Yulan & Blaise shake off the ‘Growing Pains’ in hypnotic style

There's a pleasing contradiction at the centre of Yulan & Blaise’s ‘Growing Pains’. What began as a lullaby-like voice note has emerged as a pulsing piece of experimental dance-pop, taking the restless thoughts of adulthood and answering with pure, unadulterated movement.

The Australian-American duo build the track around minimalist electronic production, but it's the organic details threaded through it that give ‘Growing Pains’ much of its personality. Small shells collected from the shores of Lutruwita/Tasmania become part of the percussion, while bamboo Chinese xūn, tubax and bass saxophone push against the cleaner synthetic textures surrounding them.

Grounded and hypnotic against the restless backdrop, Yulan’s vocal reflects on the strange discovery that growing pains don't necessarily disappear once adulthood arrives. The idea of surrendering spiralling thoughts to the sea gives the song an appropriately elemental quality, informed by both artists’ own relationships with the ocean.

Yulan spent part of her adolescence living aboard a catamaran off Australia, while Blaise grew up freediving on the opposite side of the Pacific in San Diego. It's a detail that makes the track’s saltwater imagery feel even more fundamental than merely decorative.

‘Growing Pains’ works because instead of attempting to think its way out of uncertainty, the track turns its discomfort into rhythm.

Strange, tactile and quietly infectious, it captures Yulan & Blaise at their most interesting. Sitting somewhere between experimental art-pop and the simple pleasure of being moved by a beat.