Yu Su’s past decade has been a process of steady if unpredictable change. Born and raised in Kaifeng, China, she didn’t encounter electronic music until coming to Vancouver for university, and since then it’s almost as though she’s been making up for lost time.
Her earliest material was sample-based, lo-fi, and psychedelic, followed by a run of blissed-out, Balearic downtempo inspired by her friends in the Mood Hut crew. Her debut album, 2021’s Yellow River Blue, marked a major progression in virtually every way: catchier melodies, dubbier rhythms, and dreamier vibes, with ambient house balanced by a newfound interest in post-punk. Now, on Foundry, her first album for the Short Span label, she moves into more textural and abstract territory—but also, with the title track, she scores her first proper club anthem, one played out by Jane Fitz, Soulwax, and Optimo’s JG Wilkes; it’s a low-slung acid jam of curious proportions, sounding both intimate and gargantuan all at once.
Curiously, when I spoke with Su last week, she professed not to know much about “proper” dance music, despite the fact that she’s been involved in electronic music for over a decade. But, she says, she recently experienced a sort of hallelujah moment that has her obsessed with pushing herself as both a producer and a DJ. So obsessed, in fact, that she spaced on our scheduled interview: Shortly before we were to speak, a box of Discogs purchases had arrived at her door, and she was so immersed in her new wax that she forgot to log into Zoom, at least until a nudge from her publicist. But hey: If there was ever an airtight excuse for being late to a meeting, it’s getting lost in a Discogs order.
Over the course of an hour, we talked about her upbringing in Kaifeng, the befuddlement of attending her first Mood Hut party in Vancouver, why she didn’t consider herself a “real DJ” until now, why she thinks making functional dance music is harder than experimental composition, and more.
Read on for the full interview; the first third is free for all, while the rest is for paying subscribers.
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YU SU: Oh my God. I’m so sorry I’m late.
FUTURISM RESTATED: It’s all good. No worries.
I just got my Discogs delivery half an hour ago and of course I completely lost track of time.
Oh, that’s totally understandable then!
I’ve never been buying records in my life until the last four months.
You haven’t been buying records until the last four months?
Yeah, I’m not joking. I’ve bought albums before, but I have never bought 12-inches for DJing. Never. I wasn’t a real DJ. I don’t know—I only understand dance music now.
Wait, tell me more about that. When would you say you became a “real DJ” or that you came to understand dance music?
If we have to pinpoint one day, it would be one morning when I heard Z@P play at Houghton. I saw that at Houghton and I was like, “Oh, I understand repetitive music now.” This is totally not exaggerating, but I really think I just didn’t really get it until last year.
That surprises me, because—I mean, you’ve been making dance music for a long time. Yellow River Blue, that’s not strictly a dance-music album, but it certainly has dance-music elements.
Well, maybe before it was more on the surface level. Or it might be because I was approaching dance music as a musician versus approaching dance music as a real DJ. I think those two things, there’s some fundamental difference in how you understand the functionality of it. Because most of this kind of stuff, minimal techno, is not about musicality, it’s about how you make these frequencies absorb people. It’s more physical and maybe more, I don’t know, almost chemical. It’s more scientific, so it’s actually more mathematics than writing music. You know who else is a good example of this mindset is Kai from Mount Kimbie. We had a conversation about this. We’re on the same page, because we don’t have this, like, “I belong to the dancefloor. I belong to the club. I have to see Ricardo. I have to see Jeff Mills.” It’s never that. It’s the side-door approach.
It’s very interesting, what you’re saying about the difference between a musician and somebody that’s making music for the dancefloor. Because I think perhaps a musician has musical ideas in mind, and there’s an infinity of ways of realizing those ideas. Whereas for a producer, like you say, it’s about functionality, and there are certain things that will work and certain things that probably won’t work. And it’s kind of about cutting away the elements that don’t work in order to zero in on what does.
I think so, which is why our favorite producer ever is Terrence Dixon. Because I think Terrence Dixon’s production represents this in-between thing. I think it all comes back to this in-betweenness, where to us, to our ears, the most powerful dance-music productions are the ones that aren’t necessarily big-big. Doesn’t have the biggest kick, everything might sit in the middle. Same with Shinichi Atobe. It can sit in the middle. It can sound so little, but it’s the way that the elements are being put together and the way it loops. Then when you hear a big system, it’s actually bigger than ever.
