After 2022’s acclaimed Topical Dancer with Charlotte Adigéry, the Belgian musician returns with a charming, quirky electronica LP dedicated to his Hong Kong-born Chinese mother, Yu Wei Wun, and a celebration of that territory’s culture. His mother died in a car crash in 2008, and Pupul visited Hong Kong in 2018 where he wrote down a letter to her after visiting the street where she was born. The album captures the Ghent artist’s discoveries about self, identity, and Hong Kong culture with a series of crisp, quirky, catchy pieces of electronica, sometimes with local field recordings, which at times have delicate echoes of Kraftwerk or Yellow Magic Orchestra, but with a Chinese flavour. Highlights include a real a metaphorical train journey of the self in Completely Half, the clubby electro-pop instrumental Spicy Crab, Frogs, Kowloon, Ma Tau Wai Road featuring the voice of his sister Sarah, credited as Salah Pupul, and the offbeat clubby Doctor Says which samples the voice of a Chinese physician who spontaneously examined Pupul during his trip and summarised his health condition. The closing track, Cosmic Rendez-Vous is a low-key number featuring the voice of his mother querying the conclusions of an astrologer, capturing how she would always ask questions and seek explanations. Eclectic, strange, eccentric and gently moving. Out on Soulwax's record label Deewee.
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