CHINESE VERSION 去年九月，當Organ Tapes在Hackney Wick的Colour Factory表演時，他在自己的歌之間插播了一首破碎失真的《春天裡》，這是中國搖滾音樂人汪峰知名度最高的歌之一。我站在觀眾之間，在那個瞬間彷佛被揍了一拳—這首歌不是單純為我帶來了回憶，而是提醒著我自己確實擁有這樣的回憶。非常稀有的一個瞬間。那個時候算起來我已經到英國兩年了，因為疫情的緣故一次都沒有見過我的家人，而Organ Tapes也處在類似的境況中。就在那個瞬間，我意識到這樣一首我從未出於想要聽而聽的歌，實際上是我熟悉的一部分。上一次這樣的事情發生在我身上，是四年前，我在MoMA的影院裡看米開朗基羅·安東尼奧尼的紀錄片《中國》。裡面有一幕拍的是在南京市的十幾個小孩邊唱著《我們是共產主義接班人》—一首很多在中國長大的人都要在小學學唱的歌—邊齊步行進在街道上。我當時昏昏欲睡，但在聽到歌唱聲的瞬間立刻醒來。我望向我的朋友，目瞪口呆—這首歌在我的回憶裡埋藏得如此之深，在離家幾千裡外聽到的時候，我才認識到自己對這首歌熟稔於心。似乎只有當這些聲音被放置于另外的時空中，不再是集體環境聲中的一部分時，它們才成為了我固有的一部分，不管我是否想要承認。
Organ Tapes今年新專輯發行前，我終於採訪到他。他的音樂對我來說一直都是跟鄉愁聯繫起來的，而當我困在此時此地看著家那邊發生的事情，聽著他的新專輯，這種感覺愈發強烈了。2017年，因上海線上音樂平台WOOOZY無解音樂網的介紹，我初次接觸到他的EP， Words Fall to the Ground；幾年間我零零星星地聽了他的其他音樂，但是不知為何直到來了倫敦我才知道他也用中文唱歌。去年8月，DJ Pitch 和 Organ Tapes 在 Edited Arts 的活動末尾表演了『K1. 不明白』，這首歌出自2015年發行的Tobago Tracks Volume 4: China 。在幾乎可說是狂熱的如機關槍/打字機一樣的層層打擊樂之上，是充滿感情，讓人難以忘懷的抓耳旋律。Organ Tapes用中文重複唱道，『我就在這一直唱』—Organ Tapes一直在唱，唱著那無人問津的歌謠。
Sonic Youth, Harry Pussy的Bill Orcutt, Duster, Loren Connors, Jimi Hendrix, The Durutti Column的Vini Reilly。很多的藍調結他，因為我的結他老師是個藍調迷，還有帶噪音的音樂，裡面的結他聽起來像別的東西。
When Organ Tapes performed at Hackney Wick’s Colour Factory last September, he played a chopped up, distorted version of ‘Chun Tian Li (In Spring)’, one of the most well-known songs by the Chinese rock musician Wang Feng, between his own songs. I stood watching and it was one of those rare moments when something didn’t simply ‘bring back’ to me the memories but punched me in the face and reminded me that I HAVE such memories. Having been in the UK for around two years by that time without seeing my family in China once due to the pandemic, similar situation Organ Tapes was in, it was at that moment I realized a song I never really listened to out of want was a familiar part of me. Last time such thing happened to me was four years ago, I sat in the cinema of MoMA watching Michelangelo Antonioni’s documentary film Chung Kuo—Cina(China). There was a scene where around a dozen of children in the city of Nanjing marched down a street while singing ‘Wo Men Shi Gong Chan Zhu Yi Jie Ban Ren (We are the Successors of Communism)’, a song that a lot of people grew up in China needed to learn in primary school. I was on the brink of falling asleep but sobered up immediately upon hearing the singing. I turned to my friend, dumbfounded—this song was buried so deep in my memories that I only registered I knew this song by heart when I heard it thousands of miles away from home. It seems as though when these sounds were displaced and no longer part of the collective environmental sounds that they became intrinsic to me, whether I’d like to admit it or not.
Prior to Organ Tape’s album release this year, I did an interview with him at last. To me, Organ Tapes’ music has always been associated with nostalgia, and it becomes more so as I listen to his new album, while watching what’s going on at home stuck in this time and space. I first became aware of his EP Words Fall to Ground in 2017, thanks to the introduction by the Shanghai-based online music publication WOOOZY. I then sporadically listened to his other music over the years but somehow didn’t know that he sings in Chinese until I came to London. In August last year, DJ Pitch and Organ Tapes performed ‘K1. 不明白’ from the 2015 release Tobago Tracks Volume 4: China at the end of the Edited Arts event. It’s a song with hauntingly catchy and emotional melody against the almost delirious layers of machine gun/typewriter-like percussion sounds. Organ Tapes sang repeatedly in Chinese, ‘Wo jiu zai zhe yi zhi chang (I keep singing here)’: Organ Tapes keeps singing, singing songs that no one asks about, chang zhe na wu ren wen jin de ge yao.
