mui zyu

Somewhere, a wizard has a panic attack.

It’s not an image that fantasy uses often. It feels too close to reality, the terror too mundane to grapple with. But mui zyu doesn’t just wrestle with it, she revels in it. On her solo debut Rotten Bun for an Eggless Century, the British-Hong Kong mastermind unwinds convoluted threads of electronica, warped pop and indie rock into an engrossing, disquieting journey through a fantasy world with all too real horrors. There are no dragons here, replaced by racial violence, self-doubt and crippling anxiety. And yet, it’s impossible to turn away from her hypnotic world. We talked to her below.