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On 2022’s Topical Dancer, producer Bolis Pupul and frequent collaborator Charlotte Adigéry examined xenophobia and misogyny by transmuting them into discursive electro pop with a cheeky humorousness. On his debut solo album, the Belgian-born producer takes a extra private flip. Pupul misplaced his mom, Yu Wei Wun, immediately in 2008, a demise that formed his life from that day on. But it’s one he says he couldn’t grasp totally till practically a decade later, when he first traveled to his mom’s native Hong Kong. There, he found a connection to his roots that diasporic individuals typically really feel upon visiting a familial homeland, forming an elemental bond even with out an ancestor to information him. The life-changing expertise informs Letter to Yu, a shapeshifting ode to each his mom and Hong Kong that darts between sawtoothed membership songs and extra languid comedowns. Pupul’s music is without delay contemplative and exuberant, shifting with a rhythm much like navigating the teeming crowds of a brand new metropolis.
Whereas Pupul was making journeys to Hong Kong, visiting landmarks just like the bustling Ma Tau Wai Street or traversing town subway, he recorded every single day, even when simply capturing snippets of discovered sound. These recordings give Letter to Yu a definite sense of place, just like the din of a practice platform that programs by way of the background of “Fully Half.” Over a tugging synth melody, Pupul grapples with the language barrier that deepens the cut up in his identification: “Individuals discuss to me like I’m an area/A way of disgrace is my half,” he sings in a halting melody; “I want I spoke what they converse/So I may mix in simply.” A lot of Letter to Yu’s greatest songs dip into that pondering register—just like the brooding, hypnotic title observe, on which Pupul pitch-shifts his voice down as he reads a letter to his mom. “That is the place you have been born 59 years in the past/And I’m lastly right here,” he intones as chimes echo round him. “Why did it take me so lengthy?”
Pupul’s productions alternate between pensive moments and out-and-out floor-fillers. Letter to Yu’s most energized songs recall his limber manufacturing on Topical Dancer whereas ratcheting up the depth: The martial stomp of “Physician Says” builds to a jagged synth freakout, whereas the turbo-charged “Kowloon” folds droning keys right into a sauntering drum beat for a madcap French rave-up. It’s a contemporary and invigorating tackle electro pop, twisting and buckling into totally different shapes with every stunning beat change. Pupul places his foot on the gasoline on the bracing standout “Spicy Crab,” the place crinkled synths clamor for consideration over a dizzying spiral of electro riffs; its kaleidoscopic climax is among the album’s excessive factors.
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