To begin with a frank confession, today's article has my selfish intentions. Because I have always paid attention to Yin Yuke, and personally appreciate his previous works, I want to recommend it to you at the first time when I see him release a new album.
After listening to the entire album of "What Are You Laughing At" in its entirety, I feel that this selfishness is completely justified, and it really deserves to be recommended to more people.
Yin Yuke's new album "What Are You Laughing At". No disappointment. It's something I'd like to see in this market. Be free, self-centered, and fully engaged. This is the feeling I wrote down on Weibo after I first listened to it, which represents my extremely excited mood.
On the one hand, this excitement stems from the joy of hearing Yin Yuke's studio album again, his last album "Bathroom and Pacific" was three years ago. On the other hand, because of the convincing performance of "What Are You Laughing At", it made me hear the most typical Yin Yuke, and the atypical music that was most different from the market routine.
If you don't know Yin Yuke, you may not be interested in "the most typical Yin Yuke". But I believe that "the most different from the market routine of the atypical music" will definitely stimulate your curiosity, after all, there are too many new generations of singers to launch the so-called "new music" actually makes our aesthetic fatigue, really different music is scarce. You naturally wonder, what is the difference between his work?
This brings us to the cleverness of What Are You Laughing at. Its difference is not made bluntly, but is amplified and expanded based on the singer's own temperament. Especially after the previous "Bathroom and the Pacific" was completely laid out, the difference in "What Are You Laughing" is enough self-consistent.
The style here is different. Compared with the explicit classification, the choice in the album is to completely let go, the musical elements are complex, not stuck to a specific category, and the only thing that can be summarized is "alternative". The singing here is different, Yin Yuke's vocals are not so much singing as they are telling, and the period is full of various life-like sound processing. The structure here is different, specifically it can include: the song format, which has broken the conventional paragraph setting and fully developed an unfettered expression, and a song can be regarded as a self-contained monologue or a wild "gibberish". Sound design, the heavy use of harmony in the song, prompting the vocals to become elements that can be well interacted with the instrument, so that the sound structure of the song is unique.
Then there's the overall structure of the album. Similar to Bathroom and The Pacific, What Are You Laughing at is a conceptual structure that emphasizes the text and musical connections between the songs, especially the transitions. This directly determines the appeal of the album to serve a full narrative, it does not need to highlight one or two songs, but focuses on the overall arrangement. The intention of "What Are You Laughing At" is like a fictional literary work, and it seems to be a lot of delicate thoughts derived from real life. In short, it is a coherent experience of following the song transition to complete the step-by-step change of scenery.
This experience is naturally far more fulfilling and rich than the feeling of listening to a single.
That's why it's "something I want to see in this market." We can't do without FMCG entertainment pop music, and naturally deserve to have a full and rich "alternative" music.
Don't get me wrong about "alternative", I'm not saying that the music on the album is blindly weird and experimental, it's just an expression of the unique attributes of Yin Yuke's work. Moreover, while showing the extraordinary, it can also ensure a good listening feeling, such as "I am really strange, strange" and other songs have EDM-style smooth melody and clear rhythm. As mentioned above, the album is extremely open to the use of musical elements, and there is no hard limit to pop or non-pop.
Of course, my main point is to say these keywords: wanton, self-sufficient, fully engaged. Some might mention that these are not so special. My thoughts: Yin Yuke is just 22 years old. It's rare to be able to do all of this in a musical composition at such a young age. And he did not fall into the formal circle, did not stay on the surface, resulting in a hollow appearance. He behaved quite credible. Wanton, self-ego, fully engaged, what they have in common is that they cannot be expressed through "acting", that is, they cannot be rigid, they must be natural. From this point of view, Yin Yuke highlights the integration of the most authentic self into the album, not delicate and not exaggerated. In this way, he is infinitely close to the essence of musical interpretation.
About arbitrariness.
