Cici Zhu - Mirage
Cici Zhu is a British-Chinese Electronic Music producer and vocalist whose music combines the Ancient Chinese sound Guzheng with electronic music to create what she calls “Zhengtronic”. After taking a long break from making music, Cici returned and realized her sound changed, now bringing more world music elements into her music. Today we take a listen to Cici Zhu’s song “Mirage”.
“Mirage” opens up somewhat slow and subdued, featuring production choices that seem to try to draw the listener into a trance. At the 1:37 mark, bass and drums kick in, giving the song some oomph while strings provide a rich melodic texture. The track again shifts into its slower/subdued nature afterwards, featuring wordless vocals that give off an extremely mystic and airy vibe. “Mirage” then shifts back to a drum and bass-driven high - featuring a beautiful string flourish - before returning to the mystic vibe presented earlier in the track. This back and forth nature really caused me to buy into the name and theme of the song; “Mirage” plays like the soundtrack to someone seeing something that is not really there and that person then trying to talk themselves into believing that what they see is real - or isn’t.
Overall, “Mirage” is an intelligently crafted EDM song that features tasteful use of strings and wordless vocals to capture a theme brilliantly. Cici Zhu really does an amazing job at capturing the essence of seeing a mirage, to the point where I could imagine a movie in which a character is struggling with discerning whether or not what he sees is real with “Mirage” as the backing track. You can check out Cici Zhu’s other music through YouTube and Spotify and as always we have “Mirage” embedded below - take a listen!
