Live Review: Nosaj Thing's ‘All Points Back To U’ & announces new album, Parallels

26 June 2017 | 11:10 am | Freya Dinesen
Originally Appeared In

Los Angeles-based electronic producer and composer NOSAJ THING has announced his new album, Parallels, releasing its lead single ‘All Points Back To U’.

Los Angeles-based electronic producer and composer NOSAJ THING has announced his new album, Parallels, releasing its lead single ‘All Points Back To U’.

This is Jason Chung’s fourth album under his distinctive moniker, exploring binary flavours and traversing through new dimensions to bring forth an extremely diverse body of work. Parallels represents a redemptive rebirth, with the album’s compellingly elusive, undefinable sonic sounds born out of what he terms, a personal and musical “identity crisis.

‘All Points Back to U’ presents Nosaj Thing’s first collaboration with iconoclastic Australian producer and singer, Steve Spacek, who delivers stirring, soulful vocals and lyrics over Chung’s intense analog synths and dazed kick drums.

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Nosaj Thing is renown for his innovative and unexpected musical pairings, embarking on precious projects with Kid Cudi, Kendrick Lamar and Chance the Rapper. Chung and Blonde Redhead vocalist Kazu Makino are also longtime collaborators, with the latter appearing on Parallels’ icy 1980s-synthetic track, ‘How We Do’.  

Parallels highlights the new artistic foils enlivening Nosaj Thing’s diverse soundscapes, and assimilates Chung’s influences up to now: from the grime-styled bass adventure ‘Get Like’, to the tropical groove and choppy vocal samples of ‘U G’.

Chung says, My previous records reflected the anxiety of living inside my own imagination... For Parallels, I went outside of that: it’s all about trying new things, creating new worlds. In the past year, I faced up to my own internal struggles & became more social. This allowed me to jump styles & genres - exploring different emotions and sounds beyond what I’d done before. I’d make something ambient and cinematic, and then create a dancefloor beat, along with a broken hip-hop groove – and then try to make them work together.”

Parallels distills Chung’s entire history to its essence, coagulating Nosaj Thing’s signature fraternisation of futurism, nostalgia and unexpected melodies into its highest expression of genuine and new.

Parallels is out on Friday September 8 on Innovative Leisure via Inertia Music.

Words by FREYA DINESEN

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