Adai Song appears with a fervent creative vision in her latest album, “The Bloom Project,” an experiential cultural and emotional conscious awakening through sound. Over eight dazzling tracks, she reimagines the early 20th-century “shidaiqu” style, which combined traditional Chinese folk with modern electronic textures. The result is a record that’s at once deeply in touch with roots and unapologetically modern, stretching the potential of what global music can mean in our contemporary era. The recording can feel cinematic and intimate at the same time, a dialogue between yesteryears and future times, womanhood and identity, and silence and revolution.
It starts with “A Lost Singer,” a gorgeous augmented version of Zhou Xuan’s 1937 oldie. Where the original embodied loneliness, Adai converts it into self-possession. Her voice toggles between brittle and robust, as erhu and piano twine and ambient bass tones billow. That song is like finding a woman who isn’t looking for her voice anymore but realises that it has been hers all along. It also establishes an emotional tone for the project: a reawakening through ownership, with tradition embracing evolution.
“Night Shanghai” comes next, shining with the heartbeat of neon nostalgia. In its EDM house rhythms and guzheng melodies, it calls to mind the call of modern cities, beauty paced with ache. Adai’s singing is graceful but has a gravity that sinks in. The track is indicative of the contradiction of modern times: the escape to the dancefloor and then the loneliness that follows when the lights turn off. It transitions perfectly from reflection to movement, like the album itself is breathing in and out of memory and momentum.
The result is that balance explodes out in full-on “Make Way.” A reimagining of the 1940s shidaiqu anthem “Rose, Rose, I Love You”, this version forcefully wrests back the narrative. No longer a muse: the rose is a voice demanding space. Strata of house percussion, pipa and shimmering synths build into a declaration of strength. It’s a world music offering that is experienced on several layered levels.” Journeys feels global and multi-layered, but at its core, it offers a deep sense of intimacy that represents Adai as both a bridge artist and an innovator. From mere softness to full-on statement, this is the pure aural upgrade.
Then there’s “I, I Want,” a sweet and twerpy ditty that wields its duality with impunity. Trap beats intertwine with classic strings as Adai writes a script for desire and independence. The chemistry of the song is electric flirtation, empowerment and vulnerability, as well as gambling at the same time. It’s among the album’s most recent inductees, but it too is rooted in cultural rhythm, reminding us that freedom can be simultaneously ancient and futuristic. It goes down easy with “Carmen 2025”, a stomper that reinterprets Bizet’s opera through an East-Western gaze. With guzheng solos and EDM drops, Adai isn’t so much imitating Carmen’s defiance as reimagining it.
“The Bloom Project” is in its stretch drive, and it feels like the dawn after a revolution. “Wuxi Tune” fuses jazz, garage rock and old-time storytelling in a brisk sprint that feels as though it were shot through with motion. “Wild Thorny Molihua” reframes softness in strength and reenergises the jasmine flower. And Adai, with “River Run,” closes the album in grace, a goodbye not to love but to imprisonment. The resultant bloom of sound, of imagery, of imagination gifts us a new-found glimpse into what reclamation sounds like as a living narrative. At the cutting edge of culture, Adai Song reinvents sound as a language representing freedom, identity and tireless rise.