#40: Garden in the Clouds
on 1pfani and Random's new joint EP, a blinding slice of bright, fuzzy, and romantic indie pop
Keeping it short this month!
1pfani & Random - 走向花園的橋
Escapism is central to cloud rap—the image supposedly responsible for the coinage of the term was a CGI castle in the clouds. No surprise then that the production mimics the figure in a mix of digital and celestial: its fuzzy synths make you feel like you’ve been rendered inside the clouds, the neutral, hazy atmosphere, like you’re floating in the sky. 1pfani (pronounced epiphany) and Random don’t aim for something nearly as luxurious or fantastical as a sky castle on 走向花園的橋 (Bridge to the Garden). The pair’s joint EP often grounds the cloud rap production, while adding splashes of colour. It sounds like an afternoon spent in a bright garden filled with tropical flowers.
1pfani folds into a deeper embrace of the atmospheric production and surrounding nature, compared to her 2020 EP, Epiphany. The indie pop singer might take a glossy sheen characteristic of cloud rap on a track like “瓢蟲” (“Ladybug”), but even hovering above the muffled beat, the world remains within view: “you pull me up and take me across this corner / flying through the sky, you carry me to look across the grassland.” While the flora hangs around the edges of Random’s production, the fauna occasionally rolls into focus. In between the thumping house beat of “把愛好好收著” (“Carefully Hold Love”) is the high-pitched chirp of birds, while “被淤泥覆蓋的心” (Heart Covered in Slime”) introduces itself with the buzz of beetles. Their world feels bright and alive.
Maybe it’s because 1pfani takes care to ensure these colours are made explicit: purple hanging on your left, red hanging on her right. There’s an ocean of golden flowers creeping in on the horizon. She paints the scenery with a deeper vibrancy than Random’s fuzzy production will allow. It’s as she turns her focus to a lover that she best understands the insularity. On “把愛好好收著,” she imagines the world built out of her lover. The clouds are made from his tears, the rainbows are painted using bursts of his negative feelings. Powering through the buoyant track, 1pfani sounds as if she could do anything: “give me all your pain and sorrow,” she commands, dressed with the tenderest smile.
These fragmented tracks can feel too sterile, too computer-generated to be real. The pounding beat of “把愛好好收著” attempts to spur a course correction for an increasingly distant relationship; the glassy atmosphere of “海一片金色花園” (“Sea of Golden Flowers”) feels like a world made too fantastic to fit real lovers. Perhaps it’s the second voice on “海一片金色花園” that makes most sense out of 走向花園的橋. Peaceful for a moment, he asks the hardest question for an on-and-off relationship: “let nature take its course, which way will you go?” His answer is swallowed in the wind, his voice garbled and abruptly cut off. 1pfani ignores any desire to respond, in favour of another tender offer to continue loving him, another experiment in attempting to make her bright, sunny indie pop thrilling, her field of flowers filled with colour. She keeps her garden immaculate.
Listen here: Apple Music // Spotify
Forsaken Autumn - “Snowy White Morning”
This is a moment so awkward that you forget time is still moving. The Chinese duo are still working at painting the bleariest mornings through crystalline dream pop, here, a pair of young lovers viewed through a frosted window. The drum beat feels like the most distinct figure: initially steady before it hitches like a sharp breath, the rhythm skews like two sides attempting to catch up with one another, two attempting to right the air. A cold room turns into a private void. “Inexplicably embarrassed / caught the breath we exhaled,” she sings with a sigh. Already she’s in the pattern of connecting the you and the I even as she’s caught up in her own clumsiness.
Trevor Kuo - “愛你愛到忘了自己”
Kuo performs like he’s building up to a proposal even when he can only imagine his lover is still there. The ballad is straightforward but hits at all the right notes: orchestral strings for the melodramatic chorus, a breezy section that cuts the accompaniment to make you understand the present emptiness. Largely lifted by that breathy voice, it makes yearning feel like a gargantuan weight—though the clean resolution feels a bit contrary to its heft.
LINION - “Tears in Water (a tucu saqemauqaung aken) [feat. Kivi]”
Something brilliant about how when it arrives at the first chorus, the titular phrase is shouted by LINION: “right now, I want to cry,” he sings in Paiwanese, borrowing from guest Kivi’s ethnic background, before switching to his native Mandarin, “I just want to cry and cry.” It feels like an extension on the bassist’s last project as he explores the difficulty in which masculinity and sensitivity coexist. Kivi’s voice sounds lovely, and as she takes her turn with the chorus, there’s some mutual learning in how she attempts to express the same release by performing the chorus in the same weary yell. The arrangement spirals from there, crashing drums courtesy of Canadian jazz musician Efa Etorama Jr., sparkling guitar melodies by LINION, and cleansing ad-libs from the pair of vocalists.
