Here's why Peggy Gou's Debut album 'I Hear You' is one of the best electronic albums of the year – Grimy Goods

Join the DJ, producer, and artist as she translates a message of riveting positivity through her magnetic dance tracks. Catch her as a headliner at this year’s A Big Beautiful Block Party in Las Vegas.

Peggy Gou clinches a pot in the pantheon of club music tastemakers with her long-awaited debut album, I Hear You. Awaiting you inside are forty sublime minutes that transport you to a utopian soundscape that offers you more than just an aural escape—but also a grounding feeling of rejuvenation. The collection will no doubt feature heavily during her headlining set at A Big Beautiful Block Party in Las Vegas, formerly known as Life Is Beautiful, alongside Justice and LCD Soundsystem
From the moment Gou started dropping the singles that would meld together into I Hear You a few years ago, which had yet to be revealed, each one seemed destined to launch the internationally prized DJ and producer to interstellar heights. All ten tracks pulse with all the infectious, anthemic, and euphoric energy you could ever hope for from a collection by one of EDM’s most innovative voices. Evoking the elysian atmospheres of the European clubs, parties, and festivals she’s performed at.
Like the 80s-90s house she was born into, Gou’s debut is both a time capsule of modern electronica and a visionary look into its future: one that melds together throbbing, ecstatic beats with a melodic pop-sleekness. Finding a sweet spot between entrancing, danceable rhythms and the transcendent vocals layered over those oscillating soundscapes—as she does on “I Believe In Love Again,” an irresistible, R&B-infused groover that’s made all the more luxuriant by the presence of Lenny Kravitz‘s gleaming croons.

Gou’s beatific sound goes hand-in-hand with her exigent need to do more than ignite an emotional purge through dance within her listeners. Across I Hear You, she uses her music to not only recalibrate the way she interacts with herself and the world around her but also to reimagine her perceptions of both.
“Create your own view / Your universe / Your after image / Your artwork,” she advises on the LP’s intro track. As electronica hums and twinkles in the background between steadily detonating bass, she charts a path through the destructive cycles of human civilization, fostering a need to find a better way forward. “We have colonized / Industrialized / Modernized,” she intones. “We have forgotten self-respect and to listen to ourselves.”
The first step is invariably a mindful look inward. But the second is to give yourself over to either the electrifying conduit of sound that courses through a dancefloor (“I Go”) or frantic, romantic passion that has everything in common with a blissful earworm you just can’t shake (“It Goes Like) Nanana”)—Gou provides both with rapt reliability.

Gou has always mingled both Korean and English in her lyricism, and I Hear You only affirms the multilingual transcendence her music is capable of. A lack of fluency is far from a barrier when you’re traveling through her aural realms—as evidenced by the ease with which listeners will find themselves spellbound by tracks “Lobster Telephone” and “Seoulsi Peggygou (서울시페기구)”—the latter seamlessly pairing the rapid, ethereal string rhythms of the gayageum with drum machines and synths. On “All That” (feat. Villano Antillano), she even expands the album’s linguistic palette to include Spanish.
There’s a universal language being spoken here: every surging rush of bass, beaming synth, and stellar instrumental delivers a wordless provocation of ineffable but radiant emotion. Call it what you want—nostalgia, ethereal innovation, dreamy intoxication—the feeling it leaves you with translates worldwide. I Hear You provides crystal clear proof that Gou’s talent for manifesting magnetic dance tracks, allowing her to break through to multiple continents, has lost none of its ravishing potency.

Words: Steven Ward
Visit Peggy Gou on her website and Instagram to stay updated on new releases and tour announcements.

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