Yu Su - Yellow River Blue

January 22, 2021 - bié Records/Music From Memory

Vancouver-based producer and chef Yu Su is here with her album debut, a warm and bright journey through time and nature and urban sprawl. The project tracks Su’s late 2019 tour of her homeland China, traveling from the Yellow Sea Coast’s Qingdao to Xining on the Tibetan Plateau, though it feels just as introspective as it does outwardly explorative. 

Yellow River Blue bursts to life with ‘Xiu,’ a multi-layered cake full of texture and depth. Ambient-leaning field recordings and soft sing-songy vocal elements intermingle with sharper plucked melodic lines, quickly building a shimmering tension. The tension never bursts, choosing instead to flow over like a velvety buttercream frosting while a gentle but danceable beat drives the piece onward. ‘Futuro’ stops this momentum in its tracks, offering up a more savory approach complete with a thick dub rhythm and meandering bassline. The tracklist begins to take shape as a collective meal rather than a series of courses, as ‘Touch-Me-Not’ takes its place as the sparkling, effervescent beverage. Bubbly synth arpeggios are split and cracked by harsh gates and delay effects, at times to the point of distraction. Yu Su dials things back with ‘Gleam,’ a smooth and infectious head bobber. The percussive elements provide a solid base for delicate ear candy and vocal snips to flow in and out of, light and airy, sharp and tangy. 

‘Melaleuca’ yet again takes on a different flavor than previous tracks, with a more directly nostalgic sensibility provided by dusty drum machine percussion. Yu Su wields these new ingredients smartly, building a carefree, drop-top-down, driving-through-the-city atmosphere. The soft but clear melodic line that emerges in the track hints at a depth beyond the sunny synths, but the hint remains just that; a mystery for another time. ‘Klein’ leans back into heavier use of spatial effects and layered delays. A thick bassline and basement drum kit crash into the scene and quickly assert dominance over the rest of the elements as a distant vocal chant calls out from another time. ‘Dusty’ starts subdued but quickly grows louder and more complex, like gentle egg whites and sugar slowly brought to the stiff peaks of a French meringue. Yu Su rounds off the collection with ‘Melaleuca (at night),’ the aptly titled dark-time version of ‘Melaleuca.’ Lights dim on the album as the food metaphors and music fade into the past, memories of a dream of a thought.

Yu Su offers a particularly strong debut with Yellow River Blue, combining and recontextualizing atmospheres and feelings. We look forward to more music, more food, more travel, more life. 🍍