I don’t really want to get ahead of myself, but I do really want to talk about “Foundry,” the track, because it is very similar to what you’re talking about. It’s such a powerful and I suspect functional track; I haven’t heard it on a big system, but I’d guess that it’s going to sound massive. That bassline, combined with this very crisp, precise snare hit, and then the shuffly snare rolls—it feels like a big, big anthem. But it’s also really dynamic, with a lot of small, subtle sounds in it. But let’s set that aside for now, because I want to talk about some other stuff before we get to the new album. What records did you get in this Discogs order?
It’s mostly a lot of Donato Dozzy and some Thomas Fehlmann, some old Kompakt stuff, some Terrence Dixon and Rhythm and Sound. A couple Perlons. And Laurie Anderson. It’s a bit all over the place.
There’s really no better feeling than getting a new box of records, whether it’s from Discogs or Hard Wax or whatever. I remember when I was actively buying a lot of vinyl and living in Berlin, some of the best mixes I ever made were when I had a bag of all-new records that I’d never really heard before. In that hour or two that you’re pulling them out for the first time, there’s that sense of flow and exploration. It’s really exciting.
True. I get it now. I see the obsession.
Could we take a step back and talk a bit about your background? I know you’re from Kaifeng. Tell me a little bit about what that’s like and about your upbringing there.
Kaifeng is an extremely historical city in China. It was at some point the capital, the New York of ancient times. So it was very advanced, hundreds and hundreds of years ago. And then throughout history it really degraded, because of the cultural revolution and also where it is, which is in the middle of the country. You’re not that connected with the rest of the world. So the whole province just became this very agricultural place and there’s not really any development of modern culture or music in any sense since I was born. So it’s very closed up and conservative. When I first started studying piano—forced by my parents, of course—I was one of the only kids in my city who had a piano at home. It was that closed off.
Wow.
Yeah. So I think that’s the background of where I grew up—if my parents didn’t force me to start learning piano, there’s no way I could be doing any of this now.
Were you pretty serious about piano?
Yeah, because of my mother as well. It was her project, me and piano, from when I turned four until when I was like 16, 17.
And when did you discover electronic music, or even popular music? What was your listening like as a teenager?
So pre-2018 Beijing Olympics, just after the internet became popular, there were maybe five, six years of no restriction; I remember because that was when I was like, “Oh, YouTube.” So I think that was the beginning of it, and I heard Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys, that was the first introduction ever. The really, really popular pop music. So that was middle school, high school-ish, but not properly dance music in any sense. I’m pretty sure the first thing I heard must have been maybe Justice, because they were on the chart, probably. Yeah, it would have been Justice.
And were you still in China at that point?
Yeah, this was just before I moved to Canada and I was like, whoa, this is so... I think I saw them as Fuji Rock. I got taken to Fuji Rock and I had no idea who they were. I just remember it being very foreign sounding.
That must have been quite an experience if you weren’t deep into a lot of contemporary music, to go to a massive festival like that. Do you remember what else you saw there?
I think Jesus Mary Chain maybe, but no, the only memory was Justice, probably because that sound and lighting, the stage design, must have been just so, so new to me.
And then you went to Canada; what took you there?
University. Same thing: my parents forced me, sent me away to study. It’s very typical—Asian kid gets sent away for a better life, and you get sent to some business school, and of course I didn’t do that. I secretly switched to anthropology. I’m not sure exactly why, but I got really interested in anthropology in Vancouver. Well, I think it’s because of Vancouver’s history. The indigenous history was fascinating. So I studied that.
Is Vancouver where you began making music?
It was, yeah, because that was when Mood Hut was flourishing. And of course that was the first time I’d been to a party, and my first proper gig DJing was there. So yeah, it all really started there through those guys.
How did you find your way into that scene? Because that’s a pretty obscure little niche, right? I mean, it’s like you kind of have to know something about something to be into that stuff.
I went to a party. Without really knowing too many people whatsoever, I got brought there, and completely sober. I didn’t even know what LSD was. Nothing. Sure, I knew what weed is, but I was really just someone who wasn’t supposed to be there, almost. So imagine that kind of environment, like a proper underground, underground kind of party, pitch black, weird music. That was just so uncomfortable for me to experience that for the first time. Because obviously everyone else is on a totally different frequency. I could tell something was different, but I didn’t know what it was. So it was scary, it was confusing, it was dark, it was sweaty. I was nervous. But because I was too scared to leave on my own, I just stayed until basically the end.
