Every debut album has a warm-up. For Christian Gates, it was Why Do I Hear Breathing?, the 2023 EP that bridged his run of viral singles and the fuller statement of No Strings Attached.
A body of work, not just a moment
By 2023, Gates had already proven he could make a single land; NUMB had gone viral and would eventually go Gold. The EP was about proving something different: that he could sustain a mood across a project, a collection that hangs together rather than a scattered run of one-offs. That is a real jump. Making one great song and making a cohesive body of work are different skills, and the EP was where he practiced the second one.
The title tells you the tone
“Why Do I Hear Breathing?” is pure Gates, paranoid, a little gothic, unsettling in a way that fits the dark, confessional world he was building as ItsLuxCity. It is horror-movie language pointed at heartbreak, exactly the register his fans came for.
The EP that taught him how to make an album.
The setup for the album
Coming a year before his debut LP, the EP reads in hindsight as a rehearsal for the album’s emotional swings, the same instinct that would later put the hard energy of TOXIC next to the ache of Saying Goodbye. You can hear an artist learning how to sequence feelings, not just write them. See the full discography in the wiki.