Leng Seong

Gweilo is a new offering from the artist Leng Seong, and is best regarded as a prolonged act of subterfuge. In this playfully baffling addendum to the artist's previous work, Seong explores his relationship to the archetype of the trickster–a mythical figure best characterized by their tendency to challenge the natural order of things by breaking, redefining, or simply existing outside of traditional rules. Misdirection becomes the artist's process rather than his aim, and provides a radical means of experimenting with sonic, visual, material ephemera from wide ranging ancestral, personal, and pop cultural sources. While Seong–perhaps unsurprisingly–prefers to leave this work undefined, it fits neatly into his oeuvre as a lucid reflection on the spaces traveled between cultures. Partially inspired by the Malaysian folktale Sang Kancil, the album shifts at the pace of the titular lesser mouse deer, fleet of foot and quick to evade. Seong and collaborators Perera Elsewhere, Mauli, Abigail Toll, Tengal Drilon and Uxile tirelessly race between genres, blending hip-hop's rhythmic intensity with the ethereal qualities of electronic soundscapes and warm-yet-moody vocal samples. Across this 10 track journey energetic upbeats preface almost manic shifts to softer rhythms. We are invited to keep pace as Gweilo marks the path with 808s, Chinese choir samples, anime-inspired chants, and indecipherable vocals. It is through these perplexing signs that Seong reveals language itself as a favored tool in the tricksters box. Gweilo is bookended by two tracks exploring the failures and frustrations of language as a means of transmitting cultural heritage. Even the most recognizable documentary vocal samples are distorted and presented as forms of secret knowledge. Seong uses language to destabilize the spaces between the ear and the tongue and suggests that mere listening will always lead you astray. Keen listeners who experience Gweilo live will certainly realize that this work was fundamentally conceived as an audio-visual experience. Textile sculptures and live video manipulation reveal the artist's practice as fundamentally performative. Just as Seong himself refuses to be identified, Gweilo embraces each and every opportunity to shift its shape. With a watchful eye on convention and no claim to heroism, Seong approaches these shifts with the same preternatural cool required of the prey to outwit the predator. Each act of misdirection is a gesture by the artist towards his belief that self-discovery and survival may equally require us to inhabit the role of the trickster.

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