YELLOW RIVER BLUE (2023 Repress) by YU SU

*2023 Repress**

Released in collaboration with Chinese label bié Records.

Named after the world’s most heavily silted river, 'Yellow River Blue' is Yu Su's personal musical autobiography, constructed around stories of chasing something inconceivable. Written and recorded in different continents in between August 2019 and March 2020, all songs seek to musically translate years of moving and touring, temporarily settling, and the feelings of both being turned away and accepted. In her own words, “The world is my home and it isn’t, but as long as there is generosity of water and mud...” It is an homage to her home beside the Yellow River.

Yu Su's debut album consists of eight songs that are versatile in both writing and aesthetics. Versatile individually, consistent as a whole. Yu Su is in a class of her own, dodging the obvious while combining sounds and inspirations of various origins into a new destination that sounds like her home in the here and now. It's a release that is constantly in motion and moves fluently between contemporary pop, ethereal sound compositions and dance-floor experiments.

'Yellow River Blue' comes as part of a collaboration with Yu Su's co-founded new label bié Records and will be released as MFM052 in vinyl format by Music From Memory on January 25th 2021, after seeing a full digital album release via bié on January 22nd in the new Year of the Ox, according to the Chinese zodiac. Both formats come in different exclusively designed artworks.

Rush Hour Store Record of the week W05: 

In 2019 Kaifeng born, Vancouver based artist Yu Su released the excellent ‘Roll With The Punches’ on Second Circle. ‘Yellow River Blue’ is her stunning debut album for Second Circle’s parent label Music From Memory.

A collaboration with the Beijing-based bié imprint (yes, that lowercase is intentional), ‘Yellow River Blue’ is a tribute to the mighty Huanghe river that flows all the way from the Bayan Har mountains in Western China to the Bohai Sea with an estimated length nearing 5500 km, but also a testament of Yu Su’s personal journey to the other side of the world.

Yu Su’s freeflowing approach allows her to translate this personal journey into a unique musical universe that’s influenced by anything from traditional Chinese folk and avantgarde modern classical music to plastic eighties pop, pulsating dub and dusty nineties-inspired triphop without ever fully committing to any one style to make sure her music stays intangible at all times.

This approach results in a one of a kind debut album with eight compositions that all sound totally different but somehow form a beautifully coherent whole, thanks to Yu Su’s highly personalized style of looking for new angles and a plethora of good ideas, culminating in one of the coolest records to come out this year so far (RO). ⁣