◎ Sword burn
The hedgehog band released a new concept album "Crow Valley - Dizzy Sentient Beings, Fate Connected Crow Valley - It's All Connected", as the tenth album of debut, the band will extend the creative perspective to the intersection of real society and the Internet world, with the combination of virtual and real "Crow Valley" as the place where the story takes place, with 12 songs to lead the audience to complete an "improper game" of offline life and Internet surfing with 12 songs. Listening to the entire album, you will clearly feel that this "hedgehog" has now shifted from the self-emotion of singing youth and ideals to a more complex and entangled collective emotion. Compared with the hedgehog that is familiar to the public and sings "A generation will eventually grow old, but there are always people who are young", this hedgehog now maintains a youthful spirit while looking at reality more courageously and with a sense of alienation to show the care of the times.
The "Crow Valley" was inspired by the ancient people who used crows to pass books over the air. Zhao Zijian, the lead singer of the band who turned programmers, combined his familiar Internet-based information society with the ancient crow biography today, and fictionalized a strange space called "Crow Valley". Here, all sentient beings are connected to each other and show their own postures as the main body. Unlike the full story concept album that is promoted by the fictional story protagonist according to the plot development, the "Raven Valley" constructed by ZiJian is more like a holographic society, and the 12 songs are like fragments randomly extracted from the information society.
With a crow cry, in "Chaos Open", we can enter the fantasy world of "hedgehog", the rhythm of drums and basses forms the musical foundation of "Crow Valley", Shi Lu's drums are full of kinetic energy and temperature as always, and the bass of a sail is low-key and does not fall. At the production level, the cooperation with the old partner Lu Xiwen was maintained to form the signature sound effect of "Hedgehog". "Creeping into the Dark Trail of Brutality" points to the other side of the utopian Internet, which is a mixture of desires that cathartic negative energies. In the era of rampant online hostility, Zijian wrote with his signature words, that is, the combination of abstract words, to dangle a little water from the sky above the qi. The musical darkness was alleviated in the following "Luckily We Still Have Music". The drum set is like a heavy punch on the cotton, pulsating and gentle. The voice whispered and chanted, "Reality is so determined, fortunately we still have music." "In a state of utter despair, music becomes the only outlet. In "The Right Player in the Unfair Game", the audience is pulled back to uneasiness and commotion, and the lyrics return from Chinese to English. As the representative band of "Beijing New Sound", the hedgehog band uses punk and noise pop as the main style of music, and the lyrics are first based on English lyrics. In this song, you can hear the vivid and angry hedgehog, and the hoarseness of Zi Jian singing "I have wasted too much time", which reminds people of American rock superstar Kurt Coburn, who has no choice but also a few who do not give up.
Look at the now torn Internet, on the one hand is the anxious inner volume, on the other side is the rotten lying flat. Online and offline, every ordinary you and I are constantly consuming ourselves. In "Flow Like Water", the hedgehog puts away his thorn to show peace. Zi Jian sang the most tender moment of the album: "Sighing life, hello." In "Wave Travel", the wave refers to the signal of the Internet, and the band continues to travel in the "Valley of the Crows". "Wave Tour Dialogue God's Palm Print" uses bilingual lyrics in Chinese and English, singing confusion and singing relief after pouring out confusion.
In an interview, Zijian once said that he would use the current influence of the hedgehog band to make some songs of social significance. "Echo of the Wind of Death from the Raven Valley Dungeon" is one such song. Inspired by the documentary "Belgian Child Killer", the song combines Zijian's own childhood abduction to give a voice to the victims of domestic violence. The long and gloomy bass line, the heavy dark black atmosphere, into the darkest moment of the entire album, after the sentence "I'll become a ghost forever singing in the winds", the victim becomes a ghost forever. "Hope • Quiet Fire" and "Still Alive • Enjoy this Moment" focus on Internet emotions, the former singing "They still won't give up any opportunity to destroy you", reflecting on the current internet violence in Internet social networking, and the latter using the slightly ridiculous and quite golden sentence potential of playful lyrics of "Rock and Roll is actually not as godly as the legend", writing the emo psychology of young netizens. The arrangement of "Halo Love Can Conquer Everything" is like a dream, too much external strife and inner self-consumption, which makes people upset, fortunately, we have love that can overcome everything, so as to complete the music therapy for decadence. The album ends in "Lost Crow Valley", "This chapter is over, but the book is not", ordinary daily life or carnival disorder of the Internet world, although lost in the Crow Valley, you still have to keep independent thinking, in the bustle and hustle and bustle to see the direction of the road.
The above is the fantasy roaming of "Crow Valley", starting from "Chaos Open", the interweaving of love and desire, there are scarred despair and redemption of love; there are accusations of facing online violence, there are also voices for victims of domestic violence; just like this, when the perspective of the "hedgehog" changes from the inner microscope to the wide-angle mirror of the information society, "I" go to "we", and in the music we share the same era.
In 2005, the band was formed in Beijing under the name of "Hedgehog", a three-person group of two men and one woman, with a bit of youthful playfulness in the manic mood, which was refreshing in the rock circle at that time. From the simplest three pieces of instrumental programming of rock and roll to trying to play more diverse instruments, from writing lyrics in pure English to using chinese and English lyrics together, they have not stopped the pace of creation. After that, starring in the music variety show "Summer of the Band", with the help of the east wind of platform traffic, they were able to successfully break the circle with "a generation will eventually grow old, but there are always people who are young", and gained attention that they had not had in the past. But business hasn't dampened the band's musical imagination, and they haven't nibbled on the "youth" and "ideal" traffic codes, and now this cloud-sounding "Crow Valley - Dizzy Beings, Fate Connected Crow Valley - It's All Connected" is a testimony to the creative ambition.
Unlike albums composed of singles, concept albums require a high degree of unity of lyrics and music. In terms of lyrics, Zi Jian's perspective is broad enough to try to speculate on many topics. Many of his psychological depictions can resonate with the audience, but the insight is slightly lacking in depth, and the discussion of Internet phenomena is not always in the bull's eye, but more personal feelings. Musically diverse enough to support different styles of songs. The band's bold blend of progressive rock on the musical roots of the past, coupled with environmental sampling, makes the listening effect richer and can be regarded as a breakthrough. Although they have been debuting for nearly 17 years, at this moment, they feel that this old hedgehog has always been new in their bones, and applaud their creative ambition and courage.