For us, I want to be able to stay at ease with what I see, and if I can, I'd love to keep playing like this.
In the fall of 2021, Escape Project released their second full-length album, Back to the Ocean, a full 10 years after their last album.
Escape Project's new album Back to the Ocean.
In 10 years, whether it is the direction of music, the industry pattern, or the encounters in life, there can be too many changes. The escape plan, which once did not mind being labeled "pop rock", once again let go of its hands and feet, and presented a more contemporary musical language and a more international aesthetic vision in the new album. At the same time, like "The World" 10 years ago, the new album is also filled with warm energy.
Escape Plan's 10-year-old album World.
As the lead singer of the band, Mao Chuan believes in "the essential influence of the environment on creation". Indeed, every song on the new album can find all kinds of connections with the hometown of Qingdao. The song is like a city, accommodating all private emotions and open to the public.
The final song of the new album is called "10th", which is both the tenth song and the 10-year span of insights condensed in it. In the song, Mao Chuan sings: "I don't know in this second / How many planets have fallen / Has anyone ever asked you as a self / What it feels like / I thought I came to be free / In fact I still can't walk out of myself ..."
・Escape Plan lead singer Mao Chuan.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="32" > golden song is sometimes a contradiction</h1>
You may not be familiar with the escape plan band, but you must have heard of "The Brightest Star". Born in 2011, this song, after several rounds of cover songs by variety artists and first-line singers, became popular in 2013, and then became a national golden song that was sung on the streets, bringing popularity and a steady stream of work offers to the escape plan. To this day, its influence is still online, and for a popular song, this lifespan is not short.
"The Brightest Star in the Night Sky" is from escape plan's debut album World. As soon as this debut came out, it won multiple awards, plus the two golden songs of "The Brightest Star in the Night Sky" and "Ten Thousand Sorrows", for independent bands, what do you want? At that time, they always reminded people of the British Coldplay band that fled at the turn of the century, with a warm melody and pop texture of the escape plan, when the Beijing independent bands were pursuing alternative beauty, they became "good-sounding" outliers, taking the lead in breaking through the boundaries of the circle and entering the mainstream vision.
When "World" was published, 10 years had passed since Mao Chuan left his hometown for the first time to go to Beijing to pursue his dreams. Although the media likes the story of "one hit and one hit", mao chuan and his band have accumulated hundreds of performance experience before the big hit.
The predecessor of the escape plan, the "Peacock" band, has been active in various scenes in Beijing since its formation in 2005. Two years later, the band changed its name to Escape Plan and signed to the label, and they were running between intensive performances with almost no stop. According to Shen Yi, the manager of the "7LIVEHOUSE" of the Zhengzhou performance hall, when the escape plan was able to sell 200 tickets, they still took the night train back to Beijing after the performance in order to save one night's accommodation costs. If "almost fame" is the destination of most bands, then it is not only lucky that achieves "one hit and red", the bittersweet and bittersweet of the North Drift Band should experience, and the hard work and sweat behind the "10,000 Hours Law", the escape plan has never been absent.
For musicians, the golden song is sometimes a contradiction - the world is vast because of it, but it has also become a burden of deliberate attempts to transcend, and "The Brightest Star in the Night Sky" is exactly what the escape plan is.
As a songwriter, Mao Chuan admitted that there will be resistance for a period of time, and said to the agent, "We don't sing this song in the performance, we must turn the page", but it did not last long, it was really difficult to resist the audience's strong demands, after all, "there is nothing to be ashamed of if you don't steal or rob", sing it. Later, whenever he wrote a song, Mao Chuan had to work hard to reach the height of "the brightest star", and whenever he thought of self-expectation and public expectation, the pressure would not hit one place. Mao Chuan said that he did not work hard enough, and the struggling emotions that had stimulated his creation no longer existed when people reached middle age, all of which delayed the anticipated new album again and again, and further pushed up everyone's expectations.
It also took Mao Chuan a long time to accept the change of mood little by little, and no longer insisted on producing works through painful collisions for inspiration. For the golden song baggage that has been hanging above his head, he has gradually become transparent, and after 10 or 20 years of looking back, he understands that those songs are not written by one person or one pen, but the joint action of all causes and circumstances. It's hard and meaningless to try to replicate the success of a song. Thinking of this, Mao Chuan was relieved.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="109" > music and motorcycles</h1>
Two years ago, Mao Chuan "escaped" again from Beijing, where he had lived for more than a decade, and moved back to his hometown of Qingdao to settle down. Interestingly, such a big decision was actually because he had paid social security for 5 years and obtained the qualification to buy a house and a car in Beijing, and he was forced to seriously consider whether to take root and be a Beijinger.
Mao Chuan grew up in Qingdao, and as a child, he was influenced by Tang Dynasty bands and became obsessed with guitar and rock music. Around 2000, he finally made up his mind to go north and entered the Midi School in Beijing. After graduation, he was a little dazed, so he returned to his hometown and worked in a piano shop. But unable to withstand repeated persuasions from friends, Mao Chuan returned to Beijing, and only after that did the escape plan around 2007 be born.
More than ten years away from home, let Mao Chuan's childhood reach of the sea has become a distant nostalgia, this nostalgia has always haunted him. What hometown brings to Maochuan is a complex feeling that is both familiar and strange. It was this fresh excitement, mixed with the accumulation of his past life, that jointly pushed him to start the creation of a new album. In the past two years since he returned to Qingdao, he has gone out to blow the sea breeze, play with cars, and feel very happy with his family and colleagues. He was particularly fond of riding motorcycles, and his mother often lamented to him that he was fortunate not allowed to ride a motorcycle in middle school, otherwise he would not know whether he would have survived intact until now.
