen has released her second single with a nice little video. Take It All Back is quite an airy song, so the brightly coloured music video suited the dream-pop sound perfectly. The emotion of the lyrics was captured in the storyline lived by Sui’s alter-ego. She daydreams on a couch as she watches Sui sing on a small TV set with smeared makeup, reflecting her lost and broken state of mind.
Sui explains the plot in more detail. “Susan is the album’s namesake – a manifestation of meta-data, her personality has been cultivated from the collective anxieties, hopes and dreams of the digital documented public. Susan is also an individual, someone’s digital doppelganger. In this video she is trying to connect with her true self. I took a particular liking to mannequins wig models that manage to convey human emotion whilst simultaneously being completely vacuous simulacrum.”
Tempesst – Tidal Wave
Animation is often a great music concept. I didn’t like it much when I was younger, but I grew an appreciation for it. The limitless nature of hand-drawn images mean that absolute anything can happen; our imaginations show no bound! The fact that this is animated by the Tempesst boys themselves makes it extra cool. Tidal Wave has a vintage rock sound that is both timeless and super retro. The 248 ’70s psychedelia-inspired images matched the song’s sound perfectly, fueling the imaginative juices and stimulating the minds of all who watch. Many hours of work paid off, boys!
Patrick James – Bugs
Finally, Patrick James’ new video for fresh track Bugs that premiered yesterday afternoon on Frankie. I’ve taken a liking to the Sydney-based busker ever since California Song so I’ve been keen for this new track. Like the song, the video is sweet and simple. James stands in the ocean, fully-clothed, getting soaked by the crashing waves and others splashing in the water. I hope he shot the video during the warmer months. He then moves onto beach and walks along the shoreline. The song is a chill, folk-like tune, which will leave you feeling relaxed and warm inside.
He’ll be going on tour at the end of the year. Go see him in action if you like what you hear:
Thursday October 15th, The Gov, Adelaide
Friday October 16th, Amplifier, Perth
Thursday October 22nd, Theatre Royal, Castlemaine
Friday October 23rd, 170 Russell, Melbourne
Saturday October 24th, The Workers Club, Geelong
Thursday October 29th, Sol Bar, Maroochydore
Friday October 30th, The Soundlounge, Gold Coast
Saturday October 31st, Woolly Mammoth, Brisbane
Thursday November 5th, Lizottes, Newcastle
Friday November 6th, The Metro, Sydney
Saturday November 7th, ANU Bar, Canberra
Sunday November 8th, Anita’s Theatre, Thirroul