How to introduce Yang Li is a difficult problem.
If I say that he graduated from the Ukrainian Tchaikovsky Conservatory, one of the eight major conservatories in the world, majored in vocal performance, and has a very high vocal range of C4, many people will definitely think of the names of singers such as Vitas and Dimahi. What I remember with such a high pitch is always a gorgeous stage and a structured formal dress, and the image and voice are as high as the voice, which is what a big star should look like.
However, Yang Li was not like this.
Yang Li is very good at singing, but in his musical world, singing is not a one-way street, a path that ultimately only reaches C4. Yang Li's music world is more like a castle, which has pop, classical, rock, gothic, folk songs, folk songs, and those casual interpretations. Yang Li's stage is not the stage of singing in the narrow sense, but a broader space, which includes the street, the years and the heart.
Have you ever seen a singer with a gorgeous high pitch, but still from the perspective of a humble "little waste character", observing the world and reflecting on his heart?
This is precisely what sets the EP album "Little Wasted People" apart. Although Yang Li's vocal performance in it can be called a voice actor, he is not performing skills, but using techniques to synchronize the magnificence of the work. If you only pay attention to the external aspects of the range and scale, then you are right about the wrong focal length.
From a humanistic point of view, "Little Wasted People" is very similar to the albums of Zheng Zhihua's "Single Escape" and "Fallen Angel", and the album as a whole has a dark black tone that is thick enough to be indissoluble. The reason why it is dark is because of the humility and sensitivity of the little people. After all, the inner world of a little person who is always radiant is certainly abnormal.
Of course, the upgrading and progress of technology has also allowed Yang Li's "Little Wasted People", in terms of musical performance, to break through the humanistic feelings of the combination of songwriting and singing in the early years, but to integrate humanistic feelings and musical techniques, echo and interact with each other, and finally stir the heart into echoes, and connect the heart songs into suites.
"Waste" can be said to be the fulcrum type song of the whole album. With gothic as the atmosphere, combined with opera rock, when the high pitch of the colorful and the shouts of the roar collide with each other, isn't it exactly every little person, there will always be that kind of excitement in the heart? It's just that Yang Li used a technique that transcended the ordinary to express this kind of soul sound.
The theme or song title of "waste" is not only a kind of self-deprecation, but also a kind of inspiration, and it can be said that all the small people who are struggling and trying to go upstream should have a value. Only by knowing that you are a "waste" can you know your shortcomings and strengths better, and can you really live like a character.
"Rhapsody of Little People" uses a three-beat waltz beat to find a brisk release outlet for the darkness of "Waste". Works that resemble life and work are not uncommon in contemporary times, but it is rare to express them in this magical way of arranging music, especially in combination with the interpretation of brilliant treble. Sometimes, against life, it is not necessarily simple and rough rock music, but also in such a playful and dramatic way, presenting a different kind of wonderful willow and dark flowers.
Out of the Gothic atmosphere of "Deep Alley", even if there is no special element used in the arrangement, the temperament of Yang Li's voice line makes this small song have a taste of world music. But even in the most colorful part, Yang Li's voice is not natural, that is, the kind of unreal voice. His voice still maintains enough pyrotechnic smell, like the legendary earth, equally wonderful but belonging to the human world.
Yang Li's "Little Wasted People" is also a highly completed album, it is not an album in which the songwriting and arrangement are particularly prominent, but they are combined in a process way. It can be said that although there are rock, gothic, opera and other elements in the album, whether it is "Waste" or "Rhapsody of Little People", or "Nest" and "Joker Mentality", the album is not only in the arrangement, but also has a high degree of creativity, and a real sense of originality.
And producer Wang Yusheng in this album, but also really penetrated into all of Yang Li's works, like the guitar Riff in "Joker Mentality", like the extension and echo of Yang Li's vocal part, more like a harmony of existence, which also makes the whole album musical, like a synthesis.
It is not the wind and snow of humanistic craftsmanship, nor the dream and original intention of the philosophy of success, Yang Li's "Little Wasted Characters" is a group portrait of small characters completed by one person. But Yang Li's music is not giving up treatment, although there is grayness, although there is self-deprecation, but between the words and lines of music, it is always in a seemingly negative gap, bringing the positive that comes to Japan, this feeling is like the one sung by Beyond in the past... "The mentality of not dying lives to old age."
From "Intro" and from "Outro", the entire album of "Little Wasted People" is like Yang Li using a combination of vocals and music to guide the listener to a secret, dark little person's inner world. This is not a brilliant big show, but a set of slightly gray rhapsody of small people, so that everyone can feel that the world of small people can be ordinary, but it cannot be mediocre.