Blood Lotus releases independent debut album Middle Of The Night

Blood Lotus, the stage name of Hannah Wu, has released her debut album Middle Of The Night independently. The title track blends electronic production, avant-pop and R&B, part of what Wu calls an approach to Asia-futurism, and comes with a music video directed by David Tse and inspired by Asian new wave cinema, tracked in the release calendar.

The song is a breakup song at its core, tracking the conflict between letting go of a relationship and returning to one that has reached a clear end. Wu plays the guzheng, a traditional Chinese plucked instrument, on the track, transposing pentatonic scales from musical histories across Asia into vocal melodies built for an electronic palette.

Wu grew up between New Zealand and China and lived across Australia, Taiwan and China while writing the album. Her parents were avid listeners of classic Chinese opera and Asian folk, while she grew into pop, R&B, hip-hop, ambient and experimental electronic music; later, living in Asia, she discovered underground club artists including Tzusing, 33EMYBW and Howie Lee, whom she credits with blending temple instruments and folk samples into heavy electronic beats.

Wu worked with producers Voidhood and Kuya Neil on the record. She has said the loss of someone opens space in a life to experience something entirely new, framing the album's title track as being as much about the transformative potential of grief as about the relationship it describes.

Wu frames the whole album, not just its title track, as an exercise in attentive listening. "The process of listening is really such a profound act, as it requires an attentiveness," she said, describing traditions and cultures as "never static; they're always in a process of collision with others." She summed up the record's spirit more simply elsewhere: "Life is short, precious and fleeting, so you need to live it to the fullest... you never know what the future holds."