Most artists spend years building toward a debut. Cassandra Liu spent hers building a universe.
“Chaos Is Me,” the first single from the Chicago-based, Chinese-born artist’s debut album Madison Boulevard, is a dark synth-pop track rooted in an unlikely place: a walk-in closet and a dinner table conversation. The song began when a friend told Liu that chaos is good, that it means change, and that the best things come from change. From there, Liu built something much bigger.
The track draws on Zhuangzi’s Butterfly Dream, a classical Chinese philosophical text about the fluid boundary between self and other, and filters it through pulsing synth and vocal layers she wrote, produced, and recorded entirely herself. It has a prominent dark pop base cultivated into atmospheric sensibilities with webs of conceptual electronica and immense vocal depth.
The accompanying music video, directed by former NYU film student Matan Hamam, extends the concept into abstract visual territory, with Liu moving from observed art piece to active observer over the course of the track.
Chaos Is Me is out now.
