Cat #: 134TZM
Low Wormwood’s 3rd album.
Tag: Maybe Folk
Xiao He – Silly’s Ballad – 19th July 2012
Cat #: 100TZM
It’s been 2 years since Xiao He’s bizarre double CD “The Performance Of identity” (2010) was released thru tenzenmen as catalogue number 050TZM, marking a half-century of releases for the label. As one of the most important avant-garde artists in China, his astonishing creativity doesn’t change or vanish with the passing of time, instead he becomes more distinctive and interesting. He keeps on playing his solo symphonies and “universal experimental folk”, which has gained him much appreciation and a glowing reputation. Xiao He and his songs have been to dozens of countries and whilst performing last autumn he jumped off the stage and broke his feet! This new album, Silly’s Ballad, was created while he was instructed to rest at home by doctors, with his feet set in heavy casts. Xiao He wrote all 12 songs with an acoustic guitar, he even recorded them while in bed and on the couch. The new album overflows with beautiful melodies and classic folk arias.
He writes of the album, “While I was recording [the songs], cicadas were tweeting, and sometimes even a plane passed by. I tried to record without any external sounds before by thickening the walls of my studio, but at the same time I was isolating beautiful things outside.” So, when Xiao He returned to write love songs again, he was inspired by diverse colours and sounds. Besides the self-deprecating title, natural feelings hide in every sentence of the lyrics, reflecting Xiao He’s wisdom and philosophy. The use of narrative poems throughout the album helps Xiao He express his mystical world in sounds and words.
More to the point, this being catalogue number 100TZM, marking the full century for tenzenmen, this folk album will be released in a very special and limited format: not on CD, tape or vinyl, but as a ‘musical artbook’. It is perhaps the first of its kind. This multimedia truly enables Xiao He’s creativity better expression. The artbook contains 12 different pictures of leaves, drawn by Xiao He in Zurich in 2010. Those leaves lay scattered on the mountain road Xiao He walked along every morning to exercise. The 12 songs correspond to 12 different leaves. High-end headphone brand 233621 has generously provided specialized custom-made headphones for this ‘album’. Furthermore, this musical artbook also includes three music videos that were commissioned to three up-and-coming and very talented directors: Yu Liwei, Yang Jin and Zhang Yuedong.
Xiao He expressed his wishes for the artbook: “I hope this album will become the glorious road along which a silly person is looking for another silly person.”
Low Wormwood – Lanzhou Lanzhou – 8th July 2012
Cat #: 098TZM
The cliché goes that some geographical areas are synonymous with certain sounds: Merseybeat from Liverpool, for example, or grunge from Seattle. But it’s also the case that certain bands define their locales. Here, one tends to think of such acts as Arcade Fire, who did just that for Montreal with Funeral and The Suburbs. Such is the case with Low Wormwood, whose latest album, Lanzhou Lanzhou (their second licensed to tenzenmen) is perhaps a defining moment for both the band and the city of the title.
Unlike many bands from Lanzhou, this quartet don’t practise harmony- driven guitar folk. The metrics of this album depart from their early grunge and shoot for a less fiery but more coherent structure, coupling string-soaked flourishes of folk-rock with mundane lyrics about day-to-day living in Lanzhou. It borders on being a concept album, but the catchy rhythms manage to dilute the anthropological solemnity and make this something special.
‘Recording this album is almost like being in a relationship,’ explains lead singer Liu Kun. ‘When you love each other, it really burns. When you hate each other… well, it also burns.’
Travellers – Traveller – 23rd September 2011
Cat #: 074TZM
Traveller is a world music collective started by Wu Junde in 2008. Their style draws heavily from contemporary folk music from western China. In addition to Wu Junde himself, collaborators and members of Traveler are some of the most prominent artists in the domestic folk scene, including Zhang Zhi, Wen Feng, Chen Zhipeng, Zhu Fangqiong, Wan Xiaoli, Zhou Laoda, Zhou Shengjun, Wu Buli, Hugjiltu, Da Song, Wang Xiao, Xiao Zhou and others.
Their musical backgrounds are ample and quite diverse; lead singer Wu Junde played bass in Tongue, IZ, and Hanggai before founding Traveler; Zhang Zhi is an expert at guitar, dombura, bass and keyboard and plays various other instruments, was the lead singer and bassist for psychedelia band, and once organized 9 Songs Music Festival in Karamay, Xinjiang. In 2010, breakout performer Wen Feng received Los Angeles KAZN FM1300’s Best Drummer Award, and in the same year participated in the American Music Awards’ Ribbon of Hope ceremony. Da Song gave up his work as a fine arts teacher in favor of a nomadic musical lifestyle, allowing him to develop his interest in African drumming and to introduce this form to Lijiang, Yunnan.
Traveller’s sound synthesizes a wide range of genres and influences. With traditional styles as their starting points, they add the timbres of dombura, Mongolian sanxian, Xinjiang hand drum, and other distinctive folk instruments, producing an amalgamation of folk ballads, world music, Kazakhstani music, and Chinese classical music, to name just a few. The group’s releases include a self-titled album, “Traveler,” “Nikele” with Zhang Zhi; “Son of Dark Horse River” , with Wang Xiao; and “Far Away”, with Xiao Zhou.
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