Sue Zuki

Glasgow based musician known for frosty, arched-eyebrow synthwave.

Her recent release “WE ARE ALL VERY ANXIOUS” opens with lo-fi, high-strength industrial bangers before settling into a more quixotic, Hype Williams-aping flow.

The key to Sue Zuki’s music is her vocals, where she misanthropically preaches the records themes of psychological alienation and despair, trapped within an augmented virtual reality. Whilst trapped and unable to properly function inside this distorted simulation there are the bewildering sounds of a thousand voices and ‘every conversation’ unhealthily looping inside your mind, through the echo chamber. Manifesting into a bleak neurotic obsession and feelings of inadequacy, a desperate plea, blinded and fatigued by the unnerving glare of the computer screen, processing too much information and not knowing if the human ‘interactions’ you’re experiencing are genuine or artificial.

The trauma of this hollow existence is further emphasised with the combination of fragmented and jarring rhythmic grime percussive kick drums that is boosted by the metallic coiling density of detached, propulsive industrial structures. Synthetic frequencies writhe, becoming more lysergic as they progress. DnB tempos accelerate and shift in pitch as if in an erratic state of panic, dissonant foreboding drones absorb you as if drowning under the hypothermic pressure of the deepest, coldest and darkest frozen oceans. Throbbing sub bass fuelled with dread and agonising noise grips you into a suffocating claustrophobia, compressing further and further.

Rather than suppressing these feelings of insecurity and affliction there is a degree of exaggerated, self-deprecating sardonic humour that gradually unravels helping to confront the despondent nature of the record. Accompanied also by subdued, fragile and sunken RnB / Rhythm and Gloom vocals with desolate acoustic guitar fusions which overall provides an empathetic tone. Sue Zuki’s music is a profound and startling glimpse into the growing cultural discomfort and paranoia of the conscious state of the human condition in the 21st Century.

https://www.nts.live/shows/sue-zuki?fbclid=IwAR07KNetAaR0AUZ0jK426fEA9ECs3lVOVsrnagzPSQkcfr7AFfdfGW-GugU