Australian-Taiwanese artist Cait Lin 凱琳 unveils GRADIENTS, a six-track EP that captures the spectrum of her bicultural identity and emotional storytelling. Blending R&B, soul, jazz, and pop, the record paints a genre-defying picture of resilience and renewal — anchored by the empowering focus track 'PEACE & LOVE', an anthem that exudes both softness and strength.
Created between Taiwan and Australia, GRADIENTS reflects Cait Lin’s personal and cultural duality. “Growing up between Taiwan and Australia gave me two sensibilities that show up in my music: Taiwan gave me a softness, a kind of tenderness in how I approach melodies and emotion, and Australia gave me candour — the directness to just say it how it is. GRADIENTS is how those two worlds sound when they meet,” she shares.
Produced by ARIA-nominated Ghanaian-Australian artist Citizen Kay and Taiwanese-American duo Fi-Né, GRADIENTS unfolds like a spectrum of sound and feeling. Each track is tied to a colour — coral symbolising optimism in 'PEACE & LOVE', twilight orange for intimacy in 'Stand Still', deep red tied to urgency in 'Make Time', blue-grey radiating vulnerability in 'fragile love', bright yellow translating to hope in 'Colours in the Sky', and late-night purple haze in 'PLAY THE GAME'. Together, the EP suggests that emotions, like light, exist in shifting shades rather than clear contrasts.
Cait Lin reflects on her idea to symbolise emotions through a visual aspect like colours to humanise the emotions as she says, “The whole EP is about emotional in-betweens. Not black and white, not neat, but all the gradients that make us human,” Cait Lin says. “It’s also very personal; I feel like my life as a mixed Taiwanese-Australian, living between languages and cultures, is itself a gradient. The music became a reflection of that.”
Cait Lin brings a rare global perspective to her artistry. Fluent in both Mandarin and English, she fuses Eastern and Western influences with emotional honesty. Her accolades include top honours at the Taipei and Taichung International Jazz Festival Competitions, and a 2022 Queensland Music Award for '就當家裡 Welcome to the Neighbourhood: Taiwan' with Matt Hsu’s Obscure Orchestra.
Beyond her solo work, Cait Lin is the co-creative director and lead vocalist of ZY THE WAY 中庸, a jazz-poetry collective reimagining classical Chinese verse through modern harmony. She also hosts Razzamajazz and Sweet Talk on ICRT FM100.7, Taiwan’s leading English-language station, and made history as the first female host of the Taichung Jazz Festival.
With GRADIENTS, Cait Lin 凱琳 invites listeners into a world of colour and emotion — one that doesn’t shout, but lingers softly, revealing strength in every shade.
Like what you read? Show our writer some love!
-