- Using ideas from techno, EBM, gqom and hard drum, Tzusing probes cultural alienation and issues of identity with his trademark razor-sharp club music.
- Wrestling with masculinity—its contradictions and negations—is something of a preoccupation for Tzusing. The Malaysian-born producer's first album, 東方不敗 (Dongfang Bubai), was named after a character in a wuxia novel who castrates himself in order to harness the secrets of the Sunflower Manual and become a martial arts master. On his latest album, 绿帽 Green Hat, Tzusing deals with sexual politics and the emasculation of infidelity. Indeed, to "wear a green hat" as a man in Chinese culture is to declare oneself a cuckold.
The decision to name the album this is a bold one, especially when the album cover depicts the producer in one frame wearing a green hat while bleeding from the head, and in another baptising himself with water poured from a green hat, held aloft like some sort of holy vessel. It's the injuries and the exultation of patriarchy, the agony and the ecstasy—two sides of the same coin. Tzusing takes these concepts to task on his new album, which has a tongue-in-cheek playfulness that mediates his critique, allowing it to land comfortably without appearing self-serious or preachy.
The questions posed by 绿帽 Green Hat are gendered, but they're geopolitical too, especially considering the suggestiveness of track titles like "Balkanize." When first encountering the album, my mind immediately went to the century of humiliation, a period in Chinese history when the country was subject to repeated interventions and invasions from European and Japanese powers. That might seem a leap to some, but what's the significance of the cuckold if not humiliation?
In a 2017 interview with RA, Tzusing, who currently divides his time between Shanghai and Taipei, but who has previously lived in Taichung, Singapore, San Diego and Chicago, said, "I feel like I'm culturally appropriating my own culture because I don't know it that well. It's my background, but I'm getting it from [a] corny Hong Kong movie."
This sense of alienation from one's own culture is unsurprising for an Asian artist whose audience is largely located in Europe and North America. Tzusing has spoken in several interviews about the anxiety created by the Western gaze. Will the work be perceived as intended, or will its "Asian-ness" be regarded as "baity” or "pander[ing] to current trends?"
There's a general, matching unease here: sirens pierce the air, menacing synth arpeggios circle overhead like ravenous buzzards and what sound like war drums beat at an ever-quickening pace. The LP is neatly split into two acts. In the first, Tzusing is in his element, offering his trademark hybrid of industrial EBM techno with the self-assuredness and grace of a seasoned cyclist weaving through peak hour traffic. The opening "Introduction" features a text-to-speech voice reciting a The New York Times Busines Travel article about the faux pas of handing out green baseball caps to the chagrin and amusement of locals.
After "Introduction" comes "趁⼈之危 (Take Advantage)," arguably the album's crown jewel, which samples the "I drink your milkshake" speech from There Will Be Blood to incredible effect. The speech is a shameless declaration of avarice, an unblinking assertion of one's divine right to another's possessions. There are glaring parallels to be drawn here with capitalist extraction, patriarchal violence, military occupation, but they're drawn with a measured hand that never loses sight of the speech's status as a jokey meme as well as commentary. If that's delivered with a wry smile, then "偶像包袱 (Idol Baggage)" wears a twisted grimace. Against a background of angular strings that dance like a possessed marionette, a sample of a woman laughing is woven throughout the track, chopped and processed at first to sound like wracking sobs, which gradually mutate into an uncontrollable cackle.
Where the first act moves with the steady rhythm of an approaching army, the second hits with the dizzying speed of an airborne assault. Featuring samples from Apex Legends—an online shooting game where players work in squads to eliminate opponents—it's not hard to imagine the breakbeat-hard drum fusion of "Clout Tunnel" soundtracking the game's mercenary missions. "Exascale" expands on these ideas with a seismic low end that tips over into double, then quadruplet, kicks. The track accelerates into near-oblivion before swerving and levelling out into a gabber stomp.
What Tzusing has achieved with 绿帽 Green Hat is no cakewalk. Albums this thematically and musically rich rarely have club appeal, but the vast majority of this record is still made up of Tzusing's one-of-a-kind dance floor hybrids, unencumbered by any conceptual baggage. The only irony here is that an album which scrutinises the extremes and dangers of power is clearly the work of a producer fully in control of his powers.
Tracklist01. Introduction
02. 趁⼈之危 (Take Advantage)
03. 偶像包袱 (Idol Baggage)
04. Muscular Theology
05. 孝忍狠 (Filial Endure Ruthless)
06. Balkanize
07. Interlude
08. Clout Tunnel Feat. Suda
09. Exascale
10. Gait
11. 戴綠帽 (Wear Green Hat)
12. Residual Stress