mui zyu - Demon 01

photo by Holly Whittaker
written by janice headley

With her solo project mui zyu, London-based musician Eva Liu (also of Dama Scout) sought to capture the sounds she heard growing up at her family's Chinese restaurant. As she explains to Talkhouse: 

My debut record, Rotten Bun for an Eggless Century, is about self-exploration and identity, at times told through a lens inspired by fantasy video-games and Chinese folklore. In the process of pulling together the themes for this collection of songs, I reflected on my own childhood and began to uncover sounds from my memory... Since we worked on this record, I feel even more tuned in to sounds around me all the time. For the most part, this has been a wonderful shift in my consciousness. Abrasive sounds that used to cause me stress are now intriguing — I’ll think about how they are made, what is causing the friction, how the air is moving, and I might even try to find rhythms in the chaos. I have welcomed this new found relationship with my sonic surroundings and wonder if it’s played a role in my overall wellbeing.