Interview by Anlin Liang
I don’t think you mind other people saying that your music sounds like certain artists?
I don’t mind, no, because people inevitably say that. That’s what people do about music, don’t they?
I’m gonna say it—one of the reasons why I like your new album is because I can pick up a lot of sounds from my memories while listening to it. Songs like ‘Line (with Glasear)’ and ‘忘了一切 (with Munni)’ have that particular hi-hat sound that remind me of slowcore bands like Arab Strap, Bedhead and Codeine—not any of their songs in particular though.
Yeah, I love that kind of music for sure. I think a lot of music I made when I was a lot younger sounded a lot like those kind of bands, not exactly, but in a way. I’ll tell you that one band I used to try and copy when I was younger is Duster. There’s a song I put out on Bandcamp recently from when I was 19 or something. I made it with my friend Deva. I think it was pretty much I wanted to make a song that was similar to Duster but that’s not normally the way I make music.
Were you in a band? Or do you always make music on your own?
I’ve been in bands in my life, but never for that long. I played in a hardcore band in uni with noctilucents who now co-runs Genome 6.66Mbp and we did one awesome gig. He was the singer. It was really sick but with only one gig and short lived.
What is your new album about?
These are the songs that I made during late 2019, some of them even earlier, and then 2020. Songs that I made in that period mostly, and then eventually I felt they were an album. It’s hard for me to say what it’s about because I just think that they speak better for themselves than any explanation of what they’re about that I can give.
I can’t really hear a lot of lyrics in your songs, I know you do it sort of on purpose with your way of singing…
It’s not really on purpose anymore to be honest. That’s just naturally how I feel inclined to sing. But when I listen to it I can hear most of what I’m saying, and I think certain people I know hear my music a lot clearer lyrically now, maybe. I think the lyrics are fairly discernible in a lot of this album, but maybe people won’t necessarily agree.
I do know what you sing in ‘Li Bu Kai’ though—‘Sheng ming jiu xiang yi tiao da he (Life is like a river)’.
‘Li Bu Kai’ is probably quite hard to understand, or the other bits are at least. I would definitely more overtly slur my vocals back then out of shyness. The lyrics you quoted are from Wang Feng’s ‘Fei De Geng Gao (Fly Higher)’.
You like Wang Feng?
I do like Wang Feng a lot, yeah.
Talking about Wang Feng, the title of the album Chang Zhe Na Wu Ren Wen Jin De Ge Yao is a line from Wang Feng’s ‘Chun Tian Li’. What do you feel about this song?
I think this song is a masterpiece, it’s a really really good song.
I know my parents like this song, but I can’t seem to like it. It’s their generation’s music I think.
My dad would probably view it as young people’s music still!
Wang Feng sings about the time when he had nothing and was all alone and no one knew his music, but he sings it as a man who’s made it. So I think it resonates with the generation that experienced that social mobility. I believe a lot of people my age, who are in their early twenties, indeed like this song, but I just don’t see this song as cool.
Yeah that’s an interesting perspective on it. I understand his place in culture as something akin to U2 in the UK, ha. I understand that, I nevertheless still like it.
Why does that line specifically stand out to you?
I think it’s just talking about music in a way. He’s talking about the relationship that he used to have to his music, about doing it for its own sake. And I think it resonates. Not in a nostalgic sense even, just in a sense of being a pure and nice sentiment that speaks to what music means, or what its significance is, at heart. It’s not really about my personal relation to the narrative of the song by any means, in the sense that the narrator has ‘made it’ and looks back on his ‘simpler’ pre-fame life. But ‘Chun Tian Li’ has a sentimental value to me as a song that I heard a lot when I was a kid as well, in supermarkets or on TV. It’s a song from youth, so in that sense it’s nostalgic, but not in the sense of me relating to the specific nostalgia of the song’s narrator.
Have you listened to a lot of Wang Feng’s music?
I have gone through a bunch of his music and picked out the songs that I like. There are certain songs I remember when I was young that I liked, or not even necessarily liked back then. But they’re familiar to me, and now they’ve accrued meaning in time.
Would you agree this album is a transition from your previous music with more Dancehall, Afrobeat, and Soundcloud Rap elements to one with a more Rock aesthetic?
