- Shards of trance twisted into delicate shapes.
- On last year's Becoming Is An Eventful Situation, Rui Ho let the brash approach of her trance-influenced club tracks dissipate into bold ambient music. Its follow-up, In Pursuit Of The Sun, takes those strong melodies to the dance floor. These are vibrant and decisive tracks that ape the barreling trance tunes she's known to play out. The new EP is inspired by a classical Chinese text, the Shan Hai Jing, which is a collection of vignettes and verbal sketches infused with mythology and magic. Fragmented and otherworldly, Ho has a similar approach to composition.
In Pursuit Of The Sun is beautiful but deceptively heavy. Delicate pentatonic scales are mimicked by jabbing basslines that make Ho's tracks feel nervous. It often sounds like she's taken gentle lullabies and sped them up. On "Ardour," there's a sudden spring into happy hardcore that could easily startle a dance floor. The way Ho appropriates the sounds of trance and hardstyle—gleaming high-pitched synths—reminds me of how Lorenzo Senni isolates the base elements of the genre to emphasize their brute force.
But where Senni's impact is physical, Ho's is melodic, almost celestial. "The Heat" has a gorgeous lead melody that twirls around its drum pattern. Hard and heavy dance music rarely has this much heart, which is why the three aggressive remixes, while solid, don't add much to the originals that more than hold their own. In Pursuit Of The Sun is an adventurous and heart-palpitating EP from an artist who continues to explore the outer realms of trance.
Tracklist01. Wings Of Light
02. Acceleration
03. The Heat
04. Ardour
05. Wings Of Light (HDMIRROR Remix)
06. The Heat (Louis Me Remix)
07. Ardour (Bela Remix)