In an online world, it is through virtual art that we can reach a new realm of freedom. Abating our sensual constraints through the fluctuations of sound and colour. On March 5th, it was object blue who stirred our senses with a 30 minute livestream to celebrate the release of her latest five-track project, ‘Grotto’.
Born in Tokyo and raised in the suburbs of Beijing, it was during her time studying in London that she discovered her love for the dystopian world of the electronic. Finding solace within the abrasive beats which continue to play a central role in her music today.
Echoing out from a cave of sound, object blue leaves behind the grotto’s festive connotations for something of a more ethereal plane. Paired with bubbling textures of the cotton candy, medieval reality created by wife and creative partner Natalia Podgórska, the live manifestation of this project is equal parts hypnotising and shocking.
Slowly humming itself into being through the electronic spirals of ‘Opened Close’, object blue appears. Sitting in a blanketed sphere of peace, violently contradicting the ever-changing virtual world which engulfs her. Her hair frames her face. A circle of pearl-encrusted silver frames her features. Vivaciously scratching against the high textures, this track brushes with its own ceilings in a slow movement against time.
Leaving the grandiose for the organic, ‘Fugitive’s Flourish’ dives into the, in parts, grotesque elements from the EP’s linguist origin. Leaving you unable to look away, the track jumps in unison with the visual osmosis that grows from behind the producer’s euphoric state. Joined at points by figures whose heads have plucked and replaced by magnolias, it’s a fever dream in all proportions. Stretching the short two-minute track into a new live universe that can never be constrained to record, it explores darker territories as the producer gives her soul over to the music.
It’s with a gong that signals a transference of heartbeats. Absorbing all movements in the airwaves and leaving a blank page for the desolate ‘Exorcism of a Self Help Book’. A track that extricates your soul through its ticking clock of industrial beats and rupturing melody. Abrasive in the best way, it signals the return of the flower-headed monsters and sirens the heads of Gods for ‘Procession of Healers’.
Finding its cyclical way to the end in ‘Closed Open’, object blue creates a choral mantra of electronic praise which puts all her monsters to rest. Slowly returning to the starting sequence, a black screen running through the EP’s opening track, we are left longing, waiting, hoping for something more to excite our senses.