Loved by the fashion world and at the epicentre of cutting edge sounds, Merry Lamb Lamb is carving a path that’s fully her own. The Hong Kong-born, London-based musician has created an exuberant, artistic persona – someone she would’ve looked up to as a shy teen. Creating late-night, dancefloor minded music, Merry Fung’s sounds are an evocative and ethereal listen.

With the airy quality of early Grimes, Yaeji and Sassy 009, Merry Lamb Lamb’s music is multi-layered and delicately produced, her silky vocal almost ASMR-like in parts. Her tracks are trilingual – she sings in her three tongues, with each language portraying a different side of herself: “When I speak in English, I feel more calm, but in Cantonese, I'm more straightforward, and then Mandarin is more poetic in a sense.”

Released in 2022, her debut album Genesis was an exploration of eclectic ‘80s pop, throbbing house and gently distorted piano keys. Where much of the album looked inward and felt introverted, its follow-up, Exodus, delivers stronger, bolder flavours that are even more club-oriented. It’s a “courageous story about me stepping out, looking for that utopian dream,” she says. To do that, she channelled the “pessimistic”, “pretty angry” feelings she experienced through lockdown.

Tracks like ‘Tranquility’ are loaded with retro strobing shades and analogue sounds from vintage synthesisers. She wrote the track as the world opened up again, post-pandemic, sampling sounds from busy trains she was on. Opener ‘Romantic’, with its breathy, Enya-like vocals, is about travelling anonymously and feeling disconnected from any one place. Having lived between Canada, Hong Kong and the UK, while building the majority of her friendships online, Merry Lamb Lamb’s music gives off a dislocated, untethered feel.

Wistful track ‘Night’ was written while she was quarantining in a dark hotel in Shanghai, disconnected from reality (“I felt like a ghost, because I wasn’t sleeping or eating”). ‘Who Am I’ addresses Merry Lamb Lamb’s identity crisis and her feeling of not belonging anywhere, using sped-up nightcore production.

Raised in the bustle of Hong Kong, Merry Lamb Lamb found she had to grow up fast – aged 14, she moved to Toronto on her own to study. “I pretty much had to take care of myself and mind my own business,” she says. One of the only East Asian people in her school, Merry spent most of her time doodling and writing poems in her notebook. She’d sketch herself as an anime version of Superwoman who would destroy the world, while obsessing over Avril Lavigne’s rock chick persona and the glossy J-pop stars she saw on TV. In her room, she’d sing karaoke covers of Belle & Sebastian, unaware they’d be pivotal to her music career.

Uploading these covers onto Facebook, they caught the attention of her now-creative director, Lung, who encouraged her to start producing her own music. She taught herself Ableton, made easier by her natural aptitude for the piano and computer programmes. Taking inspiration from Japanese electro-pop such as girl group Perfume, she loved how electronic music had “the sense of just getting away from reality”.

Merry Lamb Lamb was born out of the desire to “create a character that I could look up to when I was little – I wanted to be that person that was relatable, but very confident and strong.” Merry is the name her mum gave her, wanting to bless her with happiness (“but I'm actually pretty sad and moody!”), while ‘Lamb Lamb’ comes from a nickname some friends called her: “It makes me feel like a character, like a walking anime.”

While studying fine art in Canada, she found herself frustrated by not being able to break any rules, and being criticised for “not drawing something realistic or pretty ... I like things that are raw with emotions.” Music was a better way to get these feelings out. After some bedroom experimentation, 2015’s ‘Cosmic World’ and ‘Pity Party’ were her debut tracks – quirky pop cuts with noodling keyboard instrumental and colourful synths.

In 2018 she appeared on Chinese music talent show Rave Now, an electronic music production game show with Alan Walker on the judging panel. It was a fun experience, but she found the environment “super competitive”, leading her to the realisation that she wanted to make music for the love of it, not fame.

The visual arts student in her jumps out on her Instagram and social profiles: a vivid explosion of colour. With a covetable fashion sense and signature above-brow fringe akin to a Yoshitomo Nara character, Merry Lamb Lamb’s artistic posts are a joy on the ‘gram. It’s this that has led Gucci, Moschino, Chanel and Acne Studios among others to tap her up for campaigns and collaborations. Her own personal style is fun, colourful and experimental, inspired by the fashion magazines she’d pore over but also from being a “hardcore nerd” who wears Pokemon T-shirts and would happily describe herself as an Otaku.

Her accompanying visuals are equally as strong, such as the 3D rendered version of Merry Lamb Lamb’s bedroom in the video for ‘do you think about me every day?’ by artist Ruby Gloom. She and Lung are working on an audio-visual setup to bring her work to life, planning an immersive show that’s “more like theatre and music combined,” Lung says. “It’s taking out the emotion from the song and surrounding the audience with it.” Merry Lamb Lamb wants to perform live and orchestrate her tracks to an audience. “I’ve always seen live shows as an interaction – machines can be pianos, guitar, bass...”