x/o - Chaos Butterfly (2022)

Today, x/o the Vietnamese-Canadian electronic music producer, vocalist and filmmaker announces their debut album Chaos Butterfly.

An epic tale of catharsis and self-actualization explored through metamorphosis. It is a free-falling kaleidoscopic journey into a beautiful nightmare, both cataclysmic and tender. Expanding on the themes present in their first EP Cocoon Egg, the album builds a parallel world from a different perspective.

The album follows a loose narrative about an anti-hero navigating trauma through whirlwinds of grief and anger; a vengeful spirit who finds true strength in inner healing and forgiveness. An allegory for transcending societal concepts of gender, it is a journey of self-acceptance and reflection of x/o’s own path towards their non-binary identity.

Throughout the voyage, x/o pulls apart and collides masculine and feminine tropes both conceptually and musically by utilizing contrasts between soft and hard, internal and external, calmness and anger, loud and quiet. This system of symbolism and influences reveals pattern duality.

Colliding disparate but interconnected influences, x/o references Playstation’s Final Fantasy world-building, Fight Club, the half-yoma warriors in the anime Claymore, as well as the real legends of the Vietnamese Trưng Sisters.

Chaos Butterfly playfully resists easy categorisation, fusing breakbeats, with elements of solemn ambience, distorted metal, and trip-hop catharsis, with inspiration from artists such as Yoko Kanno, to Bone Thugs-n-Harmony as well as Deftones, Massive Attack, Orbital, and Aaliyah.