Tzusing - Green hat (绿帽)

RECOMMENDED: On his second album, Tzusing, a Malaysian-born artist who lives between Shanghai and Taipei, reflects on the complicated history of patriarchal heteronormativity in China and how these archaic double standards still dominate the culture in pervasive, often invisible ways. Even in progressive circles, internalized male inadequacy and its inevitable projection of possessiveness and aggression is swept under the rug, so by confronting it head-on, Tzusing attempts to challenge these structures with an aesthetic anxiety and a thematic intensity that is hard to ignore.

Although 绿帽 Green Hat isn't shy about leaning into its multi-layered concept, the album never loses its well-rehearsed dance charge. Tzusing has undergone many metamorphoses throughout his career, but this is where he sounds most eager to unite his interests and inclinations.

From the mercilessly funky hard drum inversion in '孝忍焾 (Filial Endure Ruthless)' and the manic uptempo war of 'Exascale', through the raging combination of wheezing voices and downtempo rhythms in the Suda collaboration 'Cloud Tunnel' to the wedding party flex in the epic closing track ' Residual Stress', you can feel that the producer has really found his groove. It's an album that underlines the often maniacal restlessness of dance music and seamlessly juxtaposes it with the insane stress of infidelity. Fear is a well-worn genre-crossing musical theme, but Tzusing approaches it from a fresh perspective; this isn't blood dripping from skulls, it's rapid thoughts penetrating the mind. And that's really scary.