In the dozen years since returning to her birth country, Helen Feng has been a vital force in the Mainland music scene. As a cultural commentator as host of The Rock Show. As a creative entrepreneur with the FakeMusicMedia collective she co-founded. And as the front woman for three seminal groups. Often dubbed the ‘Queen of Beijing rock,’ she’s closing in on her crowning achievement, as her current group Nova Heart storms through the country to support their highly anticipated self-titled debut album.
“Girls like to be called queens and princesses, so hand me my tiara, bitch,” she jokes, before abdicating her royal title. "I’m more like a nerdy girl in one of those 80s teen flicks who does one of those music montage transformations to become Olivia Newton John at the end of Grease, except way less skinny and unable to wear leather pants to this day.”
While she threatens to dig out pictures from her “show choir days in high school with a bad perm, braces and oversized flannel shirts,” it’s hard to imagine Feng as anything less than the magnetic stage presence that elicits comparisons to Debbie Harry and Jim Morrison (although she did famously commandeer the stage at the 2010 MIDI Festival from a wheelchair, a result of a stage dive gone wrong.)
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Feng already has the rock star schedule. We’re doing a walk-and-talk backstage at the MIDI Festival in Shanghai, an interview crammed in as she zips from one media obligation to the next.
Her Mainland rock cred has already been cemented. Her first group, Ziyo, was among the leaders of Beijing’s Internet inspired rock scene that spawned current standouts like Carsick Cars, New Pants and Queen Sea Big Shark. Their infectious mix of indie rock guitars with a dance beat scored them an ill-fated major label deal with Warner Records.
Next came Pet Conspiracy – a groundbreaking act that layered her punkish vocals over harsh electro beats. And she’s already gone Hollywood, singing the theme song to The Mummy III.
Feng’s also contributing in other ways. Her FakeMusicMedia collective has brought over international stalwarts like CSS, Hot Chip, Andy Rourke from the Smiths and Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke for Mainland shows this year.
Their Electric City nights are a collaboration with Beijing’s Pilot Records to provide “a platform for artists to educate, share, create and ultimately work with young developing artists to help them mature to where they can go onto the world stage.”
“It’s time for the music in China to start creating new trends; not just regurgitate old ones,” she adds.
She’s walking the walk with Nova Heart. Despite forming in 2011, the band has already laid the groundwork internationally, touring five continents and becoming festival favorites from the Mainland to Madagascar. Raised in North America, Feng is the perfect ambassador to bring China’s underground to the global spotlight.
“We just got way more love in other countries,” Feng explains. “When we first started, some audiences were disappointed when they didn’t get the Pet Conspiracy thing with us. Overseas, people didn’t come to the show expecting to see me in my shiny spandex jumping off of drum sets. They actually listened to the music.”
Europe has played a prominent role in Nova Heart’s story. At the end of Pet Conspiracy’s 2010 tour of the continent, Feng quit the group to focus on shifting Ziyo’s musical direction under the new band name, Free the Birds. Before returning home, she spent a few days partying in Istanbul, randomly meeting producer Rodion – dubbed by MixMag as “the new genius of Italian dance music.”
Eager to collaborate, Feng sent self-produced tracks from Beijing to Rome where Rodion injected an “evil disco” sheen. Nova Heart quickly swelled from a solo project to a trio comprised of Beijing rock vets: ex-Hedgehog bassist Bo Xuan and current Hedgehog drummer Atom.
Their debut EP Beautiful Boys was released in 2012, receiving attention from NME and Rolling Stone. The single ‘My Song 9’ scored high radio rotation across Australia on Triple J, a first for a Chinese act.
While the disc contains only four songs, it highlights the band’s distinct but accessible sound – a darkwave electro mix for the late night after the club. Their aesthetic was perfectly captured in the music video for ‘Beautiful Boys,’ which documents three working girls on the job in Beijing.
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Despite all the past accolades, Feng cops to pre-release jitters. Recorded in Berlin, Nova Heart tones down the four-to-the-floor beats for a musical potpourri. Feng lists off the wide range of sonic influences on the album from psychedelic rock to LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy’s DFA label to the reverb-drenched guitars of Morricone’s Spaghetti Western scores.
“The album is much moodier and darker. The sound has a story behind it from the other musicians and the collaboration with Rodion went deeper, as we both went through a bit of unrelated personal trauma, which is reflected in the album,” she says, before cracking, “I like to describe it as an album of quintessential existential crisis.”
Although some of the album tracks are already staples of Nova Heart’s live shows, Feng promises they will be “presented in a different way.”
The band is supporting the record with an eight-city national tour, their first in over a year. While Feng praises music festivals for taking the group over the world, she’s eager to present Nova Heart “in a controlled atmosphere that better expresses what we want to do.”
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For one of the country’s most creative groups, the potential for presentation is endless and Feng does nothing to tone down expectations by keeping a tight lid on details.
“We wanted to make an album that sounds like a movie soundtrack for a weirdly experimental yet epic film from the late 60s and 70s, but interpreted through a band that exists now,” she teases.
“An emotional thriller, a horror movie for the modern age, but without all the cheesy conventions. Something (David) Lynch, (Stanley) Kubrick or (Roman) Polanski would direct. Good music for your home psychoanalysis session, on a fair amount of acid.”
// Event listing: December 5, 9-11.30pm, RMB70-100. QSW Culture Center, tickets.
// Rodion and Helen Feng spin at Electric City: December 20, 10pm-late, RMB80. Arkham.
****WIN!!!*****
We have a pair of tickets to Nova Heart to give away. Simply answer the following:
What was the job that Helen Feng took that brought her back to China?
E-mail your answers to win@urbanatomy.com by December 3 with the subject ‘Nova Heart’ for your chance to win.
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