Spotlight

Lia Ouyang Rusli

August 13, 2026

Lia Ouyang Rusli (she/they) is a film composer & artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She recently scored A24’s Sorry Baby (dir. Eva Victor), Happyend (dir. Neo Sora), A24's Problemista and HBO's Fantasmas (dir. Julio Torres), among other films. She makes solo music, DJs, and performs under the moniker OHYUNG. Drawing on ambient soundscapes, harsh noise and euphoric pop, OHYUNG brings together disparate sounds and influences in her music. Her 2025 album You Are Always On My Mind was described by Paste Magazine as an "unpredictable masterpiece" that moves between "bantam electronic gestures, blow-out raptures, raver torrents, and light shifts." Her ambient records include her most recent IOWA, celebrated by Pitchfork as a "chilling, starkly beautiful ambient album," and imagine naked!, a "masterful selection of muscular, shuddering, trembling ambient excursions" (The Quietus) that was hailed by NPR as one of the 50 Best Albums of 2022 and by PopMatters as the #1 Ambient Record of 2022. She hosts the monthly Lot Radio show Stray Dogs, highlighting asian diasporic experimental and electronic music.

Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.

My name is Lia Ouyang Rusli, I make music for film and TV, and my own music under the name OHYUNG.

You have said that “if [you] make something beautiful, [you] can do that, but then [you] have to have an element that is unsettling in connection with it.” Would you say that this process for conceptualizing works goes for both your solo project as well as your film scores?

It applies to everything, mostly my own music where I have complete control, but also in film music I believe there’s always a balance between emotions in scenes, something beautiful in the music disrupting and clashing with something unsettling on screen and vice versa.

What sounds, movements, and genres are influencing you right now?

Recently I’ve been listening to the album Fade Into You by Romance. I also really like Hyd’s new album Hold Onto Me Infinity and I’ve been listening to Kate Bush as well. I also have been feeling the sounds of emptyset.

How has your role as a composer evolved?

It’s changed in terms of scope and ambition– I learn new things on every project, people trust me more and I have more resources, but the way I think about composing has stayed the same, trying to create a striking score in creative ways that push my own growth as an artist. 

Can you talk about your approach to composing the soundtrack for Sorry, Baby and Happyend? 

I had similar approaches for both of them in that they are incredible films on their own without music, so I approached both with a very light hand. I think both scores are under 20 minutes of music. They’re both incredibly different films, but I really like working on different types of projects back to back. I rarely want to repeat the same thing.

Who do you think is making important work, sonically or visually?

I have no idea…Downtown Boys just released a new record Public Luxury that I think is important and moving. Juliana Huxtable is a DJ and artist that I think is at the vanguard of queer nightlife in New York, but she has been for a while now.

What do you do when you’re not working on music?

Dancing and cooking.

Your DJ set with June Kuoch for The Lot Radio, Hauntology of War, is a sonic collage of archival footage and contemporary experimental music from East & Southeast Asia. Tell us about the set; I’m particularly interested in how your collaboration with June came about and how you selected the recordings/tracks that were used.

My friend June is currently a PhD student and is partly studying archival sound from the Vietnam War, and after joking about including these sounds in a DJ set we ended up actually planning out a soundscape that mixed these sounds with contemporary club music from the same regions in southeast asia. A lot of the music I pulled from are musicians who have a similar anti-colonial mentality informing their music, so in some ways there’s a direct connection from the legacies of these wars and much of the music we played. June was in charge of sourcing the archival audio and I was selecting the club music.

Can you share a reaction to your work that has lingered with you?

I recently did a DJ set where I took a lot of risks and people ended up really enjoying it; one person told me they felt like I was conducting the crowd, and I think that’s a high compliment that I hope to achieve with all my art, a trust from the people receiving it, that they’re ready to be surprised and challenged and are excited to go where I take them.

Who would you ideally like to collaborate with? What makes for a good collaborator?

I tend to work solo but there’s a loooong list of people I’d love to work with. Arca for one lol. Filmmaker wise, I try to work with auteur directors, or projects with a specific vision and willing to take risks. I don’t know what makes a good collaborator but probably trust.

Do you have any upcoming plans that you want to share with the readers?

Putting the energy out there that my next main record will be a pop record (though little experimental side projects and ambient projects will always be there).

What do you collect?

Just pothos plants, I started with two and have propagated them into 11. I just pruned a few of them and currently have like 20 more at the beginning of propagation.

Interviewed by Seth Nguyen. Artist portrait photographed by Jessica Dunn Rovinelli.