“I’ve been wanting to get back to the essence of music, to speak through music rather than words,” Hu Mengzhou tells Apple Music about his 2023 debut album. “I hope my music needs no explanation.” Since first appearing on China’s Got Talent in 2011 as part of a genre-bending guitar-piano duo, the Shanghai-born, classically trained musician has become a titan of the Chinese EDM scene under the moniker CORSAK胡梦周. So his first studio album feels like it’s been a long time coming. “I feel an album should express a complete set of values,” Hu says. “This year I finally feel ready.” The straightforward title 一张专辑, readable as both the unassuming “An Album” and the statement-making “The Album”, gives no hint of what lies within, which is precisely Hu’s aim. Deliberately withholding information is one of his favoured techniques—single-character track titles are enticingly cryptic and often bear little resemblance to his chosen English renderings. It’s part of his approach to production as well—he points out the strategic silence on album opener “引” (literally “Introduction” or “Attract” but given the English title “Pluto&Charon”), where his vocals on the climactic chorus drop out abruptly before the words “I love you”. “I choose to pause the music at the critical moment, interrupting it with nothing but the sound of breathing before the hook kicks in with a cosmic explosion of screaming guitars,” he says. “Right here, silence speaks louder than words. Not saying anything is dignified and divine.” This use of negative space, a technique drawn from traditional Chinese painting, is just one of the album’s many references to visual art, which range from the playful overview of calligraphic craft on “墨” (English title “Art”) to the mythological realism of a Jacques-Louis David masterpiece on the love song “画” (literally “Painting” but given the English title “Mars being disarmed by Venus”)—not to mention the audio evocation of Neon Genesis Evangelion on the bagpipe-driven electro-rock anthem “零” (English title “Rei”). Hu even describes his love of electronic music in visual terms: “To me, it break the shackles of the sonic imagination. I can use it like a paintbrush to draw anything in the universe. That’s the beauty of electronic music.” Though the album is more pop-oriented than the artist’s EDM-heavy catalogue, he continues to make full use of his electronic toolbox. The nostalgic “狂” (English title “Encore”) employs an EDM build-up to bring a poignant ballad to a fevered crescendo, while “怂” (English title “Shy”), the artist’s second collaboration with Shanghai-based singer-songwriter HAMA陈缇, performs the neat trick of reworking his atmospheric, aspirational 2020 dance track “Breaking (feat. 谢雨纯)” into a pop duet between anxious lovers. When it comes down to it, Hu is genre-agnostic: “Honestly, whether it’s pop or electronic, all sounds are waveforms to me,” he says. Using Spatial Audio technology was an opportunity to take those sounds further. “I’ve always said my music is best viewed with the ears,” Hu says. “Spatial Audio lets me take my imagination to extremes but still have clear paths and guide rails.” He and co-producer Richard Furch, a sound engineer behind multiple Grammy-winning albums, worked together on the Spatial release. “We basically re-engineered every song, redesigning the audio for every channel but taking care not to lose the spark. And each song was a massive project of over 150 channels,” Hu says. “I think we succeeded. I especially recommend three songs in Spatial Audio: ‘脑 (feat. 黄鹤Miah)’ (English title ‘Brain’), ‘零’ and ‘冬 (feat. M3SSIAH)’ (English title ‘Winter’).”