Korean-American DJ and producer Yaeji – full name Kathy Yaeji Lee – is the queen of introverted club music. She broke through with her squelchy house track Raingurl in 2017, contrasting a bold bassline with deadpan vocals about her glasses fogging up in the club. On her new mixtape, her first release for XL Recordings, Lee digs even further into her interior landscape, with diaristic, spacious house music on which she sings about subjects like the difficulty of getting out of bed (on the glimmering lead single Waking Up Down). As we enter a nightclub-less era of isolation, she’s timed it eerily well: this is dance music to soundtrack – and soothe – an existential crisis.
At a slower tempo than her more well-known club tracks, this album foregrounds Lee’s vocals, and straddles a blurry line between dream pop and DIY dance music. Occasionally, it’s a sombre listen. On the cavernous In Place 그 자리 그대로, Lee’s Korean vocals drift perilously over a nightmarish rolling bass before her voice is pitch-shifted to a low, demonic drone. In the Mirror 거울 is another example of Lee using her vocal to creepy effect, as it echoes ominously over sinister bass, while The Th1ng (featuring London-based drag performance artist Victoria Sin and producer Shy One) matches philosophical spoken word with writhing, distorted electronics.
Mostly, though, Lee counterbalances her darker experiments with playfulness and hope. Her genre-fluidity creates moments of unexpected beauty, such as the improvisational jazz flutters of These Days 요즘 , and the verse from Brooklyn rapper Nappy Nina on the off-the-wall dance highlight Money Can’t Buy. Lee is at her strongest by far when balancing her bubbly, light melodic touch with more poignant elements, as she does on the synth-led closing track Never Settling Down. It’s a commitment-avoidant twentysomething’s anthem on which she sings alongside distant drum breaks: “I’m never settling down / I’m never touching ground /... Never having to admit that I swallow my feelings.” Moments of startling emotional clarity like that prove Yaeji isn’t just a club producer but a songwriter whose impact can be felt far beyond the dancefloor.
