Photo: Bandcamp
Following Peggy Gou on Instagram can feel like stepping into another world. The South Korean DJ seems to be in a different country every few days, travelling by private jet to play sets in front of tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people. She’s phenomenally successful, and her feed can blur into a montage of beaches, restaurants, fashion shows, and adoring crowds.
That success, and perhaps the fact that she doesn’t hide it, has earned Gou some public haters, (safe to say more than her white, male contemporaries). There is, partly by design, a Peggy Gou brand that’s bigger than the artist herself. And almost adjacent to that is the fact that she produces, and sings on, her own songs.
Gou has released seven EPs since 2016, but I Hear You is her first LP. The list of accolades leading up to it is a long one, including being named DJ Mag’s Best House DJ in 2023, and Forbes including her in a list of Asian leaders, pioneers and entrepreneurs under age 30, in 2019. Her singles regularly appear in Pitchfork’s end-of-year electronic music roundups.
Her last few EPs, on tastemaking label Ninja Tune, showed her using her singing voice more, and expanding her sound from dancefloor bangers into a broader array of styles. Crucially the sound started to thin somewhat, becoming more indebted to ‘90s production than denser, more modern sounds.
She told NPR that the song ‘I Go’, which wound up included here, was a “reimagination of the sounds [she] grew up loving”.
Of ‘(It Goes Like) Nanana’, Gou said “there's a feeling we all know but is hard to describe, that feeling of love, warmth and excitement when you're surrounded by friends and loved ones and the energy speaks for itself”.
Her enthusiasm for rave culture is undeniable, and despite not being a gifted singer, her smoky tone fits the intentional crudity of the tracks perfectly.
Elsewhere the tempo slows, but the music keeps its retro sheen, and Gou steps aside for other vocalists. The appearance of Lenny Kravitz might surprise, but she’s reached a certain tier of celebrity: just last week photographed partying alongside Gwyneth Paltrow.
Gou has said she dreamt about this album for ten years before its release. It’s clearly a milestone for her, and I think that’s because it’s designed to be more than a series of dance tracks. There’s space to slow down and spread out, and alongside the downtempo tracks are slightly experimental ones like ‘Seoulsi’, which features a gayageum (a Korean stringed instrument), playing a melody over a jungle rhythm.
Taken apart from her carefully constructed star persona, I find Peggy Gou’s music charming because of how rudimentary it is. It’s important to note that’s a choice: preparing for this piece I went through numerous DJ forums with members complaining what a 'bad producer' she is. But go back ten years and you’ll hear her tracks were much tougher, squelchier, and more modern. The way they sound now is not an accident.
In 2020, a long Facebook post by a DJ who had shared an apartment building with Gou went semi-viral. He ranted about what he perceived as bad behaviour, but gave the game away when he complained about her wearing perfume and fashion label clothes. The tang of sour grapes was extremely apparent.
Wealth and self-promotion are obvious targets for critique, (not to mention a pretty laissez faire approach to carbon emissions). But they’re separate from anything to do with music. And the music here has been assembled with great care, and should be respected as such.
