duYun – Shark In You Album Review (w/ Full Album Stream)

Listening to this album makes me wonder what it’d be like to accidentally attend kind of a boring party and all of a sudden have some random girl wander up to you and be all like, “Did you know that I’m utterly insane?” and you’d be all like, “I don’t understand entirely; explain this to me further.” And so, to further clarify her point, she removes her head from her body and tears it open carefully — showing you all the tender inner workings. They vibrate in ways you can’t honestly understand, but which sort of intrigue and terrify you simultaneously. You just sit there stunned for a while, eventually only able to conjure forth, “Yeah, I see what you mean now,” as a response.

This is outsider music for sure, which is strange because it’s apparently an experimental composer from New York taking on her “pop” persona. Not much pop to speak of here — just freak out psychosis territory, although it’s not an altogether unpleasant brand of crazy. Being from an avant-garde / performance art scene of the more traditional variety, she toys around with a lot of “difficult” sounds which will be more than a tad off-putting to most. That’s kind of the point with a lot of the Tzadik-esque school of thought I suppose — not that I know much about it. As far as I can tell they try to make the listener uneasy with atonal bursts of unsettling aural discordia. I guess my complaint with this tactic is that half the time you feel like you’re just getting toyed with. If you’re going to make it weird, then weird it out already. Have at it.

Which is why Shark In You surprisingly works for the most part. duYun isn’t shy. Just when you think she’s going to mind-tease you forever, a bath of spastic electronic glitches unexpectedly bursts forth and you feel thoroughly and properly fucked. Is she even singing along with the beats? She’s just kind of mumbling and chant sighing incoherently. Then all of a sudden she’s doing spoken word about Dutch politics or some shit. What the hell is going on here exactly? See, she’s not playing around. She’s truly nuts, and the world’s a better place because of it. Thanks for sharing duYun; I’m just going to, you know, hang out on the other side of the party because you kind of scare me.