In 2018, Mao Chuan completed a cycling tour around Australia.
What a person loves is naturally a portrayal of his personality. Looking at the motorcycle alone, on the one hand, it has a delicate and complex mechanical composition; on the other hand, it brings us endless possibilities to drive into the wilderness. This duality is clearly visible in Mao Chuan.
If you look at the lyrics of the escape plan, there is always a kind of romance based on a grand world view, starlight, ocean, "the size of the sun and the moon and the inclination of the earth", "is it waiting for the sun to rise, or the accident comes first", "every tear is ten thousand rays of light, and the darkest place becomes bright." I rush to the warm current, looking for your ocean"... The words are filled with metaphors of heaven and earth. Even if it is a love song, it must be sung "I hope that before I live forever, I can reveal the true origin of human beings." But looking back at the process of songwriting, it is actually far less open and so dashing. Mao Chuan admits that his control of details is very strict, and in the early stage of creation, he hopes to appeal to reason as much as possible; and then the remaining space is filled with romance. You say, does this coincide with the philosophy of motorcycles?
Regarding the name of "Escape Plan", the band originally introduced it this way: "This is an imperfect world, we can't choose. In the face of ugliness, in the face of trauma, in the face of death, in fact we have no way to escape, so the real meaning of escape lies only in the plan. To this day, Mao Chuan's view of the world has not changed- he thinks that he is free to come and go, but in fact he still can't get out of himself. So just go back, back to the ocean.
Returning to the qingdao seaside again is more like returning to life.
The result of escape is to return to life and face yourself. It's a bit like the copy for the new album Back to the Ocean, "We're no longer trying to liquidate our relationship with the sea." As long as I have seen that blue, she will be with me wherever she goes for the rest of her life."
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="111" > don't get into a fight against pop</h1>
Li Yuan: When did the "Back to the Ocean" album start to be created?
Mao Chuan: Probably the first sound on this album began in early 2019. In fact, the biggest pain in the past two years is to save songs, after the song is done, it is not sent out, nor is it saved for others to hear, at that time, I wanted to save the song, and I can no longer send an EP (mini album) like the original three or four songs. We have always been a "pigeon" band, always let everyone pigeons, this time decided not to do pigeons to do eagles.
Li Yuan: Issuing a card in 10 years belongs to slow work and fine work. Is this due to character?
Mao Chuan: Thank you for your wording (laughs), which is actually procrastination. We give everyone the feeling that they are not working too hard, and I admit it, so it is still due to personality. We feel that life is very good, especially at this age to dig into the heart, I think that the material that can be written into a song, or the most painful feelings, not necessarily struggle, not necessarily the pain of explosion, but it may be the feeling that is stuffy in the heart and cannot be said. So when you dig into the pain that's more abstract than when you were younger, it's actually quite painful.
Li Yuan: So this new album is quite beautiful, musically speaking, it is all a warm tone.
Mao Chuan: I also think so, after doing it, we will also jump out very objectively, like a normal person, to look at this album objectively, and then we will feel as if this is not very struggling.
Li Yuan: From Qingdao to Beijing and back to Qingdao, has the city had any influence on music creation?
Mao Chuan: There is a big impact. For example, the writer will choose a place to stay based on the content of the book. Some works may be in the village, and some may put themselves in a particularly troubled city, which will essentially affect the way you create. There are several songs in the [new album], written that I want to go for a walk at night, to see the street corners that have changed and are familiar to me when I was a child, and when I get there, there will be a very strange feeling, I can't describe. When I was a child, I felt that from my home to the current studio, it was a very long journey, and now it was just a matter of oil. So I think Qingdao is too small, too small to be particularly cute.
Li Yuan: Does the ocean have a great impact on you?
Mao Chuan: Very big. Our drummer is from Inner Mongolia, and I believe that the grassland in his mind is the same as the impression of the sea by people living by the sea, it is an energy that exists in your subconscious. Before I was 20 years old, I had never been to Laoshan Mountain, Qingdao was surrounded by the sea on three sides, and you couldn't escape if you wanted to. And when you have a process of leaving it, you will feel that it is important.
· Escape plan for 2017.
Li Yuan: Will these feelings be written into the song?
Mao Chuan: There are already a lot of them in this album, and I believe I will continue to write them, but I haven't written them thoroughly.
Li Yuan: After almost 20 years of making music, do you think that on the aesthetic level, is there something that can define the escape plan throughout?
Mao Chuan: I think it is still the old saying, that is, it comes from life, higher than life. But for the word "high," we like that feeling a little bit taller.
Li Yuan: I remember that in the 000s, rock bands were particularly resistant to leaning on the pop side, but when some people said that the escape plan was a pop band, you didn't particularly oppose it.
Mao Chuan: We didn't think it was very good. I think the biggest change in this era is that the scope of pop music is wider, and it turns out that many people who talk to pop "die" say that I am not popular, and in the end it is still classified as pop music.
Li Yuan: Are you a very ambitious person for the future and for the next 10 years?
Mao Chuan: My ambition is actually more about what kind of things we make ourselves. I've always compared us to a small restaurant that tastes good but doesn't expand. For an operator, you have been a small restaurant for 50 years, and you have opened 30 branches in a few years, I think the ambition is the same, you have to insist on doing one thing, it deserves to be respected. So for us, I want to be able to stay at ease with what happens, and if I can, I'd love to keep playing like this.
About the author: Li Yuan, drummer, radio host, the program is broadcast on the Central Radio and Television Station and other platforms, is committed to promoting new Chinese and foreign music with independent aesthetics. He has served as a professional judge in many music programs such as "Summer of the Band" and "Top Chart of Chinese Songs".