On October 14 this year (2019), Dou Wei celebrated his 50th birthday. Ten days later, the word "Dou Wei" was once again on the hot search because of his ex-wife. This is not unusual, Dou Wei has appeared in the small talk after tea and dinner in recent years, and the key words around him are either the daily shape of the untrimmed edge, or the gossip and trivia related to the ex-wives.
In the fragments of information in the mass media, the music of the Chinese rock pioneer itself seems to have no more newsworthiness. However, if you pay a little attention, you will find that for more than twenty years, Dou has maintained a high output of creation, and every year he releases new works.
At the age of 49, Dou Wei released ten albums.
Dou Wei's latest album "Ji Ai Ling" was released on September 5, followed by an EP "Bodhi Prayer" released on the same day as this album, a total of 23 songs.
The new album "Ji Ai Ling" is divided into two versions, which were produced by Dou Wei and his good partner for more than ten years, Wen Zhiyong, using a double version of the cross-match. Although it is two versions of the same album, the differentiated orchestration is enough to taste with the attitude towards two completely different works. The album continues to maintain Dou Wei's experimental style in recent years, but what is intimate is that this time Dou Wei hid some Easter eggs in the album that were enough to satisfy the public's selfish desires, such as inviting his two daughters Dou Jiayan and Dou Jingtong to contribute to the next version of the album "Dinghui Garden" and "Tong Jiushi" in the next version of the album. The father-daughter trio worked together for the first time and earned enough gimmicks.
The album's first version is equally interesting, with each song sampling excerpts from foreign-language films produced by Shanghai Film Translation Studio as important elements, including classics such as Hamlet, Notre Dame de Paris, and Tess. It is not the first time that the original sound of the sampled translation has appeared in Dou Wei's music, as early as the release of "Inter-Listening Monitor" in 2017, such sampling has made many fans give a high evaluation after obtaining a sense of novelty. The old-fashioned dialogue, under the peculiar and strange tone of the translation film, is interspersed with the sound of flutes and synthesizers coming from the depths of the headphones, and the overall atmosphere seems to be beyond the auditory senses, like traveling back to the old days to watch several open-air black-and-white movies. These love-related phrases, weaving the soul of the entire album, seem to be an entrance to the values of the musicians themselves.
<h1>"Rock 'n' roll is a crooked path"</h1>
The album of "RememberIng" got a high score of 8.6 on Douban, and most of the ratings on Douban for Dou Wei's album were on 8.5 points. The self-proclaimed "high-grade" Douban youth prefers Dou Wei, in addition to scoring high ratings, the long series of interpretations derived from the album are also trying to annotate Dou Wei's works and analyze those seemingly advanced musical concepts.
The music fans who followed Dou Wei the only way to listen tacitly did not mention "rock", which is the biggest label of Dou Wei itself, but it is also something that Dou Wei repeatedly spits on in interviews.
If the long-haired Dou Wei in the Black Panther period still has a bit of a rock and roll posture, after leaving the band to sign the magic rock Dou Wei, the so-called "rock" word began to fade gradually on him. On the Hung Hom stage in 1994, a flute, a black dress, elegant and elegant, more is the style of Wei and Jin literati. "Sunny Days" in 1995 and "Mountains and Rivers" in 1998 are generally recognized as two divine works that transform Dou Wei's musical style, at which time his music began to deviate from the basic pace of popular music, and the fusion of electronic music with traditional Chinese music created a sense of psychedelicity throughout. By 2006, "Rain Call" became Dou Wei's last album with lyrics so far. After that, the vocals disappeared into his work, and Dou Wei poured his center of gravity entirely into the melody itself, and the rich orchestration made his music more like a work of art. "When expression is already weak, aphasia becomes another way" this is the explanation given by Dou Wei.
<h1>Dou Wei's musical landscape</h1>
Although more than 50 albums and EPs have been included under Dou Wei's music label, there are only 6 solo albums led by Dou Wei, and the other works are produced with various bands or partners. To understand Dou Wei's musical context, it is necessary not to mention his bands.
The first is the most frequently referred to black panther period. In the three years from 1988 to 1991, Dou Wei contributed classics such as "Landless Self-Tolerance" and "Don't Break My Heart", which also helped the Black Panther band to rise to the top.
Then, after a brief period of personal life, Dou Wei began to work with the translation band, releasing "Auditory Hallucinations" (1999), "Rain Call" ((2006)) and, more recently, "Elephant" and "Monitor Room". Dou Wei, who walked with the translation band, the temperament of "immortal" was initially formed, and the ancient meaning was integrated into the melody, creating a sense of picture more like an ink painting.
