Eliza G is a multimedia artist known for creating trance-like acoustic and electronic beats that pair perfectly with looping animated visuals. Now they are inviting the world to experience a bunch of strange new characters and liminal spaces with the audio-visual album, GRAY AREA. Existing in the lo-fi hip hop realm, the first single, Panda Chef vs. the sinking suspicion that none of this is actually real tells the story of the character Panda Chef suffering from depersonalization disorder. Sound sources for this track were sampled from kitchenware and utensils, mixed with a groovy bassline and guitar chord progression, Rhodes electric piano, and a disembodied voice singing only “Panda Chef” with different inflections over the main melody.

While looking at a board of old polaroid photos, Panda Chef begins to dissociate and lose grip on reality. They feel as though they are perpetually falling, spiraling, floating, in an endless abyss, even when surrounded by the things they love. The scene cuts abruptly to a shot of them peppering a pot of soup in slow motion, an out of body experience. Questions of identity swirl and haunt as the only text repeated by my disembodied voice are “Panda Chef”; unedited, time stretched and reversed. The beat samples kitchen utensils and appliances to juxtapose lucidity with the disorienting liminal space.