People might perceive it as such, but this is more like the music that I used to make when I was 17. I grew up playing guitar and I’ve really gotten back into the act of playing itself in a way I’d neglected in the past few years. So it doesn’t really feel like something new in a way. I just make what I feel like making at any given time, I suppose. I don’t agree that my output thus far can be described accurately as Dancehall/Afrobeat or ‘Soundcloud Rap’ either, really, all the attachment of those terms to my work was usually just for marketing purposes when journalists had to write about it, or else they were pinned onto me by association. I still get people writing or coming up to me as if I’m either a club producer or a ‘vocalist-for-hire’ Soundcloud Hyperpop rapper type or something because I came up in that scene, and I don’t really understand it. I think you have to have ignored or missed a lot of what I’ve made to arrive at that conclusion. I don’t agree with it, in the same way that I don’t want to present this as ‘my rock album’ because I’ve picked up the guitar again. I don’t really want my album to be instantly digestible in that way and I’d rather let it speak for itself.
There’s a song on this album, ‘Never Heard’, I find it very interesting with the clear bass and vocal and the guitar instrumental that’s supposedly a field recording?
Yeah, the guitar is a field recording, and then edited and looped. That’s why it sounds so fucked up. DAWs are cool but the richness of ‘real’ sound is unmatched.
The Microphones has a song called ‘Sand’, where one of the instruments sound quite blurry, it’s probably a field recording of that instrument as well.
In general, the way that he records music had really influenced me when I was a kid. That was the kind of approach that I tried to mimic when I started recording music for the first time. A lot of his stuff would have interesting ways of layering different instruments or panning things. He has a kind of approach to production that’s not really following…especially now because I know there are YouTube tutorials and the template for an industry standard way of producing music widely available, but I’d rather develop my own practice through different forms of DIY experimentation with the recording process.
I’ve never really sat down and learned recording techniques or software through tutorials, I just make stuff. But when I first started making stuff and experimenting with making music, I would literally try and do what he did with the panning of guitars, like hard panning two different guitar tracks each side. And also hitting the lamp in my room with a drum stick and recording that and then hitting a pillow and recording that, and then panning them and EQing in different ways to have percussive sounds. Not that he was making music exactly like that, but that was the beginning of me learning how to record music and then I just kept a similar approach. I don’t really ever watch any tutorial videos because I don’t care to really learn music production that way most of the time.
‘I know there are YouTube tutorials and the template for an industry standard way of producing music widely available, but I’d rather develop my own practice through different forms of DIY experimentation with the recording process.’
Who are your guitar heroes, apart from Phil Elverum?
Sonic Youth, Bill Orcutt of Harry Pussy, Duster, Loren Connors, Jimi Hendrix, Vini Reilly of The Durutti Column. Lots of blues rock guitar playing because my guitar teacher was a blues head, and noisy stuff in which the guitar sounds like something else.
When I was listening to your new album I indeed thought of The Durutti Column as well—I think he used the pop song framework but made it a bit off a lot of the times.
I’m perfectly happy to be compared to him because I love The Durutti Column. I guess I understand what you mean though—I think I can relate to the way his music sounds and the way elements are put together, not so much the melodies and chords, but the sounds he uses and certain compositional sensibilities.
We talked about you sampling sounds in the film Xiao Wu in your song ‘Li Bu Kai’ before*; have you done more cinema sampling in this album?
The introduction is a sample from a documentary, but most of the samples on this album like recording sounds, environmental sounds are things I recorded – some of them are really old recordings from like 2013-2015.
Do sounds in cinema influence the way you make your music?
I sampled Xiao Wu because of how much I love the sound in that film. The sound was really, really well done. It’s almost like you could listen to the audio track and still think it was good. And I do appreciate the sound design of films if it’s all good.
I never thought of cinema influence like that consciously, but now that you mentioned it, there is definitely a parallel. Anytime you hear music in a film, there’s the diegetic and non-diegetic sound at once commingling, which is something that perhaps you don’t get in recorded music all the time, but I think that a lot of my music likes to do that. So maybe it’s subconsciously influential.
Organ Tapes / Photo by Tom Love
Organ Tapes’ LP 唱着那无人问津的歌谣 (Chang Zhe Na Wu Ren Wen Jin De Ge Yao) is out on 28th April 2022 via worldwide unlimited, buy/listen.
*The ending of the song contains a sample from Xiao Wu—it’s actually an exchange from another film that the protagonist went to see.
