Latency by Dayoung

Baroque meets industrial techno on Latency, the latest EP from Seoul-based DJ and musician Dayoung. Through the pounding rhythms of taiko drums and dark swirling electronica, she creates a melancholic soundtrack to an existential crisis on the dancefloor.

Latency, her first release on Chinabot, comes after a period of self-realisation for the 27-year-old Dayoung. “I aim to express emotions such anxiety and uneasiness into experimental, deconstructed sounds that are still more or less describable in dance-floor grammar,” she says. “Strong sounds and textures are a kind of release for me. Subversive music is an outlet. It screams out things I can't say in words.”

Building from the creeping, liquid sadness of the opening tracks, Strong/Weak, Dangerous fills in a slow BPM with distorted samples, including her own whispering voice, to create a stuttering whirlwind of repressed angst. “Sometimes you want to say something but it’s just not easy due to circumstances, and I wanted to reflect on this kind of situation,” Dayoung says.

On the next track, Disturbing Choir, heavy kicks and breakbeats turn the drama up a notch, driven by stacked melodies that interlace like a choir. An ominous feeling grows throughout the record, which ends with Expired, built around a Latin American tresillo rhythm bulked out with heavy bass and kicks. Leaving the listener with a sense of unease, it is characteristic of Dayoung’s refusal to provide any simple conclusions, preferring instead to draw us into the mist of the emotional moment.

Dayoung is a DJ and promoter based in Seoul who plays heavy bass, reggaeton, UK bass, breakbeat and more. She is also a member of the art collective Lost Air which archives and researches the underground electronic music scenes of (mostly) Seoul. In 2023, she launched a new Seoul-based collective, Fragmented Service, with fellow musician and DJ Jaeho Hwang. She has played with and supported artists like Dis Fig, Flora Yin Wong, NET GALA, and Salamanda. At the moment she is the promoter of her own party series [Girls Gone Wild] and is a monthly roster member of Visla.fm radio.

Chinabot is a platform and collective created to change the dialogue surrounding Asian music.

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