YELLOW RIVER BLUE is the latest album from Chinese electronic musician Yu Su, released January of this year. After touring mainland China in 2019 and drumming up some hype with her Roll With The Punches EP, where does that put YELLOW RIVER BLUE?
YRB bursts open with XIU- demonstrating both a intricate knowledge of dance beats and traditional Asian instrumentation- and man this just sounds absolutely fantastic, the production is immaculately balanced, the bass drums are felt in the chest, the layers of sound weave around and fly around and the vocal loop used here is just fantastic too. Really great opener.
Second track FUTURO dips more into the record's dub-y tendencies- the bassline on this track is fucking fat as hell, but despite this the track doesn't feel as impactful as the opener, it's more sparse and doesn't conserve the same carefree energy, and kind of ends abruptly too.
TOUCH-ME-NOT has an intro that's kind of reminiscent of vaporwave with it's kind of chilling out and the floating oscillating electronic elements against the warm organ tone in the background creates a really cool atmosphere. I could see it dragging at 5+ minutes but the lack of percussion gives it a kind of time-bending quality so it hardly feels that long.
GLEAM sees a return to more beat driven territory- the rhythm section is busy and the ambient synths in the background are great too. The track has a great metallic texture to it and introduces some cool nature recordings too. The track is nearly 6 minutes long but hardly feels it- the pace is so brisk that it hardly feels longer than the 2nd track.
This relatively upbeat mood is maintained onto MELALEUCA. The track has an infectious dance groove and absolutely excellent synth sounds and riffs. It's quieter passages give way to these high energy tribal- ambient infused dance sections. It's just a solid track.
KLEIN capitalises on the dark-ambient energy of FUTURO to create this dissonant and unnerving soundscape before this unsteady bass joins, and then this huge drum section that sounds like it's been made of sheet metal just takes over the whole track. Alongside the wailing background vocals and fizzling electronics, this track stands apart as one of the best on the record.
Penultimate track DUSTY creates this kind of melancholy atmosphere with these pad synths and simple melodies before developing it's own shuffling beat and introducing this kind of up - and - down synth part that sticks around for quite a decent amount of the track and kind of refuses to vary. Alot of what's going on around it is great but man the track just feels stuck around that synth line. Great track otherwise, but man...
The record closes on MELALEUCA (AT NIGHT) which is kind of a weak closer, it doesn't feel like it wraps up the record in any meaningful way, it's not a bad track at all but it's not as atmospheric or dance-y as other points on the record. It's only 3 and a half minutes or so compared to the 2 previous 6 minute tracks so it just feels like a weird place to leave the album.
So overall, YELLOW RIVER BLUE is a record with ups and downs, but more importantly shows Yu Su's potential as an artist- this record has kind of a mixture of styles of tracks going on, so I believe a really concise and focused dance record, or really great ambient record. But the album also has bangers for sure. Check it out!
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