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CHINESE VERSION 語言是Nicky Mao (毛恩馨) 談論音樂時常出現的主題。她在紐約學習創意寫作，但最終以Hiro Kone的名義憑藉音樂建立起自己的語言。從幼小時期開始，她就和音樂建立起深厚的連繫，不只因為她小時學過音樂—她的很多回憶都依附於某些家庭事件發生時，所播放的音樂；作為獨生小孩，她的孤單體驗也加深了她和音樂的聯繫。然而，直至在多年以後，她才發現，在自己感興趣的事情之中—包括寫作—音樂才是最自然的，最吸引她的東西。音樂才是她註定用於溝通的語言。
在疫情下，空間成了Nicky思考的非常重要的問題。她思考音樂所存在的空間：封城期間，空間的缺失使她沒法說服自己做線上直播表演—『（在現場演出時）空間裡的聲音，聲音的震盪和混響，這些東西全都非常重要。』但也不止是物理空間。Nicky留意到這股把全套生活搬到線上的勢頭，她卻選擇後退一步進行觀察，而非欣然地加入這場派對。她對資本主義，科技法西斯主義，對不斷取得「進步」的科技與及許多人糟糕的物質條件所形成的極端反差…關於這些事情的思考（而其中的很多她在疫情前已有進行探索），最終匯合成了『拒絕填充空間的衝動』這一直覺指引。在這條指引下，她寫出了第四張全長專輯，Silvercoat the throng。我跟Nicky聊了無常、寂靜、陰影和空間—這些事情大多指向我們所缺乏，而且在主動逃避的一種空虛。
你有看過紀錄片Summer of Soul嗎？這部影片紀錄的是1969年發生的哈萊姆文化節，同年還有人類歷史上的第一次登月。觀眾裡的一位黑人男性被採訪者問到他對此事件的看法。他說的大概是那些錢本該可以用來解決貧窮問題，住房問題等等。最近媒體不是在說現在沒人關心億萬富翁的太空競賽嗎，但我看到那個採訪我才意識到，這樣的感想其實並不是最近才產生的。
Hiro Kone 於Dais Records推出的第四張全長專輯 Silvercoat the throng 現已推出，連結收聽。
ENGLISH VERSION Language is a recurring theme when Nicky Mao talks about music. She studied Creative Writing in New York, but eventually came to build her language through music, under the alias Hiro Kone. She had a strong connection with music since she was very young, but not just because she played it as a kid—a lot of her memories are attached to songs her family were playing when something happened; the solitariness she experienced growing up as an only child also deepened her engagement with music. It took her years, however, before she discovered that out of everything she had been interested in, including writing, that music most appealed to her and made sense for her. Music was the language she was meant to use for communication.
Actual words could be intense and permanent, and Nicky knows that. “Even though I went to school for writing and even though I studied it, I saw how words are so extremely powerful. I have so much admiration for writers but music just felt more like a comfortable place for me to express myself…because I’m interested in language outside of words, I’m interested in like the space between words, I’m interested in silence, I’m interested in the things that we don’t say as much as the things we do say, or why we repeat certain things.” Things Nicky is interested in exist within sounds, and she could achieve them with sounds, in her own way.
Sculpture is another constant reference point—music doesn’t just sonically appeal to her, it’s also physical and visual. Shapes, texture, colour, objects…these things also exist in music for her; music is matte, or shiny, or porous.
Growing up playing string instruments—the violin as a kid and the guitar in a punk band as a teenager, she now works mostly with modular synths. It’s a time consuming process to work this way. “I don’t always know the shape, it takes time for me to see what that ecosystem is going to be like,” Nicky says. She would start with sketching one long piece on the modular, and then start to chisel this piece of material, add stuff, take away stuff—mostly take away stuff—and start to give it its definition. “That takes time for me to do that, and to sit with it and know what direction I want to go with that.”
During the pandemic, space has also become an increasingly important topic that Nicky dwells on. On the space that music exists in: she couldn’t bring herself to do livestream performance in lockdown due to the absence of space—“The sound within that space (when playing music live) and the vibration and the reverb and all those things are extremely important.” But also beyond that physical space. Alerted to this momentum of moving our life online, Nicky took a step back and observed rather than joining the party unquestioningly. Her reflection on capitalism, techno-facism, the polarity between the rapid “progress” made in technology and the dire material reality of many people, a lot of which she had explored even pre-pandemic, culminated into the intuitive directive “resist the urge to fill the space”, under which she wrote her 4th full-length album, Silvercoat the throng. I talked to Nicky about the transience, silence, shadow and space—most of these things point to a void that we most likely lack and actively seek refuge from.
Interview by Anlin Liang
For me, when I listen to your music, I see something more cinematic. Someone else might have written that your music could be used to soundtrack Jorodowsky’s version of Dune.
Yeah a lot of people think of science fiction, which is totally fine. I think of more…one of the directors I really like, Jia Zhangke. That slow cinema he does, that to me is what I feel like. I love his work. He uses music in interesting ways, too.
