The Seoul-to-Sydney duo debut on Car Crash Set.

Fast-rising Australian duo Victoria Kim is everything right about cultural communion in the digital age: Seoul’s Victoria sources K-Pop singles, Sydney’s Justin crafts club constructions, and the pair meet in the middle. After dropping mixes and a track on the Astral Plane’s Heterotopia, the duo will make their debut with Kiko Kicks, featuring vocals from Qween Beat favorite Divoli S’vere and a remix by Melbourne’s Air Max ‘97.

“‘Kiko Kicks’ started as an edit of a [K-Pop boy band] Big Bang song,” Justin explains via Skype. S’vere loved the track, and their collaboration has given Victoria Kim entree to the insular ballroom scene. “It’s such a hard scene to touch and it’s great to see it stretch out a bit,” noting a ball in Hong Kong where the group played alongside Mike Q and Dashaun Wesley (US), Rushmore (UK) and Moslem Priest (Malaysia) as a turning point.

Ballroom made outside of the East Coast vogue scene is often subject to questions of appropriation, and even with the Qween Beat seal of approval, Justin has been careful to “appropriate sensitively and respectfully.” Case in point: rather than using the ubiquitous Masters At Work ‘Ha’ crash, he built his own, sampling an abrasive Chinese cymbal and a 2NE1 song.

“I see Asian pop as the forefront of pop music, inspiring things like PC Music, and dance music from London being the most forward thing in dance music,” he says. “Clash those two worlds together and it becomes something crazy.”

Stream Kiko Kicks below; it’s due out on March 3 on Juno Download and March 17 elsewhere via Car Crash Set. For more Victoria Kim, keep watch for future collaborations with Qween Beat’s Tokyo rep Koppi Mizrahi and a free collection of bootlegs.

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