Today I’d like to explore an album I recorded around 2007 in Wuxi, pronounced /woo’she/ with a high pitched /she/. Below you will see an image with the flat we lived in and the location of the rehearsal room on the other side of the heavily polluted green/black/brown river.
The rehearsal space housed an array of dusty musical instruments, one of my favourite rooms was full of coffin-shaped harps (Guzhengs), but the room I used the most had a huge blue drum kit in it. I recorded the drums with a stereo mic onto minidisk and then used FL studio on a clunky laptop to layer the other sounds.
The other sounds were ambient sounds from the streets, fireworks from Chinese New Year, bicycle horns, and my favourite Chinese instrument the Hulusi (The one that sounds like whining dogs).
Anyway, let’s have a butchers at the tracks.
No recollection: This track mixes my best riot girl drumming experience with classical guitar and my monotone reflections on a resignation to the meaninglessness of repetitive infinity. I think…
Can you not love: Putting those Chinese wind instruments to good use here, this song is basically about insomnia and my techniques for getting to sleep. One is continuous closing of black curtains on the stage of life, the other is watching the Earth move away, which was a bit alarming when I realised I was in China.
Selfless: Instrumental dub track with extensive use of those bicycle horns.
NoTin: Named after the town Wuxi, which means no tin. I sat between two coffin harps (Guzhengs) and messed about. Occasionally, someone would poke their head through the window with a typical expressionless face that made me feel guilty to have a whole room of Guzhengs to myself. Fireworks from Chinese New Year in Wuxi.
NoSky: Drums and guitar inspired my Neu!, that German krautrock band.
TheGreenRiver: Inspired by ‘you’re not listening to this’ from the album NIM, the jangling sound is my guitar layered 20 odd times. The effect could be water-like or like a swarm of wasps depending on how deaf you are.
NotDog: As the title suggests there are no dogs in the recording, only in my stomach after naively mistaking it for chicken in the supermarket. There are far worse things that can end up in your stomach in Wuxi though. This epic track is built around my now sadly broken Hulusi.
LifeItMustBePaidFor: this guitar grating, shuffling snare drum track gradually speeds up as it progresses. Th lyrics reflect on the financial cost of being alive, and the fact that the less well-off sacrifice their existence to support the privileged few.
Hope you enjoyed that. There is also a video for No recollection, entitled The Simple Truth below.
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