What’s your favourite film of his?
I love Ash is Purest White, which is a more recent one. And recently I saw Still Life, which is really good too. I’m reading a quite long interview with him right now in a book my friend published, it’s really interesting. I admire him so much. And I like Bi Gan. And then Tsai Ming-liang. So this probably gives you a sense of some of the visual aspects I am drawn to.
How do you relate to their films?
If you live between worlds in a way, say, you’re a child of immigrant, for instance, like myself, who came here, there’s always this feeling of longing and transience. Because I went back and forth between Asia and the US, there’s this feeling of existing somewhere between both worlds. There’s a recognizable ecosystem to Jia Zhangke’s films, that centers a lot around the displacement or the migration of people. People within different regions of China moving to different places for different reasons, and the destabilization and things that happen as a result of this. It’s of course very different than my personal experience, but there are certain tones and emotions that feel familiar and help me understand the world around me better. There’s something striking and interesting to see these things reflected through those films—the expression of what that transience feels like, and how there’re different forms of it: some of it is just outright displacement and erasure, and it can be really negative and sad. At other times it can feel very touching and comforting as people find ways in which to relate to one another.
Do you feel like a nomad?
There’s a quality to my work and to who I am that feels very nomadic and feels like a hybrid—never quite felt like at home here, never quite felt at home there. However, often I think to myself when I’m in motion, “How at home I feel.”
What’s your relationship with Hong Kong like?
It’s strange but I get really homesick for the city, though in a way I’m always a bit of an outsider because I was never a permanent resident. But I know it in this really deep way because I spent so much time alone there, exploring the city. I feel as though my senses are heightened when I’m there. The humidity, the colors, the smell, all of it is really easy for me to visualize, even when I’ve been away for a long time. I remember when I was a teenager and discovered Wong Kar Wai it felt so exhilarating to see the city projected on the screen like that. I didn’t have any way of sharing with my friends in California this other city I knew and loved, so the sudden proliferation and popularity of his films with western audiences was kind of exciting for me.
I always want more time in Hong Kong. I miss it quite a lot, more so than I do California. Maybe there’s something about the coming and going, the absence of it that makes it more special to me. It’s a huge part of who I am, yet it remains a mystery I think to the people in my life here in the US who have never been. There are awkward moments where I feel really cognizant of how out of step I feel with certain aspects of American culture. It meant a lot to me when Gavin from HKCR reached out to ask me to be a resident last year. It felt a little like being recognized in some way, the past saying, “You belong here, too.”
Have you been to Hong Kong at all?
Yeah, I lived quite near there for my entire life.
Do you like it? Do you feel a connection to it?
Every time I went there I would stay with a cousin who live in a subdivided unit. She was a restaurant worker. So I know what it’s like if you don’t have much living in that city.
The disparity in wealth in Hong Kong has to be one of the worst in the world, it really is a city that caters to a class system which echos it’s British colonialist roots.
I want to ask about your new album. It’s created during the pandemic and it comes from this idea “resist the urge to fill the space”. I could very straightforwardly relate it to a frustration a lot of people—at least people who don’t have to work the low paying “essential” jobs— have expressed during the massive lockdown: now we have all the time, what are we gonna do? But could you tell me where the idea comes from?
I think…If we don’t step back and observe the direction we are taking, how are we going to really know what steps need to be taken. This idea that I’m expressing was really heightened during the pandemic. There was a rush to move everything online. A lot of my works talk about capitalism—there was a rush because of the way that the machineries working to keep it going and there was a lot of promoting of that behaviour to move everything online: zoom calls, our exercise routines, education, everything. I’m not saying that all of this is necessarily bad. I also understand why people need contact with one another, and why people felt the propulsion towards this. But I just want also to take a step back and think about what that means though—what we are giving these companies, what information of ourselves more we are giving freely over to what I believe we have to be really wary of. Also what does this constant productivity keep us from learning about ourselves and the world around us.
I think that we are under threat of techno-fascism, and I think that is something we don’t talk about enough, and we don’t talk about how deeply embedded that is into all of this. We have governments who are now beholden to these technological companies—one can just see the tax breaks to understand how in bed Government is with Big Tech. And the more that we consumers become dependent on the technology, the more influence they have in control over our lives so…it feels like a concern about the fact that we were so quick to just accept this and move it all on to online. It’s like the perfect storm for them. They love it! That was one thing. There are a lot of things I think that fit into that whole idea of not wanting to fill the space that we suddenly had in our lives, to maybe consider other modes of existence, other modes of collaboration and working together.
