Why is there such a strong sense of space in your music?
Ding Wei: This is taste. (Small Pride)
In fact, there were many schemes before the cover, and now this version was shot by us in Bristol, England, before leaving, when the shooting was almost over, Brother Yan suddenly came to the inspiration, saying that he wanted to shoot this, and it might be used as a cover. In fact, Brother Yan still likes red, but it is very important whether the red is right or not, and our red is still quite positive.
--Ding Wei
Five years, seven years, ten years... When the description of Ding Wei's "silent" year in the news report rose all the way to thirteen years, the picture was finally frozen in a red and black. At the end of June, Ding Wei, who has been debuting for more than 20 years, finally officially launched her fourth album "Untied". Before that, countless fans "spawned" in her Weibo messages, "making me look like a liar," Ding Wei said with helplessness and amusement.
Detached from the simple category of popular music, "Loosen up" combines a series of musical elements such as Trip-hop, experimental electronics, rock, classical, etc. Ding Wei is like a dark witch who concocts an antidote for listeners who have long been fed by fast food music, which is precious but also not easy to obtain. Fortunately, one afternoon, the witch herself revealed the "pharmaceutical" process to the Beijing News reporter, and when you understand the growth pattern of this "atypical" pop record, you may find your own way of absorption.
Salt brother
Salt Lin Chaoyang, the producer known as "Brother Salt" by Ding Wei, can be said to be the second owner of "Loosening". In 2004, Ding Wei released her third album "Dear Ding Wei", when Salt became interested in Ding Wei's music, and later when the new album was launched, Salt became involved.
"When we first started doing it, we didn't have that strong purpose, and It was through this record that Brother Yan began to contact pop music production. When he heard about my DEMO, he had a lot of ideas and started asking me how to get this software, how to operate the machine, and through this album he learned computer arrangement. Later signed with British label Cooking Vinyl, he also brokered in the middle. ”
Because of his years of study abroad experience, Salt organized Dominic Miller (Sting guitarist), Ian Thomas (Eric Clapton drummer) and other top British musicians to participate in the recording of "Untied", "his contact with the musicians is smoother, although his English is a bit Italian, and there is also a strange Russian." I'm shy, and I don't know how to express some words. ”
rechristen
Not only did the album go through a tortuous process of creation, going to Swedish mixing, shelving unsatisfactory until it was re-arranged, but even the name changed several times.
"The first name I set was "Age", and I felt that this album spanned a wide range, covering things from 30 years of pop music, and the style of the 80s, 90s, and 00 years later could be found in it. Meanwhile, barry Lategan, the photographer we worked with at the beginning, was in his 80s, and by the time we started the concert, the youngest of the musicians was 21 years old. Later, because there is a song called "Souvenir" in the album, its text meaning can be souvenirs, gifts, etc., which coincides with some humanistic aspects of this record, but when it comes to designing the cover, we feel that the name is very soft, which does not conform to some of the songs in this album, so we feel that we still have to have a clear grasp of musicality, plus at that time our main song will have "Loosen the Binding". ”
Fill in the words
Ding Wei also revealed this unusual way of filling in words. "Usually when I write DEMO, I sing it in English. This Sense of English does not refer to the real English, but to say that the logic of pronunciation is the same as that of English. Except for the Chinese used in the creation of "Wanderer", the other DEMOs are all in English. Later, when we tried to fill in Chinese words, we found that it did not work, and after filling in the singing taste changed, so what to do, just find the word according to the pronunciation of DEMO. In fact, pronunciation is related to melody and orchestration, so first ensure the rhyme of the main syllables, find more suitable words on this basis, and then look at the collocation between words. So some of the songs are more abstract and poetic, but they are also in line with our ideas for these songs. ”
Ding Wei is from a music class, in her identity system, sometimes the lyrics do not have to express too clear meaning, "because many things in the music has been very clear - emotion, atmosphere, color, picture sense, etc., many of the songs on this album, do not necessarily have to explain the theme and the central idea, many are only can understand the ineffable things, some people will listen to it for half a day do not know why, and people who understand will naturally dig out some codes in it." ”
Suzanne Vega
The last song in the album's song, "Gypsy", is an English version of Wanderer. Ding Wei enlisted the female singer She admired, Suzanne Vega, to work with. "I'm from the same label as Suzanne Vega, and through the company's matchmaking, our agent has always maintained good contact. Until last July, when I went to Cambridge to study English for two months, I was thinking about how to put this thing into practice. Later, I finally learned that she had performed at a music festival in Belgium. Before her performance, we talked for about an hour, and neither of us was so pretentious and talked about cooperation very directly. Later, I sent her all the songs again, and she chose the song "Wanderer" to fill in the lyrics in English. ”
After confirming the cooperation, Ding Wei began to politely and regularly urge the manuscript, "Because she was also very busy at that time and was releasing a new album, so I didn't want to urge her too much, so I sent her an email after two weeks, sent a Whats App, and then she wrote out the lyrics in a few days after a short break in New York." ”
dark
In the years that faded out of the stage, Ding Wei produced soundtracks for many film and television works, and she almost used all of this income in the recording and production of "Loosening the Binding", but this was regarded by her as a reasonable "wealth circulation method", a process of cultivating "children".
When asked whether raising such a "dark" child is worried about the acceptance of the audience, Ding Wei replied frankly that this is what she likes: "It is not in the sun that is brilliant to have beauty, beauty is everywhere." Those who are secret, eerie, and even a little scary in the darkness are beautiful. I'm also afraid (the audience won't accept it), but no way, to be honest, I can't write those divine comedies every year, so I might as well be honest with myself. Life is not long, I have been born like this, so just be yourself and face your conscience. ”
Written by/Beijing News reporter Yang Chang
Images courtesy of respondents
Portrait Photography / Richie
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