Hot on the heels of a whirlwind year touring the globe and releasing the acclaimed collaboration with Charlotte Adigéry, ‘Topical Dancer’, dance music’s suavest producer-singer-songwriter Bolis Pupul has announced his debut album Letter To Yu.

Letter To Yu is a love letter to Bolis’ late mother who passed away in 2008 in a traffic accident. Born to a Belgian father and Chinese mother, growing up in Gent, Bolis had not negated his Chinese roots exactly – his mother was born in Hong Kong – but he certainly hadn’t embraced them. However, in the wake of his mother’s passing, he began coming to terms with his heritage. “When I started to think about my roots, instead of being ashamed of them, I started to embrace them,” he recalls. “And so it became more and more important for me to get in touch with them. I went to evening school here in Belgium and began learning Chinese. I did that for four years. That was the first step.”

His first visit to Hong Kong in 2018 further crystallised how Bolis wanted to incorporate his Chinese legacy into his music. A primary intention on his first trip to Hong Kong was to locate where his mother – Yu Wei Wun – was born. Not wanting to forget this overwhelming experience, Bolis began writing a letter to his mother so he could properly grasp his thoughts. Much later, when the album began to properly take shape, he remembered the letter. “It became the centerpiece of this album,” he says matter-of-factly.

The album’s first single/video “COMPLETELY HALF” (built around field recordings on the Hong Kong subway) is a beautifully filmed art-house video by Magnum photographer Bieke Depoorter in the heart of Hong Kong, who follows Bolis exploring its streets and buildings in search for his late mother. The women in the video welcomed Bieke into their homes and daily routines to let her film intricately composed tableaux of their everyday lives, in which Bolis seeks the spirit of his late mother.

The creation of Letter To Yu has been a pivotal and liberating experience for Bolis. “Even though this trip was very emotional and at times sad, I also had some great times that just made me really happy,” he concludes. “This resulted in a very uplifting melody where I felt like I could handle my life.”