LOWBOW Interview
By Josh, 2011年 5月 17日
If you’ve seen an Irish man with excellent Chinese filling D-22 or What Bar with his substantial one-man-band-made sounds, you’ve seen Richard Deorian. Starting off in 2010 with a three-string guitar, bass drum and hi-hat as Lowbow, Richard is now busy with a half a dozen projects, playing solo and in combination with local musicians.
He has found a wealth of creativity and opportunity in D-22’s weekly Zoomin’ Night and taken advantage of that scene’s openness to collaborate with Wang Xinjiu of Birdstriking, Leng Mei of Streets Kill Strange Animals, and Liu Di of Wanderlust. He’s also been helping spread the DIY spirit, self-releasing free copies of his various bands’ sounds, with plans to start a full-fledged label this summer.
Read on to learn more about Richard and stream sample mp3s from his prolific output to date.
pangbianr: What is your background as a musician? Were you in any bands in Ireland before moving to China?
Richard: I started playing in bands from when I was in secondary school (high school) in Ireland, so I guess from about 15 or 16. My first instrument was a 3rd or 4th hand bass with a warped neck and one working pickup. I was listening to a lot of trash metal and L7 so I thought that getting a band together would be easy. After convincing my friend from school to buy a set of drums and finding a guitarist, EYESTRAIN was born! We sounded as shit as the name suggests.
I joined, formed and left about 10 bands before joining a band called PORN with some guys I met through an ad in an Irish music mag. We played gigs around the country and recorded demos. I thought we were pretty good, the guitarist drew pictures of dicks beside any tune (he wrote all the tunes) he thought were crap. There were a lot of dicks on the cover of the cassette of demos.
The end of PORN came when I decided to travel to Australia in 1997. We did a final show in a dump of a venue in the centre of Dublin to a very enhuastic audience. We even generated enough media attention to attract two independent labels to come to the show. They both offered contracts. Our drummer Ollie shouted out to the crowd of on-lookers that this was the happiest day of his life and it was a dream come true to finally make music a full-time pursuit. I was in Sydney by the following weekend and didn’t hear from our guitarist until about 5 years after that night.
Good gig though.
pbr: How did you get started playing music in Beijing?
Richard: My first real gig was as a bassist in a blues cover band called, “trouble no more” back in 2001. We practiced about 3 times a week and were getting pretty tight. 2 days before our first show, SARS happened and a week after that our guitarist left for the States and didn’t return until 2009.
Nice band though.
The one-man band thing that I do now came out of travelling around the country filming a cooking/travel show for CCTV 10 and spending far too long alone in dingy, skank cheap hotels. I bought a guitar, removed the bottom three strings (saves on having to learn chords) and LOWBOW was born.
Started playing shows around Beijing by the end of 2010 at which time the novelty of a one-man-band had yet to wear off.
I revamped the line-up and sacked the bass drum and hi-hat (too heavy to carry round and besides, I couldn’t really play guitar never mind drums) and started experimenting with a loop pedal, kaos pad and a drum machine.
After watching Dirty Beaches perform in Beijing at D-22 I learned how to save all the loops into the pedal rather than have to re-record each and every time I turned the machine on. I also learned that making people uncomfortable by playing too close to the front row and jumping about a lot is better than an Eric Clapton solo any day of the week.
pbr: You’ve been in China for over 13 years now… how long have you been active in the music scene (both going to shows and performing)? How have you seen it change in that time?
Richard: Though I have indeed been living in China since 1998, I only really started going to shows and later still, performing live about 2 years ago. The ‘scene’ here, just like everywhere is indeed changing all the time; lots of very creative bands and individuals performing and producing high-grade DIY music. The best thing about making music in Beijing as I see it is that it’s constantly evolving. No one person can say what’s going to happen but one thing is for sure, you could never say it’s boring and predictable. Unless your only exposure to live music are the cover bands in San Li Tun or Hou Hai, but if that’s the case you’re beyond help and are already probably well off enough not to give a fuck about LOWBOW in the first place
pbr: It seems that your instrumentation and performance style has changed over time as well. I heard that you used to perform solo with a ukulele and I’ve seen you play solo with guitar and drums and in various ensembles with different gadgets… How did you/do you identify new musical projects you’d like to undertake or with whom you’d like to collaborate?
