Lushloss

Lushloss, the project of Seattle's trans singer-songwriter Olive Jun, debuted with Asking/Bearing (Hush Hush, 2017), which is de-facto two mini-albums. All the song are too short and under-produced to complete what they started doing. This is not only "lo-fi": it is a deliberate self-inflicted wound. In fact, Jun comes through as a producer who specializes in intentionally unfinished and dirty productions. The first part is a concept around the long-distance phone call between the artist and her Korean mother. Excerpts of the conversation (that sounds like an interview conducted by the male-ish Olive) end each song of the suite. If it is stunning how she can ruin potentially magic songs like Amethyst (cartoonish laughter, broken beatbox and symphonic drone), or Sisters (that begins as a gloriously romantic carillon), it is also how expressive it is when she stumbles on the notes of crumbling songs such as St Marco. She seems psychologically unable to take herself serious, whether she's playing a piano elegy (Sheet) or simply strumming a guitar (Shame), moments that could be of intense pathos. Hold uu, a half-baked attempt at hip hop, with harp and mechanical percussion, marks the border. The second half of the album was recorded earlier and it is a completely different work. Here Jun wears the hat of a talented producer of instrumental hip-hop that swings between the extremes of the oneiric chill-music of Old Oak and the charging and intricate Clearing. There is even a stab at mainstream dance-pop (the transglobal Gymnasium).