It’s a correlation with other albums and things that I’ve been talking about in the past with my work, like the previous album A Fossil Begins to Bray. A lot of these ideas are sort of in continuation. Progress without thinking about what we’re progressing towards is not what I’m personally after. Or it’s just like feeding this machine when I feel like we have an opportunity to maybe reimagine things.
“I think that we are under threat of techno-fascism, and I think that is something we don’t talk about enough, and we don’t talk about how deeply embedded that is into all of this.”
We need to rethink what progress means—is progress necessarily “good”?
Yes. People get really enamoured with progress. I guess that’s part of why I love Zhangke’s films too, going back to that. I’m interested in the effects of that trickle down, the effects of this type of thinking—what progress is. It has real life effects on people. I’m interested in that and interested in how to fight that, or how we can respond to that, and say “no”.
Have you seen Summer of Soul, the documentary? It was about Harlem Cultural Festival that happened in 1969, the same year when the first moon landing in human history happened. A black man in the audience was interviewed and he was asked what he thought of this event. He basically said all that money could have been used to fix poverty and housing problem and such. You know the media is talking about how no one is enthusiastic about all this billionaires space race recently, but when I saw that interview in the film I realized it was not a novel sentiment.
You know what I’m thinking about and really illustrated that. I’m interested in real transformation, and not just progress for the sake of progress. It’s a very Western idea, which has been indoctrinated everywhere. Do you know the philosopher Byung Chul-han?
Yes I heard of him.
He says the same, and I’ve said it before, too. Everyone’s on the screen all the time, it’s like the light doesn’t break. So if the light doesn’t break, we don’t see the shadows. I think we need to be able to see the shadows, in order to see the definition of the things that we need to consider and think about. And so if we’re just living constantly in the positive, this transparent screen constantly, we can’t see what’s behind it. It’s just something I think a lot about, and our perceptions of things. I guess that’s why I’m really interested in the shadow or taking that step back and allowing that space to be there—so that I can see better.
You told me earlier that you are interested in silence, in unsaid things, which I would relate to the shadow that you just talked about—could you give me an example of this silence in your experience?
When I was a kid I spent a lot of time with my grandparents, with my grandmother. Unfortunately, I didn’t speak Cantonese, I know some words but not a lot. And she didn’t speak English. Our way of communicating encompasses the silences as well as the piecing things together from my very broken Cantonese and her very broken English. We were able to communicate with our broken languages, our faces, with our gestures and our silences. You experience that range of communication first-hand, and it shows you potential, and so you want to observe more. And then I can also think of things like sitting at the dinner table with my family, sometimes they’re speaking to me, sometimes they’re speaking about me, but in another language, sometimes I’m talking to my grandfather who speaks perfect English; you just get comfortable with these different ways of communication—not always knowing what people are saying, and then knowing and then hearing something there, or suddenly there’s a silence that comes over the dinner table, and people are just comfortable. That’s all really interesting to me. I learned a lot about being alone and quiet during my summers there. Because I was an only child, I didn’t have siblings, I didn’t have a lot of young friends around when I was living with them. I think this experience made me a good listener. Listening is so undervalued.
I’m glad that you mentioned you wanted real transformation. I struggle sometimes to reconcile the thoughts of loving art for art’s sake and questioning “what is this for?”
Yeah exactly. Whatever small platform I have, I want to use it to have discussions like this. I was saying earlier—it’s nice to talk about music and how we made it, but I’m more interested in what you and I are talking about. A bigger picture. Yeah, I make electronic music, I made a piece, it came out on vinyl, but it’s a more holistic thing that I’m considering in my work. I’m interested in how sharing ideas can move us in a better direction, and if my music in some way can be a part of that movement, in a very small way, then that feels like a life well-lived.
You love sculptor Jorge Oteiza and once shared this quote by him: “Art does not transform anything, it does not alter the world, it does not change reality. What the artist really transforms, as he evolves, transforms and completes his languages, is himself. And it is that man, transformed by art, who can, through life, transform reality.”
I was meant to ask how that applied to your own experience as an artist but I guessed you just answered.
Yeah it’s that process that I’m interested in. How we become better members of society and how we build better kinship with our environment. We’re living in an increasingly narcissistic time, one that focuses us inwards and necessitates constant empty affirmation.
Asking yourself what kind of relationship you want to have with the world is really crucial. If I’m going to do anything in my life, music, or something entirely different, it has to have a quality of care for others.
“We’re living in an increasingly narcissistic time, one that focuses us inwards and necessitates constant empty affirmation.
Asking yourself what kind of relationship you want to have with the world is really crucial. If I’m going to do anything in my life, music, or something entirely different, it has to have a quality of care for others.”
What books have informed you on your views?
