Expo gets electronic jolt

• Source: Global Times
• [13:44 May 31 2010]
• Comments

 

Dave Liang performs at Boston University. Photo: Courtesy of Megan Vanison

By Huang Xi

With everyone and their brother trying to cut out their slice of the Shanghai Expo pie, the Chinese-American music producer Dave Liang is celebrating the debut of his album eXpo, a compilation of some of China's best electronic music stars.

The music, from 10 independent musicians in China, is much different from anything Liang has previously done.

His early music combined traditional Chinese instruments and hip-hop with electronic music to produce albums like The Shanghai Restoration Project, Story of a City, Zodiac and Afterquake.

eXpo, which can now be downloaded online, has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual Expo, but Liang thinks that the Shanghai Expo is a perfect moment to showcase works from Chinese electro-artists. Red Mushroom is the only work in this album that Liang remixed.

"It is like a folk song conveying the composer's love and life to the listeners, but I think that the bass is too direct and too simple. It should be more powerful," commented Meng Mengqi, a music editor who graduated from Wuhan Conservatory of Music and majored in electronic music.

 

Making a splash

Liang was born in the US, and graduated from Harvard University majoring in applied mathematics and economics. He showed interest in music at a young age, always watching his mother playing the Chinese zither and participating in musical activities in high school and college.

Liang first came to Shanghai in 1997, when he watched a show with local musicians playing American jazz with ornate Chinese instruments and lyrics at the Peace Hotel.

"Hearing the exotic combination made me fall in love with the city and its story instantly," he recalled. And he decided to show the development of art in China through his music.

He set up his own label, The Shanghai Restoration Project (SRP) in 2007 and soon garnered fans and support.

Many fans asked why he uses "restoration project" in the name of the label. Liang said that he wants to "bring back the magnificent fusion of the original Shanghai jazz bands."

"Miss Shanghai," the most popular song on the first namesake album The Shanghai Restoration Project, has been extremely popular on online video streaming sites.

Afterquake is another album which made SRP famous in China and the West. Liang went to the southwest of Sichuan Province in March, 2009, with his friend Abigail Washburn, who had been to Sichuan several times before the devastating earthquake in 2008.

They stayed at villages under the Emei Mountain for three weeks, recording the sounds of houses being reconstructed and children singing.

Back in the US, Liang remixed the records with electronic elements and generated the album, which came to the market in May of 2009, in memory of the 1st anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake.

 

Hope and hardships

Like any other artist, Liang also experienced hardship at the start. Liang worked as a consultant after graduating from Harvard.

He quit to further his dreams in music three years later. "I didn't ask for a single cent from my parents. My father worried about my future when I told him my decision, and so did my mother," said Liang.

"But the company promised that it would take me back in three years if I got a master's degree. Parents in China, you know, care about backups."

He concentrated on music but things did not always work out. He taught math in order to earn money when he started to run out of cash.

"I spent two hours on the subway between Manhattan and Queens to teach, but I wrote lots of lyrics on the subway."

He also worked in Warner Music, a leading music company in the US. "It was not about music creation but was related to business," Liang said.

The two-year work experience in this music giant gave Liang rich experience in the music biz, broadening his musical horizons.

Liang said that he appreciated the "emotional support" from his parents and said that if his child wants to go into something they love in the future, he will definitely give them emotional support rather than financial support.

"But I don't have children yet," he laughed.

When asked what he would have done if he had failed in music, he said: "I don't know, but I still would have done something related to music."