#chinese american music

[lovejustforaday]

2023 Year End List - #1

夢之駭客 Dream Hacker - Otay:onii

Main Genres: Post-Industrial, Experimental

A decent sampling of: Neoclassical Darkwave, Electroacoustic, Glitch, Industrial Techno, Drone

Brace yourself, cause from here on out this is mostly just gonna be me fanboying and gushing uncontrollably.

Back in 2021, I had championed the Chinese American singer/songwriter/composer/producer/performance artist Lane Shi Otayonii a.k.a. Otay:onii for her experimental record Ming Ming on that year's roundup, describing her potential to become "one of the greatest producers of the decade". But who is this enigmatic artist?

Lane Shi divides her time and energy between creating and touring with her hardcore noise rock band Elizabeth Colour Wheel, and performing studio black magic with her solo project under the Otay:onii name.

She is also an artist who regularly alternates her base of operations between two worlds, residing at different times in New York City and Shanghai. The duality of her identity as a Chinese American is a narrative thread that appears many times throughout the artist's work, informing some of the thematic elements of her records.

According to a really great interview she did with the YouTuber Heinos, the moniker 'Otayonii' itself is actually a name that was given to the artist when she met a Seneca First Nations man, who asked if he could call her by the name for 'wolf' in his ancestral language. She liked the sound and what it represented, and so decided to own her new given title.

Musically, Otay:onii is primarily a post-industrial project, but Lane Shi regularly incorporates aspects of darkwave, glitch, drone, traditional Chinese music, and electroacoustic music into her work. Her signature sound is equal parts atmospheric, lovecraftian, primordial, playful, and frenetic. She's kinda like if an ancient vengeful demi-god reemerged from the bowels of the Earth, and learned how to download and play around with studio software on a laptop.

As a vocalist, Lane Shi possesses a contralto range, and falls under one of my favourite niche categories of woman singers I like to call "force-of-nature belters", along with the likes of Tanya Tagaq and Björk. She has a trademark lower register that I would describe as a witch's snarl, a gentler middle register, as well as a higher register that she usually reserves for piercing battle cries and wailing like a banshee.

Her 2018 debut Nag was a comparatively more minimalist, grayscale undertaking, heavy on the more ambient and gothic tones of her sound. A genuinely solid first effort, if a bit less memorable than later records, barring the deliciously dreary eponymous song which is still among her very best.

2021's Ming Ming was an upgrade in all respects. Pulling major influences from Chinese folk music and folklore, I described the record in my previous Otay:onii review as a "true Pandora's Box . . . like the story of a mortal who attempts to enter the realm of the gods". Lots of ominous industrial cyber-magic, with a rare few moments that could have perhaps been edited down or omitted altogether to increase the force of its impact.

So, what to make of her latest then?

Dream Hacker is an exorcism. An inferno of ancient eternal flames envelops this absolutely bonkers and surreal listening experience. Each song carries powerful buildups in intensity combined with impossibly elegant structural competence. Far and away one of the most visceral and transcendent records I have ever beheld. This gets into your bloodstream, like an innate, raw instinct towards entropy.

Otay:onii's work has never sounded quite this immediate, energetic, and dynamic, thanks to the incorporation of avant-garde industrial techno beats that gives the whole project a mighty propulsion. Even during its quieter moments, you as the listener are never far from being engulfed in its unruly fire and brimstone. So many little leftfield moments that made me audibly go "what the fuck?" upon my first listen, too.

To me, this is album of the year not just because it poses the best collection of songs from an artist in 2023 (which, to be clear, it does), but also because it forms the most cohesive and fully realized project of the year. Every moment of this record feels intentional, meticulously crafted, and designed to fit accordingly into a larger entity. This is almost a living, breathing organism unto itself.

Lane Shi described how much of the inspiration for Dream Hacker came to her in a dream, or as she sees it, an "astral projection". Within this dream, she says she witnessed stones being thrown by a child until two of them overlapped, followed by a great light which emerged from the center of the overlap. The imagery was profound enough that she ended up naming most of the tracks after different aspects of what she saw in the dream.

