- Beijing artist Bloodz Boi continues his string of intriguing collaborations with two Texan experimental stars, who help him make intimate ambient pop.
- Bloodz Boi is a prolific collaborator, reaching out to producers from all over the world from his home base in Beijing. It's a canny strategy, because his voice sounds good over just about anything. His early recordings leaned more towards trap (albeit a brightly-colored, and hyper-online variation). But on his two most recent releases—365 with Swedish duo Quit Life, and the brand new A Crying Poem EP with Texan collagists Claire Rousay and more eaze—he's discovered how great his voice sounds with no drums at all. It's an intriguing ambient take on Auto-Tune rap. T-Pain originally said his intent with Auto-Tune was to make his voice sound like a saxophone, but Bloodz Boi's sleepy, close-mic'd delivery makes him more like the proto-ambient trumpeter Jon Hassell or his disciple Arve Henriksen (also an adventurous electronic music collaborator).
It's easy to see why Bloodz Boi and the two Texan artists were drawn to each other. Claire Rousay and more eaze are no strangers to the intersection of ambient music and hyperpop, alternating in their frequent collaborations between bratty bubblegum and free-flowing sound collage (sometimes hitting on a wonderful synthesis between the two, as on last year's "Smaller Pools"). Rousay's distinctive insectoid vocal processing interjects for one line on opener "Sad Gondola" and pops in for what could generously be called ad-libs on "Overcast," but mostly it's Bloodz Boi singing solemnly in Mandarin, allowing the Texans to concentrate on production. Their contributions skew towards the atmospheric end of their sound. The music is full of rustles and clicks, as if zooming in on subtle domestic ambiance until it becomes all-encompassing.
The only thing here close to a beat is "The Lighter," which loops a string-screech that sounds like Pusha T's "What Would Meek Do?" Guitar and violin dominate the arrangements, the former bringing to mind every loner who's ever sat on the side of their bed to pluck out a sad melody on their instrument, the latter laying on thick melodrama that works well with lyrics like "sleep advances death / The death burns wings / Wings can't fly to heaven / I want to lie down like this." This is some deeply emo shit—if the title didn't already give you some indication—and the artists involved would no doubt be the first to admit it. (Rousay often calls her music "emo ambient.". But it's less the kind of music that inspires striking emotional epiphanies so much as the kind that acutely captures how it feels to be alone in a room.
Tracklist01. 忧伤的贡多拉 - Sad Gondola
02. 梦游 - Sleepwalking
03. 打火机 - The Lighter
04. 囚鸟 - Jailbird
05. 冷藏的火把 - Frozen Torches
06. 阴天 - Overcast