Today, OHYUNG—the solo project of Brooklyn-based musician and composer Lia Ouyang Rusli—announces their new album, You Are Always On My Mind, set for release on March 28 via NNA Tapes & Phantom Limb. A striking work of trip-hop-laced, rave-inspired electronic pop, the album explores Rusli’s gender transition, marking another bold reinvention of their ceaselessly shapeshifting project and their most cohesive, accessible statement to date. In their own words, OHYUNG describes the record as “my trans self and my former self in conversation, from both perspectives.”
You Are Always On My Mind captures their lengthy, complicated, but crucial journey between lives, strewn with both doubt and excitement. It is an ecstatic, pop-oriented shift in direction from an artist primarily known for electronic music, noise, hip-hop, and ambient, but carried with sleek confidence, maturity, and a silvery, hallucinogenic shimmer that reveals Rusli’s expansive sonic background. It is, writes Rusli, “sometimes written from a dark place and other times from a place of happiness.” Throughout, darkness and light rise and fall in layers of phased strings, trip-hop drum production, and earworming vocal lines.
Alongside the announcement, OHYUNG shares the lead single “no good,” which arrives with a video by the rising directorial talent day.The video features OHYUNG in varying forms—the bride, a statuesque scarlet diva, and a rave girl in biker boots performing in an empty warehouse—each echoing the others through choreographed movements. The hazy pop song is an anthem about the contradictory fear of becoming the person you’ve always wanted to be, and an ode to the transformative possibilities of raving. Images of liquid, morphing metal evoke the metamorphosis at the heart of the album, and the video closes with the poem “Do You Think I’m Disco” by Olivia Sio Tse, immersing the viewer into the interstitial and wordless space that the club offers us all: “There before I was there / I wanted you to imagine.”
A film score composer by trade, Rusli’s songwriting craft is meticulous and nuanced. You Are Always On My Mind was, perhaps surprisingly, formed primarily from processed “generic string loops” found in online sample packs—a strange and willfully jarring reminder that what seems to be is not always what is. Recontextualized, these string loops enshadow the simplicity of their origins, revealing a grace and purposefulness perhaps not even imagined by their authors, subtly drawing out euphoria and tension in equal balance.
Rusli also writes about the influence of rave culture central to their transition and the record’s production and themes. “It’s a declaration of love for raves and the dark hazy rooms that helped me to be free and true with myself—seeing other people who are so free and beautiful and thinking that one day that can be me— that’s me in the future.” But there is also a fear and unease present. Lead single “no good” explores “the worst version of myself as a trans person, feeding doubt to my pre-transition self” with its core lyric “anyone can see / I’m no good for you,” delivered over a relentless beat, swooning strings, and glistening synthesis.
A vital and standout voice in the New York City music scene, OHYUNG has consistently pushed boundaries with their work. Their debut album, Untitled (Chinese Man with Flame), released by Deathbomb Arc, and its follow-up, PROTECTOR, released via Chinabot, are extraordinary cross-genre collisions featuring distorted 808s, pitch-shifted rapping, frenetic pop energy, and eclectic electronic loops. In 2022, OHYUNG sidestepped expectations with a monumental two-hour ambient opus titled imagine naked!, which was highly lauded by critics, includingThe Quietus, who described it as a “masterful selection of muscular, shuddering, trembling ambient excursions,” and NPR Music hailing the record as one of the best albums of 2022.
You Are Always On My Mind arrives as Rusli’s prominence as a sought-after film composer continues to rise. Their recent scoring credits include A24’s Problemista and HBO’s Fantasmas by Julio Torres as well as Happyend by Neo Sora (son of the late visionary composer Ryuichi Sakamoto). Elsewhere, Rusli’s film work includes Miles Warren‘s critically acclaimed Hulu film Bruiser and Shatara Mitchell Ford’s Test Pattern, which earned nominations at the Gotham Awards and Independent Spirit Awards. Additionally, Rusli has scored the short film Bambirak and Rest Stop, which won Jury Awards for International Fiction and U.S. Fiction, respectively, at Sundance.
To celebrate the release, OHYUNG will host their New York City album release show at Market Hotel on March 28, joined by Dreamcrusher and Holland Andrews. Find details and tickets here. Listen to “no good” above, pre-order You Are Always On My Mind below, and stay tuned for more updates from OHYUNG coming very soon.
Keep your mind open.
[You subscribing is always on my mind.]
[Thanks to Cody at Terrorbird Media.]
