London label Damnably has already made a big dent this year with Japanese act Otoboke Beaver and the across the board love for their hyper-visceral garage punk on debut album Itekoma Hits. Damnably is also the home of prolific Seoul indie-rockers Say Sue Me, who’ve had 14 releases on the label since 2017.
Chinese band Hiperson have just joined the ranks for their new EP Four Seasons, following two previous albums of dubby, jagged post-punk in the vein of The Slits or Red Medicine-era Fugazi. The Chengdu five-piece are working from a new palette on new track ‘Strawberries/草莓’, with deftly muted guitar scratches weaving through pristine mid-tempo electronic pop minimalism. Opening with a lone bassline that nods to The xx’s ‘VCR’, it also shares The xx’s duet format, with frontwoman Chen Sijiang’s delicate vocals interplaying with another male voice, as it’s elevated by spectral Final Fantasy VII-style ambient synth pads.
The key here is subtlety and sleight of hand — there’s a waspy synth buzzing through Strawberry, along with (always welcome) 808 handclaps and earworm electronic intricacies, but nothing’s over-egging the vocal melodies or the song’s fluid movement. It’s only an opening track, but hopefully the rest of the EP follows with the same vivid melancholy. Unfortunately, we’ve got a month to wait, as it’s not out until November 15.
Listen below and follow on to Bandcamp to preorder.
Moo Kid 