Song Recommendation: “Completely Half” by Bolis Pupul

Bolis Pupul hit my radar last year as the producer for the delightfully unhinged “HAHA,” part of the collaborative album he made with Charlotte Adigéry. While the vocal performance and manipulations thereof where the headline element of that track, the overall production chops (all spiky synths, harsh blips and use of silence) really caught my attention. Pupul returned this year with a full solo album, to which he contributed his own vocals and it’s quite a powerful listen. Something of a concept album that serves as a love letter to his late mother, it’s Pupul’s attempt to reconcile his mixed heritage (his father is Belgian and his mother was Chinese) with his upbringing that, according to him, didn’t integrate his Chinese roots at all. So here we have the track “Completely Half” which explores his experience in Hong Kong of technically being a foreigner but being seen as a local: “every time people talk to me like I’m local a sense of shame is my part…I wish I spoke what they speak, so I can blend in easily.” I obviously don’t have a lot personal background to make this song resonate with me but I can’t help but be moved and captivated by his description of his liminal cultural ennui.