Having waded into "Emotional Forbidden Zone", Zeng Yike went down a path that is not often chosen in the new album "Burning" in 2021.
Climbing with the altitude, in the gradually thinning air, witnessing the change of vegetation, feeling the temperature drop, burning emotions deep and shallow on the road, step by step to the top of her personal mileage.
"Love" is the name of this misguided path. Whether he can cross this wrong path is exactly the way Zeng Yike can test whether he has "lived" as Thoreau said.
Zeng Yike's album narrative is "love-only".
Such "solipsism" balances an opposing relationship.
The cold and cold appearance is not in harmony with the affection and the inside of "Hot", in the contrasting temperature, such love burns the skin ("skin"), which is a kind of prayer to the lover "Let me see the crazy you".
And this opposition, but secretly, "this cold and lonely shell", only in the "Anatomy" moment can reveal the truth that "its heart has also burned".
The keyboard's obedient tone gradually occupies the magpie's nest at the last minute, replacing the rough sound of the guitar - the tense dynamic relationship between the instruments, and it is not the emotional self, each other, or the mutual game between multiple parties.
Such "solipsism" confronts a cruel environment.
Zeng Yike sensitively captures the real details of modern urban life like "Machine". "Smog shrouded", "gray space", "virus invasion"... In this dark background, she chose to make a mysterious and stubborn "DancerInThe Dark".
"Sweet Talk" is a commodity that has long been removed from the shelves of convenience supermarkets, and for a moment, "Sexual Encounter" is destined to decay quickly, and the joy it brings cannot withstand the eternal loneliness. The numb "everyone" has lost its real sense of the flesh and no longer needs to "see is believe", and "Rumors" has become a bestseller sold on the screen of the mobile phone.
Such "solipsism" reveals a resolute existence.
Not afraid to show the dependence in feelings, Zeng Yike's ethereal voice with a simple piano playing, singing the feelings like "Kapok" "need soil needs nutrients" as pure. As the piano gradually rushed and the drums sounded densely, this love became an inner pull that clearly "can't leave you" but "said I didn't want you".
The more passionate the love, the more divided the fear of the heart, and in such irreconcilability, I had to protect myself and make a cruel prejudgment in my feelings: "You'llbeleavingme". The distortion of the guitar and the longing sound and the dark background of the bass are composed of musical sentences, almost tearing the heart and lungs of the inner entanglement, and Zeng Yike's slender voice line constitute the split in two halves of emotion.
In Anti! After Yico" and "Emotional Forbidden Zone", Zeng Yike more skillfully grasped the "fangshu" of music production, and the "aesthetic" of song creation was more realistic.
In the 2021 album "Burning", Zeng Yike wanted to express the sense of story, not simply from the lyrics. After carrying the role of "producer" of the entire album, he included a variety of styles such as alternative, electronic, rock, and fantasy pop in ten songs, and built a personal style of blazing independent sound.
Rich instrumental arrangement, the choice of timbre, the creation of a sense of space, the sense of breathing presented one by one between the melodies... It is completely separated from the standardization of popular music. Zeng Yike grasped the temperament and form of the entire album, reached the musical control of "the unity of form and god", and also broke through a threshold about personal identity.
After the fusion of "fangshu" and "aesthetics", Zeng Yike's expression of love can be through the medium in space, and dots, pieces, and faces fall in the forest, illuminating the path of every listener.
This is not a path that is often chosen, but it is the path of Zeng Yike.