Mengzy Selects - 019 / January

Welcome to ‘Mengzy Selects’, a monthly video column which features five recently released tracks by producers and labels in Asia and across the Asian diaspora. Your host is Mengzy: a Hong Kong-based DJ and producer, PhD in musicology, music journalist, and co-founder of Feed the Dragon.

To watch the video version of this month’s column, click here.

Rohaan is currently on tour in North America but that’s not all the Manchester-based artist has to shout about this month. His new EP ‘Boy in a Dream’ dropped on Vision Recordings last week and we’re obsessed with 140 killer ‘Easy for them’.

Listen to ‘Easy for them’ here.

Guchon recently made his debut on Maximum Airtime with ‘Piano Bros’, a multigenre EP that features a standout broken beat-meets-breaks remix by Farsight. ‘Piano Bros’ is hot on the heels of the Japanese producer’s second Hot Haus Recs release that came out in December.

Listen to ‘Funky Al’ (Farsight Remix) here.

Emerging Seoul-based imprint Planet Turbo Records came out with its second, label-defining compilation on January 19. ‘In Love’ by Tokyo-based Brit Submerse opens the bass-centric VA with romantic early-90s jungle and no, that’s not an oxymoron.

Listen to ‘In Love’ here.

Speaking of love, Mr Ho’s covid-era ‘000 Baby’ was released on vinyl for the first time this month and is already sold out, of course. A new remix by the legendary Om Unit rounds off the pressing, speeding up the downtempo breakbeat vibes into a dreamy 4/4 dance.

Listen to ‘000 Baby’ (Om Unit Remix) here.

Tokyo’s mulemusiq is known to issue rereleases from decades past, such as Eiki Nonaka’s ‘A-Key’ from 1995. With ‘Blue Dress’, however, the label welcomes “modern ambient balearic” from Soshi Takeda. Airy metallic synths and electric guitar feature on the evocative track.

Listen to ‘Blue Dress’ here.

Want to be featured on ‘Mengzy Selects?’ Email promos to [email protected].

Mengzy is Mixmag Asia’s Music Culture Columnist, follow her on Instagram.