The album starts with humble beginnings. "You Do/Rub" is a two-parter, opening with the haunting, softly swirling piano ballad melancholy of "You Do". The lyrics are deeply cutting and vulnerable, as the artist ponders her shaky relationship with her father as a daughter of the generation where China had implemented the one child policy, breeding stigma against female offspring in the more conservative rural communities. Lane Shi wields her voice like a delicate blade, gracefully and artfully interrogating her father's worldview. The progression of the piano's melody suggests a kind of resolution in ambiguity, resisting rigid, narrow-minded answers to multidimensional questions.

Then quite abruptly, "Rub" completely overtakes and drowns out the serenity of the softer piano song, like a sudden onset computer virus infection. What becomes of this part two is honestly one of the most immaculate timbral frequencies I've ever heard. A glitchy, droning wall of madness forms in dark, ominous, tempestuous clouds all across the sky. Warm colours are sucked out of existence by a black hole, leaving only greyish pale blues. The soul is washed with abrasion until all that's left is the ability to observe. Sound design on this is fucking unreal, as though Lane Shi Otayonii is wiping clean of our universe, leaving only a empty slate to form the basis for her own new sonic domain, wherein she is god of all things.

"Light Burst" is the combustion spark of a rebirth of all things that comes immediately after. Lane Shi let's out a shrill cry of tremendous power and agony amidst the grinding dust and debris of an incredibly dense and intricate industrial techno concoction, built upon her long standing love affair with minor second chord progressions. This track does not relent, adding more and more layers to its already colossal tower of babel proportions until, just as suddenly as it came into existence, it vanishes without a trace of detection.

"Two Rocks A Bird" oscillates like an electron creating new electromagnetic waves. Sound particles split into atoms that dance in a mindless frenzy. Even as a regular Arca fan, I don't think I was ready to comprehend something like this the first time I heard it. Subverted all of my expectations. I think the artist may have invented a few completely new sound textures on this track. A highly reactive new form of industrial music.

After deliberating with all of the sheer fucking brilliance to be found on this project, I eventually concluded that "Overlap" was my favourite off of the record. Like the best song on her last LP "Blackheart Breakables", this is an epic midpoint that just continues to build and build, feeding endlessly like a malignant being that cannot be stopped. Hand drum beat patterns are mutated, modulated, and mutilated by industrial electroacoustic mechanisms, while a synthesized flute echos a most forlorn and sinister melody.

Lane Shi takes on the shape of a skillful pyromancer, testing her newfound powers by conjuring a sea of flames that I visualize with my mind's eye as something similar to the Darvaza Gas Crater. Alternatively, I imagine thousand year old stains of bloodshed on the tombs of a ransacked temple, or the ancient terracotta soldiers of Qin Shi Huang's mausoleum brought to life for the purpose of ushering a new war. "Overlap" is just something else, man. My other pick for song of the year.

"Ritualware" opens with a rare calm, dreams swirling on the outskirts of a newborn world that has not reached its zenith. The spacious void bursts to life with a single, literal drop (another brilliant production choice), creating ripples in space-time that give way to a trumpeting sawtooth synths' cacophonous symphony.

"Good Fool" brings things to a stirringly harmonious denouement. The light of the last candle is blown out, and a creeping dusk sets in. Petals of sound float along the wind and promptly dissipate, as everything reaches an uncanny stillness. A hushed, rapid-fire breakdown of bass drums, hand drums, and gongs occurs as the final closing act of the record.

I know I've already said this like a dozen times before about a dozen different artists, but it really needs to be said here - more people should know about Otay:onii. No one I've discovered has been doing anything as consistently exciting, challenging, and infectious as this project in the last few years. As it stands right now, the artist is criminally unknown and criminally underappreciated.