I recently read Ruha Benjamin’s Race after Technology, and felt it was very timely—given our increasing reliance on technology. She writes about how emerging technology reinforces white supremacy. I also mentioned Byung Chul-Han. I love some Donna Haraway as well, (she writes about) our relationship with the world around us, not just human relationships. But this year I actually read mostly poetry—going back to this thing of needing space. In the past I’d read a lot of critical theory, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do much of that over the past two years. I took a break and started reading poetry. Because there was space there for my brain, and space to breathe, too.
Who are your favourite poets?
I love Percy Shelley a lot. I visited his grave which is tucked away in Rome, in a small cemetery where dozens of cats live. It felt like a really fitting spot. I recently discovered this Iranian poet Garous Abdolmalekian, he was just translated to English for the first time. I really recommend this collection Lean Against This Late Hour.
Lean Against This Late Hour – Garous Abdolmalekian
Finally, can we talk about your support for the BDS Movement? You have been a supporter for quite a long time.
For me it has never been a question whether Palestine should be free and that what was taking place there was a colonial project, orchestrated by a number of western powers. You have a state government (Israel) that is armed to the teeth and then you have a vulnerable population either living under occupation or exile. These are not equal players. Anyone who familiarizes themselves with the history of the events following World War II should see clearly this is a continuation of oppression and erasure. Homes are taken or razed to the ground all the time in occupied Palestine. The practice is plain and simple – to erase any historical evidence that is Palestine. That’s why we cannot remain silent.
When I visited Palestine in 2019, I visited Jordan first. Many of my friends in Amman are Palestinian and could not travel with me into Palestine to the festival I was attending in Ramallah. What does that say? They’re Palestinian, I’m American – how does it work that I’m allowed and they are not. Because I have this US passport. My friends who do not hold the “right” documentation cannot move freely while others with Israeli, British or American passports can. That says a lot about the disparity of the world and who maintains power.
I reside in a country that pours billions of dollars into the Israeli “defense” forces. Really they are “occupation” forces, used to repress the Palestinian people and keep them living in terror. I spoke with a young man in Hebron who told me the story of how the IOF tried to plant a knife on him when he was teenager and if it weren’t for his neighbor looking out the window at the right time, they would have shot him. The US plays such a large role in what is taking place there. We are so entwined and responsible for what is taking place. This is why I support my Palestinian friends and their right to return.
Hiro Kone / Photo by Mara Corsino
Hiro Kone’s 4th LP Silvercoat the throng is out now on Dais Records, listen.
Flora Yin Wong （黃映彤）是來自倫敦的音樂人，DJ，作家，也是前Dazed雜誌音樂編輯。她的音樂及寫作作品發行和出版於廠牌Modern Love，PAN，Circadian Rhythms，以及雜誌zweikommasieben，Somesuch Stories等。我在曼徹斯特的The White Hotel觀看了她的演出，並邀請她為香港聯合電臺做一個電郵採訪。在這個採訪裡，我問了她各種問題，有跟音樂報導相關的，有跟她今年出版的書《Liturgy》相關的，有跟她寫作和音樂裡都出現的（東）亞洲元素及隨之而來的闡釋相關的，當然，也有跟香港—她母親的出生地—相關的。
問：香港對你來說似乎是個非常靈性，甚至有些不真實的地方，至少這是在我讀過你發表在Some Such Stories上面的寫作後得出的感覺。不過當然了，靈性的東西是和實在的東西糾纏在一起的…你在「Time」一文中寫到「你從夢中覺醒過來」…是2014年的政治事件震撼了你嗎？現在你怎麼看待自己跟香港的連接？
Flora Yin Wong is a London-born musician, DJ, writer, and former music editor at Dazed; her music and writing works have been released/published via labels including Modern Love, PAN, Circadian Rhythms, and magazines and outlets such as zweikommasieben, Somesuch Stories. I caught up with her set at The White Hotel in Manchester in July and invited her to do an interview for Hong Kong Community Radio via email. In this interview I asked her about music journalism, about Liturgy, the book she released this year, about the (East) Asian elements in her music and writings and the interpretations that came with them and of course about Hong Kong, the birthplace of her mother. (Flora talked about some of her experience when she worked in Hong Kong in another interview and wrote stories that reflected her time sojourning in this city, and these are some good reads.)
Interviewed by Anlin Liang
Q: Would you say your years working in music journalism, interviewing artists, reviewing music, etc., has helped you in any way in materializing your music? What would you say is your biggest takeaway when your positionality switches from the interviewer to the interviewed?
I wouldn’t say the experience of being a journalist contributed to the work, but more just it was the result of me having different ways of engaging with music as it was always such a big part of my life but I wasn’t ‘able’ to produce anything at that stage. I fell out of love with music journalism when it felt like it became a very conveyor belt system for artists. Now it does make me curious on the other side, but also bear high expectations for interview questions and just try to answer as honestly and openly as possible.
