A reflective mix shaped by grief, place, and attentive listening, linking Angie QQ’s Taroko National Park meditation to the field-recording ethos behind Sounds of Taiwan.

A few weeks back, Ransom Note, a London-based culture site with a sharp ear for underground music and patient listening, posted a mix by LA-based Angie QQ. It isn’t a DJ set in any conventional sense. The mix unfolds slowly, inwardly, closer to a walk than a performance.

Angie QQ, a Taiwanese American DJ and the founder of Pure Person Press, told Ransom Note: “This mixtape was inspired by my time in Taroko National Park in May 2019. My mother had just passed 6 months ago, and to mourn, I returned to nature. Taroko has hidden temples and places of meditation tucked in all of its crevices. I was able to disappear and hide in its fervent lushness… I hope however, this mix offers a feeling of what it would be like to meditate and walk in Taroko: spiritual, powerful, introspective, and healing.” That sense of disappearance, of sound as shelter, carries the mix from start to finish.

The same instincts guide Sounds of Taiwan, the recent Pure Person Press release built from Lim Giong’s field recordings. In October, Angie QQ described beginning that project in 2020 while living in Pasadena, missing the everyday sounds of Taiwan enough to reach out to Giong on a whim. He responded with thousands of carefully documented recordings. “In the kitchen of my tiny apartment, as sound after sound of Taiwan filled the room, I was able to exist in both Taiwan and America at once,” she told us in a feature about Sounds of Taiwan. The Ransom Note mix feels like a continuation of that impulse, listening as a way to hold place, memory, and loss without needing to explain any of it.

稷廬 (jì lú) — 六妙 (Six Wonders)
Satomimagae — Numa
綠松 (Green Pine) — 菩提雨 (Bodhi Rain)
林強 許志達 (Lim Giong & Hsu Chih-ta) — 穿過黑夜的漫長旅途 (Long Journey Into Night)
點. (Point.) — 觀 (Contemplate)
天馬 (Sky Horse) — 生命波 (Life Wave)
代々木公園 (Yoyogi Koen) — +++++, +++++, +++++.
蘇聰 (Cong Su) — 隨筆…廣西采風回憶 (Odyssey…Memories Of Goang-Shi)
A.J. Alex & Yan One — PART.1
Silent Jeff — 黃泉 (Yellow Springs)
Mong Tong — Rain Maker
虛極 (Bliss-Illusion) — 宙甲 (Recovery of All Things)
雷光夏 (Lei Guangxia) — 小鎮之海 (Ocean of the Small Town)
No Translation — 白沙屯媽祖到西螺大橋 (Baishatun Mazu to Xiluo Bridge)
Go Kurasawa — green thing
Wu Zhuoling — We’ll Follow the Wind

Note: Sounds of Taiwan is available to purchase via the ISC Store.