Dream Hacker is the rare ambitious record that dares to be so challenging and not only lives up to all of its potential, but manages to make the old formula of doing things look incredibly obsolete by comparison. Not many avant-garde music albums are this ridiculously fun to listen to, let alone manage to capture sonic worlds that are this truly sublime.

I've probably listened to this at least 40 times in the last year, and I plan on at least doubling that number in the following year. This is not just my album of the year; it is my top album of the 2020s as a decade so far, and already one of my favourites of all time. This record sets my soul ablaze and I simply can't get enough of it. Otay:onii is my new religion, and Dream Hacker is the scripture.

10/10

Highlights: "Overlap", "You Do/Rub", "Light Burst", "Two Rocks A Bird", "Ritualware", "Good Fool"

[paw-padss]

childe headcannons bc he NEEDS a solo post :p

super corny, like straight out a romcom corny. not to mention flirtatious like some sort of teen movie love interest

surfer boy vibes, like the hot lifegaurd you see at the beach. sandy but not literally and dare I say tan... am I allowed to say childe has a tan

i know I said childe was bad at baking during the valentines post but lets be realistic all his sibling experience definitely made him a good baker, or just good at all household activities in general. cooking, cleaning, like he can definitely do it all

he loves animals, mostly because they remind them of his siblings when he's away from home. I can just imagine him begging you to keep a pet in the house when y'all move in together.

and he loves ALL animals like not even just like cats and rabbits and the cute ones like he even thinks snakes and moths and other "unattractive" animals are cute. and the animals would definitely love him back

back to him being good at house work he's so acts of service like Imagine him making you a healthy lunch, cleaning the house when your tired, cooking you meals he just does it all

the one thing childe cannot do however is be smooth like I know I already said he's corny but I MUST emphasize it like its crazy how cliche and cringy he is, but you don't even hate it like its funny y'all laugh together because like what is childe if not very silly

is it crazy to say that I think Childe's lack of a childhood would definitely make him really affectionate in a relationship. like imagine PHYSICAL. TOUCH. CHILDE. constantly running around trying to find you so he can slide his arms around you, hold your hand, give you kisses, etc!!!

[frommybedroom]

so i’m thinking about japanese american paul holden, and how his mom performs kashin on him (also known as gua sha in chinese medicine, aka that scraping that all the beauty influencers on tiktok do now but has deep roots in asian culture). i imagine the first time darry saw it he was freaked out because the skin can get pretty red if you’re holding in a lot of tension, but then paul explained to him that it doesn’t hurt, convinced darry to let him try it, and afterwards it was the first time darry felt completely relaxed.

and years later, after the curtis parents have died and darry and paul have drifted apart, he comes home, sits at the table, and rubs his shoulders, thinking about how much he would like paul to perform kashin on him again before forcing himself up cuz someone has to make dinner for soda and pony.

[melliotwrites]

Ghost Story: a new musical is up on YouTube!

Two love stories between Chinese American and Polish American men haunt the same Montana ranch house — one century apart. As past and present intertwine, the lovers confront long-held fears in their quest to determine if they love one another for the right reasons.

GHOST STORY is a new musical exploring queer interethnic intimacies between working-class immigrants in the early Mountain West, as well as the complicated racial past of modern gay relationships. Through a story about love, culture, and identity, the show asks: In making meaning from the overwhelming tragedies of queer history, how do we balance seeking truth and beauty?

This presentation includes mature language and some mature themes. Stream our live cast album here on Spotify (and look up Ghost Story Melliot on other streaming services to find it!)

[quotidianish]

More antics of the blu mercs! Didn’t expect such a warm reception to these silly little headcanons at first, and I’m working up the motivation to finish the rest of the team (failing)

some sillies..