Q: I read your interview about not going anywhere when making club music and I read something from an Laila Sakini in her interview (via zweikommasieben) which is a bit related to this—she talked about how she was really shy about the club music she made and she didn’t show them to many people. I find it pretty interesting that sometimes people want to make certain things but will end up making really different things. Is there anything you could say about the difference between making the kind of club music you wanted to make and making what you are making now?
I never finished any tracks myself that might be considered as ‘club/techno music’, but do feel like it crosses over more in my earlier releases… the album was a deeply insular experience and probably translates as such. Laila is a good friend of mine and we’re actually working on a collaboration together for the traditionally very techno Atonal this year so will see where we get with that too ha.
Q: Care to talk more about the video footages you used during The White Hotel set? Why do you choose such visuals to accompany your set?
The footage I used for that show (and previously at King’s Place with Kelly Moran), are predominantly GoPro shots where I filmed random moments on the wrong setting. These were mostly from when I went to Bali alone and was having long chats with the taxi driver in the middle of nowhere at night. The jarring pace of the footage, the ghost stories he was telling me, and the typical ‘Asian’ strip lighting of the occasional markets we passed were really evocative to me of something modern and mundane, yet ancient and unseeable.
Q: I want to also ask you about Liturgy, your book that was originally intended to be released along with Holy Palm, but now published as a stand-alone project (if I didn’t get it wrong!). I have read it and a large part of it reads to me like a catalogue, or a documentation of things, including tales, places, sounds, animals, mental health conditions, that ‘carried latent potential prophecy’. How did you do your research for this book? I wonder what kind of connection do you see in these different pieces you wrote in Liturgy?
Yeah they were written in tandem, and is more like a short encyclopaedia or compilation of assorted tales and histories. Most of them are just ongoing ideas or interests in my head, and then solidified or explored further on paper. They’re all very connected in a universal sense, all the terms, stories, living creatures, unreal creatures, human beliefs etc.
Flora Yin-Wong Liturgy (PAN X Primary Information)
Q: I have seen people using languages like east vs west, or (East) Asian culture, or even ‘going back to the root’ when describing your music, and I know you talked about in other interviews that this is others’ interpretation of something you didn’t really intend to do. But after reading your book Liturgy, and also reading your interviews where you talked about using traditional Chinese instruments, I still want to ask, when you approach such things as ‘eastern’ philosophy or ‘eastern’ sounds—to put it very crudely—do you look for this “going back to the root” kind of feeling, as in you feel more grounded or connected with yourself, in these stories, symbols, and sounds; or do you approach these things with the kind of curiosity just as you approach anything else?
It’s maybe not intentional and not used as if I feel like it represents me – it’s more that they are in fact ‘foreign’ yet somehow familiar to me and therefore appear interesting. I like feeling like I’m perhaps connected to something physically and spiritually in a darker, insidious way that goes back generations even if I don’t understand it. The specific instruments are just a phase and I’m craving the access to touch and explore new ones all the time.
Q: Would you say you have a fatalistic outlook for the world? I didn’t know anything about the Olduvai theory until I read your essay ‘Into the Gorge’ . Do you think human beings are quite doomed like the theory predicts, or do you think people could work their way out?
In this respect, I don’t think people should ‘work their way out’ of anything. I detest the idea of prolonging life because of the ability to, and this overarching obsession with immortality. There’s obviously something liberating and idealistic about the drama of a conceivable ‘apocalypse’, but fundamentally it’s just another event on the timeline.
Q: Hong Kong seems to be a very spiritual and also somewhat unreal place for you, at least that’s how I feel when I read your writings on Some Such Stories. But of course, the spiritual is entangled with the real…you said you were ‘awakening from the dream’ in ‘Time’—did the political event in 2014 shake you up? How do you feel about your connection with Hong Kong now?
The political events of 2014 in Hong Kong were an awakening for many I think, even for me and my ex-pat peers who lived a very different and privileged life there. I was missing my (supposedly) ’democratic’ albeit flawed home in the UK, and I was in a very different mindset which was more about ‘awakening’ from a brief and fortune-filled respite in a foreign land. I haven’t been back to Hong Kong in several years now, and I found the last trip really sad. Whitewashed gentrified areas were much more extreme and boring, and it just seemed really jarring. There’s still a mentality of idealising the West and also at the same time the overbearing feeling of the mainland encroaching – in terms of language, culture and rules.
(Anlin Liang is a translator and a training anthropologist).
Revisit the guest mix she made for us earlier this year.
