Singer and musician Kelsey Lu, electronic producer Boys Noize, and composer Chilly Gonzales have collaborated on a new track titled “Ride or Die,” and it’s a stunner. Tinny string plucks from a spinet swirl into Lu’s warped vocal harmonies as the song builds in suspense. Lu beckons for us to become her ride or die under the open desert sky. Romantic words spill from Lu’s mouth—”Like a kiss from the sun”—as the track reaches classical and electronic musical bliss.
The track comes with an animated film that finds what seems to be various animated versions of Lu in decadent dress, one being something of sci-fi battle armor, riding and directing trains, gliding through the desert. These different versions of herself collide into each other in a fiery embrace. It’s a captivating visual that was completed with the use of 2,400 pages of hand drawn art. “A journey from introspective melancholy to explosive new heights—how far we travel and how high we go depends on the choices we all must make,” said Boys Noize on his Instagram. The visual, created by Art Camp, Danae Gosset, and Danica Tan, was sold this past weekend as an NFT via Nifty Gateway.
“I found a comfortable meeting ground within the merging of acoustically produced textures and electronic ones. I’m a very visual person when it comes to songwriting, and nature is always a part of that visualisation. There was a momentum of tension, and I wanted to soar through that. The desert kept reappearing. Its heat, its vast expanse of space, and its dangers. Sort of like a fleeting romance. It could go so many ways, often disastrous, but whichever way it goes, trust in yourself and the many sides we hold because, in the end, you are a powerful bitch,” Lu said of the track.
You watch the gorgeous video below.