[harocat]

unfortunately parasocial of me but, after the awards show I really don’t think Dylan and Esther are on speaking terms (at least rn). Esther’s interacted with all her costars irl or online (Zhang binbin), except Dylan (and xu Kai, but that makes sense since their show wasn’t big), and Dylan didn’t even crack a smile when ding yuxi & Esther were on stage. Apparently he even made a bit of a fool of himself by releasing a rap song talking himself up before dafeng aired

I think we have no way of knowing what kind of relationship they have out of the spotlight. Obviously not romantic, but as to if they are still friends or not, no idea.

I'd caution against comparing him to her other costars because the fandom around 'Dixin' was not remotely normal. It ended up hugely messy with fan lawsuits thrown to and fro, and even to this day Esther and Dylan have had to file harassment lawsuits against specific antis that are fans of the other. Because LBFAD was SO popular, and the ship fandom became SO huge, it ended up very nasty. It would be hard to blame them if their relationship was strained now because of that. Sad though, if so. Although it's none of our business, the idea of a close friendship being damaged by the toxicity of fans who can't chill out is frustrating.

There are a couple other situations where pairs won't even acknowledge each other in public because of how vitriolic it got, and how even just a glance in the other's direction, positive or negative, would create a storm of nonsense; Zhao Lusi and Wu Lei, and of course, the most famous of all Xiao Zhan and Wang Yibo. Again we have no idea what their relationships are like outside of work.

Take in point this situation- I've seen WHD solo after WHD solo go on about how 'cringy' and 'fake' Esther and Yuxi were because they and their castmates dared to show genuine emotion around each other. Very weird, irony-poisoned takes. Dylan and Esther didn't even have to have any interaction, positive or negative, for people to get mad.

Compare this to something like the Ding Yuxi and Esther Yu fans, where the two fandoms seem to get along well, and any negativity between the two fanbases is snuffed out pretty quickly.

I wouldn't read anything positive or negative into Dylan last night. He was at the event on no sleep, and was even almost dozing off at times. He was non-reactive during most of the show, even when people directly spoke to him. He literally had to fly from Macau to Hengdian after the show to start filming again at 7 am the next morning. The schedules some of these traffic stars have are crazy (and frankly very exploitative).

[theneurodivergentfox]

People: TikTokkers going to Xiaohongshu are just replacing one brain rot app with another 😡😡😡

Me: *looks up from the six minute video of an auntie making a tea pot from scratch* 什么？

[underachievers-please-try-harder]

Track of the day // Chinese American Bear - Kids Go Down (孩子们的时光)

[rwpohl]

die another day, madonna, american life 2003

[michelle3355]

Let’s boil some lobster 🦞 😍

[movietonight]

Okay so in mash they often play Japanese covers of American songs right? This was a super common thing in Japan at the same, genres like enka and kayōkyoku were mixing traditional Japanese music with Jazz, Latin and Country music, often covering songs in a mix of Japanese and English or Spanish (occasionally there is a bit of German).

Except China was doing the same thing with shídàiqǔ music (Jyut Jyu Si Doi Kuk in Cantonese, apparently). Obviously China was considered the enemy but we know that half the unit doesn't care about Cold War politics and they often deal with the black market.

What I am suggesting is that they should have gotten some Chinese records to listen to. And because continuity is often ignored on the show anyway it should have been specifically this cover from the opera Carmen.

[pronouncingitwang]

.

[importantwomensbirthdays]

Kate Liu

Classical pianist Kate Liu was born in Singapore in 1994. At the 17th International Chopin Competition, Liu won the Bronze Medal and the Best Mazurka Prize. She has performed at venues throughout the world including Shanghai Concert Hall, the Kennedy Center, and the Seoul Arts Center. Liu made her orchestral debut at the age of 16 with the Cleveland Orchestra, and has since performed with orchestras such as the Polish Radio Orchestra and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra.

[not-your-asian-fantasy]

10/3/23

[teenagefeeling]

watching some videos of & about peking opera on youtube and feeling some ways about my music education

[springcatalyst]

flatmate was playing adele in the kitchen and was like here play me ur favorite song and i said ok. and turned on permanent rebellion