If you like: pg.lost, Sigur Rós, We Lost The Sea, melancholy guitar made for listening to in the rain and violin, Wang Wen might be for you.
As they approach the 20-year mark as China’s most well-known and inventive post-rock band, Wang Wen continue to explore uncharted territory. Their latest album, Invisible City, dropped in July, but the record – a transcendent work and milestone 10th release for the band – came to be in a very different time and place.
Wang Wen recorded their new album during a snowy arctic winter at Sundlaugin, the abandoned 1930s-era swimming pool that Reykjavík post-rock royalty Sigur Rós famously converted into their personal recording studio. Only a handful of bands, most of them Icelandic, have taken advantage of the space and its unique trappings, but Wang Wen frontman Xie Yugang decided to record there after the band’s manager Sun Yi visited the studio.
Photo by Zhang Dapeng.
“She sent a lot of photos to me, and I was very excited,” says Xie. “There are so many old synthesizers and microphones that are hard to find on the market. I thought it would be the best place to record the new album.”
Even though Invisible City was recorded halfway across the world, the ‘city’ the band had in mind is actually their own hometown of Dalian, where they’ve always been based despite its relatively small music scene. Xie took the album’s name from Italian novelist Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities, a work about how cities exist as concepts in one’s imagination as much as they do in reality.
When listening to Invisible City, it becomes apparent that the band was preoccupied with a place they know intimately. The songs sparkle with tenderness and melancholy as they evoke Dalian’s atmosphere, which Xie describes as “quiet and light.” They are also rife with surprising sounds thanks to the smorgasbord of rare instruments available at Sundlaugin, along with the horn, cello and violins Wang Wen has added into their instrumentation over the years. The open song, ‘Daybreak’ begins with an eerie lullaby of chimes, with murmuring ambient noises and whistling wind, calling up images of Dalian’s declining creative scene.
Photo by Zhang Dapeng.
“It’s about the changes in Dalian over the past two years,” says Xie of the record. “I can clearly feel that the city is sinking, and more young people choose to leave for opportunities elsewhere. Young people are a city’s hope, so if they choose to leave, the city will become more and more silent and old. We want to use music to foster hope for the young people who choose to stay here.”
Wang Wen’s origins date back to 1998. Xie was a college student in Dalian and used to go out drinking with a high school kid named Zhengzi, who eventually became Wang Wen’s bass player. In the ensuing 20 years, they’ve toured China inside and out, gone overseas to Europe for shows a handful of times, released a split album with Swedish post-rockers Pg.lost, and put on a fundraising concert in Kathmandu for the 2015 Nepal earthquake at the behest of a fan, among many other milestones. They’ve also witnessed firsthand the prolific growth of China’s indie rock scene over the past two decades.
“In the past 20 years, there have been many more independent bands in China, and their personalites are more distinct,” Xie says. “More outstanding foreign bands are also coming to China to perform, so the audience can see more high-quality performances, which will undoubtedly make Chinese bands work harder to perfect their own music.”
Photo by Zhang Dapeng.
In addition to their prolific output, Wang Wen is known for throwing themselves headfirst into touring – the Invisible City tour will take the band on a three-month stint through every major Chinese city, followed by Southeast Asian and European legs in 2019. Though Xie is uncompromising in his approach to recording music, he believes that live shows are about the viewers rather than the band.
“When creating music, one should be honest and loyal to one’s own expression,” he says. “You make music, and if others don’t like it, they won’t buy your record, so I have no psychological burden at all. But at a show, the audience buys tickets to support you. I want to give them the best experience possible.”
This thoughtfulness in everything Xie does is just one of the many things that has catapulted Wang Wen to such a storied spot in China’s music landscape. Each record feels like a reflective personal work from a devoted group of veteran musicians.
“I feel that music is beyond the limits of thought. A musician makes a certain work and expresses his thoughts, but the work is not limited by that. The energy will be different for every listener,” Xie says of his songwriting. “People’s emotions are complex, too complex for them to understand themselves. When I create, I just want to capture what my true state of mind was at the time.”
Shanghai: Sep 8, 8.30pm, RMB150 door. Bandai Namco Shanghai Base, see event listing.
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