Lucy Liyou (루시 리유) – Every Video Without Your Face, Every Sound Without Your Name

Lucy Liyou (루시 리유) has always created with particular vulnerability, the sound artist centring real intimacy amidst her cavernous soundscapes. But on her latest record she pushes this further than ever. The record’s lyrics – which were born as an address to her parents but mutated over time into a final message to her lover before the end of their relationship – are in such a space of quiet, pleading desperation that it verges on discomfort, all teary questions and begged last requests that were they not so captivating, you’d want to look away from. The closing title track takes this intimacy to its extreme, going full concrète, far beyond a pain that songs would channel, leaving only silence and flickers of field recordings as flashes of remembered intimacy.

It’s a real feat then that she composes in a way that can match. Liyou’s usual gift for creating these weightless spaces is utilised to full effect, but this time they are less formless, taking on the sly skeleton of torch songs, the lyrical bloodletting buoyed by the sounds oozing with it. The sublime Imagine Kiss for instance, a bed of muted synths that billows into a gentle whirl of chimes as the words plead more and more, is remarkably done.

It’s brief, but necessarily so, its tone so personal and exposed that any longer would feel like emotional prurience on the listener’s part. As it is; it’s a gorgeous record, one that further solidifies Liyou’s place as an artist capable of breathing the sublime into the most solemn of places.

Listen to: Credit, Imagine Kiss, No Tide Aorta