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The artist opens up about making his debut LP for Spatial Audio

“I feel an album should express a complete set of values,” CORSAK胡梦周 tells Apple Music. “This year I finally feel ready.” During his decade-plus in music, CORSAK (aka Hu Mengzhou) has appeared on TV talent competitions, performed at the EDM festival Tomorrowland and worked with famed DJ Alan Walker—so his first studio album feels like it’s been a long time coming. The unassuming title, 一张专辑 (THE ALBUM), gives no hint of the soundscapes contained within, which is precisely his aim. “I’ve been wanting to get back to the essence of music, to speak through music rather than words—I hope my music needs no explanation,” he says. Deliberately withholding information—in the form of abstract song titles and strategic silences—is one of his favourite techniques. He highlights the album opener, “引” (“Pluto&Charon”), whose chorus drops out at the climax before the words “I love you”, as a notable example. “I choose to pause the music at the critical moment, interrupting it with nothing but the sound of breathing before the hook kicks in with a cosmic explosion of screaming guitars,” he says. “Right here, silence speaks louder than words. Not saying anything is dignified and divine.”

This technique of negative space, drawn from traditional Chinese painting, is just one of the album’s many sonic references to visual art, which range from the playful overview of calligraphic craft on “墨” (“Art”) to the mythological realism of a Jacques-Louis David masterpiece on the love song “画” (“Mars being disarmed by Venus”)—not to mention the audio evocation of Neon Genesis Evangelion on the bagpipe-driven electro-rock anthem “零” (“Rei”). CORSAK even describes his love of electronic music in visual terms: “To me, it break the shackles of the sonic imagination. I can use it like a paintbrush to draw anything in the universe. That’s the beauty of electronic music.”

The album adopts a more pop-oriented approach than the artist’s EDM-heavy catalogue, but he continues to make full use of his electronic toolbox. The nostalgic “狂” (“Encore”) employs an EDM build-up to bring a poignant ballad to a fevered crescendo, while “怂” (“Shy”), the artist’s second collab with Shanghai-based singer-songwriter HAMA陈缇, performs the neat trick of reworking his 2020’s atmospheric, aspirational dance track “Breaking (feat. 谢雨纯)” into a pop duet between anxious lovers. When it comes down to it, CORSAK is genre-agnostic: “Honestly, whether it’s pop or electronic, all sounds are waveforms to me,” he says.

Creating the Spatial Audio edition of 一张专辑 was an opportunity to take those waveforms further. “I’ve always said my music is best viewed with the ears,” CORSAK says. “Spatial Audio technology lets me take my imagination to extremes but still have clear paths and guide rails.” He and his co-producer, the Grammy-winning sound engineer Richard Furch, worked together on the new version. “We basically re-engineered every song, redesigning the audio for every channel but taking care not to lose the spark. And each song was a massive project of over 150 channels,” he says. “I think we succeeded. I especially recommend three songs on the Spatial Audio edition: ‘脑’ (‘Brain feat. 黄鹤Miah’), ‘零’ and ‘冬’ (‘Winter feat. M3SSIAH’).”

© Apple Music