Richard: Ukulele … yeah. I love that little guitar. Most people think of it as a toy but it’s the friendliest musical instrument in the world, cheaper than piano and violin lessons and makes the Ramones sound even better!
I am burning the candle at both ends right now regarding the various (six to date) musical ensembles I am involved with but I guess like anything as long as there is one, just one interesting element in a group then I like to try it out.
I remember before I ever went along to a single Zoomin Night show, looking at MySpace pictures of all these weird and exotic-named experimental bands and musicians trying to imagine what it must be like to see them play live. My favorites were always those bands that seemed to be playing in front of 5 people and a dog in some shit pit, flea bag of a venue usually in Texas for some reason.
小红与小小红 is one of Bejijng’s more interesting and creative bands performing now. Great use of silence and static which could easily be mis-concieved as …. Nothing but it’s precisely this nothing which means so much.
In fact there are so many great bands trying new musical ideas in Beijing now it’s hard to keep track. Best thing? Just go to any Zoomin Night show and don’t read any reviews about those individuals performing. Also, bring a work mate and find out if you can become real friends depending on whether or not he/she leaves 10 minutes after the first band comes on stage.
pbr: Now I’ll name check all the bands you’re in (that I’m aware of): Lowbow, Kool Kids, Paper Tiger Jamboree, Echo Vein, Clapping Club. Can you describe each one — style, other members — and lay out a rough timeline of when they formed?
Richard: Looking at the bands that I am involved in it makes no sense at all. Too much. In fact it’s getting harder to make defining lines between these groups. I am currently doing a major re-shuffle of the various projects and moving things around but basically I want to just focus on LOWBOW, KOOL KIDS, PAPER TIGER JAMBOREE. Beyond that I am fooling myself if I think I can make them all these developed, slick professional rock groups.
LOWBOW: three string guitar, sweat, noise rock & roll.
KOOL KIDS: radio static, silence electronic guitar dance music for the deaf.
Paper Tiger Jamboree live @ D-22
PAPER TIGER JAMBOREE: live & drum looping with beat box and shit keyboards + Wang Xin Jiu who is just a nice boy to hang around with and talk about lo-fi DIY punk.
CLAPPING CLUB is 99% Leng Mei from the brilliant band, Streets Kill Strange Animals. Mostly tight post-rock instrumentals. I don’t know, Leng Mei doesn’t talk very much and as no one sings in this band sometimes the atmosphere can get a little tense but he is such a creative force and a perfectionist that it’s a genuine learning experience playing and making music with him.
Echo Vein live @ ExSE Noise Fest, Raying Temple
ECHO VEIN: as this is a two person outfit with one half being in Tian Jin (Liu Di from Wanderlust) we don’t get to perform too often. It’s mostly just bass, drum machine, keyboards and loops. 99% improvised but lots of fun.
pbr: You travel around China quite a bit for work. Have you seen any interesting music outside of Beijing?
Richard: Not so much as I travel to the ass crack of China where finding a supermarket that sells real shampoo and red wine is a bonus. Shang Hai is okay but feels very small in terms of venues. I played there once and had a lot of fun, sounded like crap but had a laugh. I hope to get back there this summer but we’ll see.
pbr: Any big musical projects on the horizon you want to talk about?
Richard: I am working on putting together my own DIY label which is going to be called WAI MAI DIY (外卖). At the moment, I will be dealing with mostly my own projects but I would like to put together some of the live recordings I have made from shows at D-22 and Old What for other bands and make them available online. Hopefully, I can get this up and running by the end of June/beginning of July this year.
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