Incoming: 惘闻 Wang Wen

By , 2016年 4月 19日


Wang Wen (photo by Muto)

Flying through my inbox this morning is a heads up that Dalian post-rock giants Wang Wen will be returning to Beijing next month on tour behind their ninth studio album, Sweet Home, Go! The literal translation of the album’s Chinese name —《岁月鸿沟》— is something like “the gulf of time”, but they went for something a bit sweeter sounding in English, on account of the gulf of language.

I just spent the weekend imbibing the Dalian scene (I mean that literally in more ways than one) — look for an interview with Wang Wen leader Xie Yugang to pop up on pangbianr ahead of their back-to-back shows at Yugong Yishan on May 21 & 22 (they’re that big). Even though the combined capacity for these two shows would be over 1,000, I’d still recommend gripping your pre-sale tickets ahead of time and saving the 50 kuai. You can do that here and here.

Find a full press release for Wang Wen’s album release gigs after the poster:

Early January 2016, during the coldest time of the year, Wang Wen completed our 9th studio album in Dalian, China. What was different about this album is that it was the first time we got Wouter and Lode to produce a record for us. For this album we recorded 6 long songs and an a cappella track recorded in an abandoned factory.All these songs were created within the last 3 years, but went through the ringer of change during the recording process. During recording an album, a band wants their music to be full of expression and feeling and to have the freedom to explore new threads, contradictions and conflicts. Producers on the other hand are looking to make the sequence of music more clear. In the end, the two sides of the spectrum strike a balance and complement each other. To Wang Wen, this was another experience in our journey to further understand and explore ourselves and the outside world.

Over the last few years, it feels like time had been spinning out of control. As time speeds by it makes people feel an indescribable excitement but also a feeling of suffocation. Just as we become used to the ways of today, things change in a flash. The Internet has seemingly brought people closer together. Actually it’s changed our existence by taking our “relationships” and turning them into rigid blocks of data, unable to blend into each other and therefore plunging us into the many deep cracks of space and time.

Is Sweet Home, Go about surpassing the gulf of time? Yes, but a different kind of gulf. English. Music is always light and heavy, but it should never just be a quick fix of energy or a mood enhancer. I’m always imagining, what if the powerful flow of music could stop time and shoot us us out of this cold abyss into the heavenly skies above, then drop us to our deaths.

– Wang Wen, Dalian. 4.11.2016

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