Arbitrariness is more extreme than freedom. This time, "What Are You Laughing At" is further than "Bathroom and Pacific", and there are more extensive attempts to explore styles, while Yin Yuke not only sings but also completes the creation independently, which determines his arbitrary ability to connect the two dimensions of text and sound. Here we focus on the arbitrariness of the text, in fact, there is a visual embodiment from the title of the song, "A message that will make you crazy when you see it", "I am really strange, strange", "Be a thief", "I, it's over"... Extremely fragmented, colloquialism is distinct, as straightforward and casual. The lyrics are more thoroughly expressed, there is a kind of relaxation that jumps out of the rules of the format, and thinks of what to write. Such an essay-style creative approach proves that Yin Yuke's sensitivity and sensitivity, small things in life and sudden whim at a certain moment can become the motivation for creation. This maintains vividness and vividness to the greatest extent, and Yin Yuke's creations, like his human voice color, are highly suitable for his original state.
As a result, his textualism will be significantly "unfathomable," i.e., you can't predict what he's going to sing next based on what you're hearing now. Very random, very accidental. In the context of the song, this also shows that he is extremely spiritual in terms of creation, and these daily text narratives do not lack a musical sense that fits the melody.
Experimenting with independent composition in What Are You Laughing At is an important step, which clearly advances Yin Yuke's development into a singer-songwriter. Thus ensuring that his works are the most authentic of himself.
About the self.
Let's start with his singing. For a long time, my personal judgment is that Yin Yuke's singing mode is an extension of the original vocal state as a whole: typical thin voice, strong sense of youthful voice, and then with the help of upper nasal cavity resonance, creating a sense of ethereal magnetism, in the specific singing will also increase the emotional factor through the air sound and convey the Dream-pop-pop empty inspiration through false voice. You listen carefully to "All for You, Okay?" The vocal characteristics mentioned are all exuberant. The ego depends first and foremost on the subject position of the voice. Moreover, his singing is difficult to summarize in a regular way, just as his idea of writing melodies will always have unexpected changes, and the changeable voice uses a very changeable emotional state like Yin Yuke's own. In the case of "My Heart Is Dead", the vocal output from the beginning to the ear will never anticipate the rapid biting "rap" in the later part, and the vocal samples of the sudden daily dialogue with the father are also used to increase the level of change during the promotion of the song.
Singing, harmony, sampling, and a variety of imaginative sound designs allow Yin Yuke's self-reality to be projected into the song. On the basis of the self, the vocals of "Fairy Voice Boy" made a breakthrough in the album, and in songs such as "There is Something in the Wardrobe" and "I, It's Over", his vocals play a mysterious and psychedelic texture.
About total commitment.
"What Are You Laughing At" is a work that pays attention to the sense of presence, whether it is concept shaping or arranging and creating, it is against the three-dimensional scene. The different musical forms between different songs enrich the possibilities of the scene, they tell a story, and the soundstage they create is immersive. I'm going to say this to emphasize that enjoying this album requires everyone's full commitment. This is also where the album shows its strengths, not staying at the level of satisfying pure hearing, but rising to the level of all-round perception.
My personal feelings include "A Letter to the God of Sleep" and "Reconciliation with the World" two songs. To say that there is not much investment at the level of arrangement, but the atmosphere of real susceptibility is obvious, and this atmosphere is mixed with diverse feelings, there are profound, fragile, light, and joyful, that is, Yin Yuke's multiple emotional colors at this moment are interacting. The core of my so-called full devotion is yin Yuke's true color as a main line character.
Not a kind of singer who is extroverted, his dedication to interpreting works is completely as undistracted as active in his own world. In this way, he solves the problem that young singers are easy to distinguish between technology and expression in singing, and he does not use technology to express, but because he is full of desire to express and freely exerts vocal expression. When I first released the first single "Slow Pace in the World" after joining Taihe Music, I predicted that as a new generation of singers in the partial Vocal system, in the future, he is expected to become the Vocal director in the market. Coming to the album "What Are You Laughing At", my thought this time is that Yin Yuke's Vocal ability shows more than a deliberate vocal function, but a feeling that fits his own temperament, because of the mood and changeable, the nature of his singing is a dynamic and vivid feeling.
Coupled with the involvement in diversified musical styles and the balance of singing and composing ability, Yin Yuke is building music in a three-dimensional way. Now it can be said that in the music constructed by the album "What Are You Laughing At", we have experienced the characteristic musical aesthetic, the unique musical thinking, and the unfettered imagination.
So what will be the direction of the road ahead? In my opinion, Yin Yuke can fully become a new generation of Indie temperament musicians.