“Bridges” part 2, new album out now.

Cover photo by Christopher Héry http://christopherhery.fr

This is the second part of “Bridges”, a double album dedicated to the electric zhongruan, an instrument created by Djang San.

“Bridges” part 1 and 2, as well as the former album “Tofu électrique” are based on an idea of an evolution of music.

By modernizing ancient Chinese instruments through electrification, the goal is to change the fate of these instruments, and to use what’s considered as the past to create new music for the present and the future.

This is not only a cross over between past and future, this is also a cross over between musical styles and between World cultures and civilizations.

The goal of that music is to create new ideas and open the mind of the listener to new possibilities in culture and art.

As we live in a globalized economy, we also live in a more and more globalized culture.

Globalizing culture doesn’t necessarily mean destroying one for the benefit of another, it can also mean sharing points of views and integrate those cultures into one another.

All the songs on this album are played using the zhongruan at the center of each of the songs. In every song the instrument is put in different musical situations in order to create something new.

Track 1: Music Baozi:

“Music Baozi” could be considered to be a sequel to “Music dumpling”, a track released in 2014 on the album “Music Dumplings”.This is an electronic track mixing synthesizers and electric distorted zhongruan.

Track 2: Shenme Shi:

This is a new version of a song I have been playing for more than ten years now, a track I have composed in 2002, one of the first to be a crossover in between Western folk-rock and Chinese folk. This is a rockier version of the song.

Track 3: An Italian in Beijing:

Improvised on the first day of recording of this album by the band playing together, this song is the “part 2” of “Someone else”, a song from the “Bridges” (part 1) album. The lyrics of the song also were completely improvised in Italian, on the spot, by bass player Steno.

Track 4: A Bridge to the Moon:

Improvised on the second day of recording as I was alone in the studio, this track is inspired by European classical music and Mongolian folk, it is once again a bridge between cultures and music styles.

Track 5: She said:

This track was inspired by the music of bands such as Cabaret Voltaire, Joy Division, New Order, Dépêche Mode, Kraftwerk and more bands which were creating a music revolution from 1975 to the early 1980’s, using more synthesizers in the music. Here, the zhongruan sound is highly inspired by synthesizer sounds and the sound of the synthesizer mixes with the zhongruan sound.

Track 6: Tsigane Anoushka:

Tsigane Anoushka is a song I have learnt from Chinese folk band “The Wild Children” in 2002 as I was playing in their bar, “The River” every wednesday night in the now destroyed South Sanlitun street. The band would play there almost every weekend and I got the chance to share musical and traveling experience with them. I later discovered this song is a gypsy music standard played all over Central Asia and in Russia, I even discovered an African version of it a few weeks ago.

Tsigane Anoushka is the name I have given to it, but this song has many different names. This is my electric zhongruan version of it.

Track 7: Gobi (version 2):

This is a different version of Gobi, a track about wandering in the desert that we always try to play slightly differently at every concert. On this version of the track I have added synthesizers and noises and pushed the sound of the zhongruan a bit.

About the cover:

The photo on the cover of this album was taken by artist and photographer Christopher Héry somewhere in France.

Visit his website here: http://christopherhery.fr

On the cover, their are 8 “Bridges” Chinese characters represented by the character “桥”. One of these represents the album and the concept as a whole, while the 7 others represent each of the 7 tracks.

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I sincerely hope you will like this album in which I put all my heart as every time.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions !

More music will be released soon again !