27 February 2026
The full eight-track LP lands on May 1 in both digital and vinyl formats
Chinese musician, DJ and creative chef Yu Su returns with her second album, ‘Foundry’, a work that marks a decisive shift from the open-ended atmospherics of her 2021 debut and last year’s two-track release. Expansive in scope yet precise in detail, the record signals a fully realised and outward-looking evolution in her sound.
The core of Foundry was initially developed for a live performance at MUTEK in 2025, a period that coincided with Yu’s relocation to London. The move prompted a recalibration of perspective, as she sought a language that could hold both her roots and her ongoing artistic progression. The result is what she describes as an “in-between music”, a post-orientalist approach that resists fixed categorisation.
Drawing on the eclecticism of her DJ practice, and shaped by collaborations that stretch across scenes and disciplines, the album leans into minimal and ambient techno while retaining a dusky, dub-inflected warmth. Yu’s longstanding interest in multisensory creation — spanning sound, taste and atmosphere — resurfaces here in subtler form, as texture and space become compositional tools.
The album’s visual identity deepens this sense of material transformation. The cover features hammered metalwork by artist Brendan Ratzlaff, a tactile gesture that mirrors the record’s forged aesthetic. For Yu, the foundry operates as a metaphorical site of collective creation, a shared workshop where disparate elements are melted down and recast. Contributions from Seefeel, Dip In The Pool and Memotone feed into this alchemical process, their distinct sonic signatures reconfigured into a cohesive whole.
The album’s visual direction was led by Lucas Dupuy, whose layered sensibility echoes the music’s spatial depth. “We both think in layers”, Yu comments. “Not linear layering, but horizontal layering, like weaving metallic threads, where a bigger picture of a grainy sphere will occur at the end.”
Two tracks from the album, ‘A Jewel’ and the title cut ‘Foundry’, are now available to stream ahead of the release. The full eight-track LP lands on May 1 in both digital and vinyl formats.