In 1999, Dou Wei set up a "not necessarily band", and in 2006, Dou Wei and the unspecified band member Zhang Recommended to form a new band "different", compared with the four major pieces of the traditional band, the orchestras of these two bands are more diverse, improvisation has become their highlight, Dou Wei most of the musical concepts are practiced through these two bands.
The prototype of another group, "Twilight King Wen Wang", began in 2002 with the self-titled album "Twilight Liang Wen Wang", Wang Xiaofang's Yangqin and Wen Bin's keyboard jointly created a classical atmosphere that made the "ancient meaning" that Dou had always pursued more prominent, and under such a combination, the "Wen Wang Ti", "Wu Wang Ti" and "Shao Gong Ti" released in recent years were also called out.
In addition to the second, Dou Wei's temporary combination also includes FM3, which is more electronic experiments, and Chaojian who joined forces with Wen Zhiyong this time. Just a few words to define Dou Wei is always biased, post-friends, metal, ambient music... In Dou Wei's musical works over the past twenty years, various styles and genres have been mixed with each other, and then integrated into the spiritual core he has always adhered to, which constitutes his real musical territory.
When it comes to Dou Wei's musical world, "obscure and profound" seems to be the only impression. But is Dou Wei's music really as sensational titles of all sorts of people say, unattainable by mortals?
If you directly compare "Don't break my heart" sung by Dou Wei, who has long hair, with recent works, the current music has indeed long been out of the word pop. Whether it is "Rain Call", which is known as the Book of Heaven, or "The Golden Curse", which lasts nearly 50 minutes, its work itself has long since broken away from the fixed form of "song", and it is indeed not extravagant to be accepted by the public for a while. But jumping out of the original shackles, the world can find music masters who walk with him, and interesting samples such as "Monitor Room" and "RememberIng", there is no high threshold. The so-called gaoshen seems to be more like a high wall built by people who are not familiar with Dou Wei, which stops more listeners and holds Dou Wei into a god.
<h1>"I try to find a way of life that is natural and reasonable</h1>."
For other music festivals where musicians perform dozens of times a year, Dou Wei's appearance on the spot can only be unattainable. Dou Wei's most recent performance dates back to the 2018 Beijing Strawberry Music Festival, where a 50-minute performance will fully present a song called "The Curse of The Golden Curse". During the period, there was not a word, only "thank you, goodbye" to the audience at the end of the stage. In such an atmospheric scene as the music festival, perhaps no other musician can play with himself, but such pride is also the real Dou Wei.
In addition to his own music creation, cross-border film soundtrack is no longer a strange thing, from the small production film "My Favorite Snow Day", Dou Wei began to exert his fists in another field. Later, Dou Wei's name appeared on the subtitle list of 6 movies such as "Flower Eye", "Looking for a Gun", "Li Mi's Conjecture", and "Wuxia". A good soundtrack naturally adds color to the film itself, and the music itself sets the tone for the film's auditory experience, as Cao Baoping said when talking about the soundtrack of the movie "Li Mi's Conjecture", "Dou Wei is the first choice."
In addition to quietly throwing a few albums on the streaming platform every year, Dou Wei will also coldly cross the film soundtrack, become the final lineup of the music festival and even create the theme song "Return to the Magic Domain" for the mobile game. Let's not discuss the conflict between commercialism and artistic creation for the time being, but if we objectively evaluate the music itself, Dou Wei's several propositional creations have also delivered satisfactory answers. Naturally, there are people who put him on the altar behind his back, but judging from the comments on the Internet, more fans have stood in the position of understanding and appreciation.
<h1>Musician Dou Wei</h1>
He is the one who came out of Vanity Fair, and the person who actively distanced himself from the materialistic era will naturally be a little out of place. And pure music for ten minutes is placed in the network of fragmented information, and there are only a few resonators. People in the fast food era may have a hard time sinking down to listen to Dou Wei, but he is not worried, just a brain to create this way, do not consider the market, nor think about marketing.
He carries too many labels on his body, and bystanders may need labels to visualize an era, and Dou Wei himself once said, "The outside world has given me many labels, and I can't refuse these." I'm just a musician, a musician who focuses on making music, who focuses on what I think, real music. ”
So this time, we're just talking about "musician" Dou Wei.
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