Celsius Drop
01.11.24
Celsius Drop is an exploration of the vast Future Roots music spectrum hosted by dublab co-founder Frosty. Tune-in to reach those outer realms. This month, Frosty welcomes Lucy Liyou onto Celsius Drop in the second hour.
FROSTY’S SET:
Tracklist:
Ariel Kalma, Jeremiah Chiu & Marta Sofia Honer – A Treasure Chest
Celia Hollander – Clearance
Svitlana Nianio – Episode III
Julia Holter – Spinning
Sign Libra – Aqua
Elle Barbara’s Black Space – Délice Créole
Abranis – Thilelli
Aksak Maboul – Talking with the Birds
David Rosenboom – Future Travel: Corona Dance
Tera Kundi Sota Fodungi – Hindi tune
Joel Chadabe – Rhythms for Computer & Percussion
Vaclovas Augustinas – RAmoGAtet
Lucy Liyou – Easiest (Practice)
LUCY LIYOU SET & INTERVIEW:
Tracklist:
Lil B – B.O.R. (Birth of Rap)
Lucy Liyou – untitled 1
Patty Waters – Moon, Don’t Come Up Tonight
Lucy Liyou – untitled 2
Zhu Wenbo & Zhu Songjie – See That My Grave Is Kept Clean
Lucy Liyou & Eric Frye – Part 4
Lucy Liyou – untitled 3
Lucy Liyou – untitled 4
Lucy Liyou synthesizes field recordings, text-to-speech readings, poetry, and elements from Korean folk opera into sonic narratives that explore the implications of Orientalism and Westernization. Though her music reflects the work of genres such as post-industrial and musique-concrète, Liyou is influenced by audiobooks as well as music from the Impressionist and Neoclassical periods. Combining all these disparate sonic elements into critically cohesive pieces, the musical world of Lucy Liyou alternates between beautiful serenity and unsettling entropy. Arresting ballads and contemporary classical pieces fragment into decaying shards, voices get warped beyond recognition, and shimmering light makes way for bit-crushed noise.
Lucy Liyou’s debut project, A Hope I Had, was a sonic examination of hereditary depression in Asian families, which caught the attention of South London-based artist Klein. Liyou followed up the release with her debut full-length, Welfare (released in March 2020 through Klein’s label ijn inc), an ambitious analysis of the colonialist concept of self-care. Less than a year later, Lucy Liyou released the acclaimed follow-up, Practice, which drew deeply on aesthetic touchstones from Liyou’s Korean heritage to examine how families explicitly and implicitly pass on coping mechanisms – or lack thereof – for grief and loss passed through generations.
Lucy Liyou’s first two full-length albums Welfare / Practice were reissued on vinyl for the first time in May 2022 via American Dreams Records. Her latest record, Dog Dreams (개꿈), is a rumination on the double-sidedness of trauma and love, on how one does not undercut the other, but rather how both are interlocked in an affective dialectic. She has collaborated with artists such as More Eaze, OHYUNG, Mui Zyu, yska, and Maria BC.
Liyou’s work has earned acclaim from Pitchfork, The Guardian, Bandcamp Daily, The Quietus, Them, Tone Glow, Wire Magazine, Mixmag Asia, The FADER, and NPR Music, among others, and received notable airplay on NTS Radio, KEXP, NPR, and Sonos Radio’s Radio Hour with Thom Yorke. Liyou has shared the stage with artists like L’Rain, claire rousay, Salamanda, Drew McDowall (Coil), Theodore Cale Shafer, HTRK, Liz Harris (Grouper) and performed on stages such as Cafe OTO, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, and Rewire Festival.