Wei Shiying - “Soulmate”
“I changed my name / I changed my body,” Wei Shiying sings. The music is equally transformative. Leaning bossa nova, it starts unassuming, just the breezy rhythm performed on guitar, before adding a flirty flute melody, later descending into a fully tropical arrangement. Towards the end, as the gap closes, it’s just her voice: “whenever I see you again / we are close than I thought / intimate,” she coos, sounding a bit like Enno Cheng. If you were expecting intimacy here, it’s instead something more individual. She improvises the rest like she’s kicking off her shoes, her hand extended as the piano line resolves.
Extra Listening
Halfway through the year and it’s shaping up to be one of the best years for Mandarin rap. This month alone, we’ve got: AnsrJ’s UGK—an homage to the American duo, although perhaps an accidental one—one of the better pop-facing rap projects of the decade, pulling from club rap sounds and ‘90s hip-hop; ZENBØ’s Caffeine, which definitely follows the sort of tasteful jazz-inflected rap Taiwanese rap pioneer Soft Lipa; and my favourite, one of the strangest things, the collaboration between rapper 西红 (Xi Hong) and electronic outfit CNdY, 荆棘拳 (Fist of Thorns), which sounds like a bunch of junkyard performance—frenetic rapping and the crushing sound of metal on metal.
One of the highlights of 荆棘拳 is a guest verse from PiNkChAiN, who released one of the most interesting albums of last year, 怎麼老是你 (How Old Are You goes the joke translation, Why Is It Always You goes the more appropriate one), which is unfortunately just a smidge too long at three hours. It’s this weird psychedelic jumble of thoughts and detours—give it a spin if you’ve got some free time (three hours of it).1 He’s got a new mixtape out now with Leo Wang and Japanese, now Taipei-based rapper Sogare, Wang PiNk Ryu Freestyle. Don’t think it measures up to his other work, but perhaps worth a listen nonetheless.
Joanna Wang, the Taiwanese indie pop sensation, has a new English album out. She’s modelled it after Kids in the Hall and its like a series of snippets as songs, weird and offbeat. Probably my favourite of her English albums as its silliness feels a lot looser than her previous ideas.
Everyone is all about Singer, a show where Na Ying—who seems to be fighting a losing battle unless Chinese nationalism ramps up or she decides to finally perform “Conquer”—is for some reason competing against Adam Lambert. They’re also all about Ride the Wind, formerly Sisters Who Make Waves, and whatever the hell its male counterpart is called. The cultural ubiquity of each is one of the strangest things to me when the results seem so goddamn futile. At least band shows made for interesting television, at least the Produce copycats made groups that actually did something. What are we doing here? Here’s American contestant Chanté Moore doing “Hello” (with a bridge made up of “Rumour Has It”) by Adele, except she changes the final chorus to “你好 from the other side.” Can’t help but charmed!
LINION and Diana Wang both did homegrown.
Chinese Football are going on a North American tour in October. Good band—Great band!
Golden Melody Award nominations are out now, with the ceremony to be held later on in the month, some thoughts on the main categories:
At the start of the nominations, the presenters are like, “we’d love to give CoCo Lee a lifetime achievement award, but unfortunately, she’s not Taiwanese.” Really seems like one of those things you’re better off not announcing!
Seen a lot of people annoyed with the nominations and I both agree and disagree with the sentiment: to me, there are two clear standout albums from last year, one of which is nominated here, the other painfully ignored across the board, and that much of the rest went by without leaving much of an impression—a rather unexciting year.
The Mandarin album of the year includes Yang Naiwen’s Flow, Xu Jun’s Open It, Fool and Idiot’s Posture (not on streaming anywhere), Accusefive’s We Will Be Fine, No Party for Cao Dong’s The Clod, and Jude Chiu’s Jude Chiu. This shortlist reaffirms the above notion but I do think some of these nominations are outright duds—Xu Jun, No Party for Cao Dong, and especially Accusefive released albums that felt like a step down from their previous albums.
My favourites from the other language categories are aoi’s Hái-Hái Jîng-Sing (Best Taiwanese Album), Chiu Shu-Chan’s Shape of Life (Best Hakka Album), and AZ’s PAMERICAH (Best Indigenous Language Album)—though that last one has a fair bit of Mandarin on it.
Normally the big Album of the year category is made by pooling together the four language categories. This year, they also threw in Paige Su’s You’ll Live Forever in My Songs and Elephant Gym’s The World, neither of which neatly fit in the four language categories; too English for the former, too English and Japanese for the latter (there is one Mandarin track, but it’s an updated version of an old one).
Song of the year category is Yang Naiwen’s “Sabotage (feat. Buddha Jump),” Fire EX.’s “Solo Dance at Midnight,” Accusefive’s “We Will Be Fine,” No Party for Cao Dong’s “Damn,” MC HotDog’s “The Landlord Upstairs,” and a-mei’s “Tristesse.” Think the Yang Naiwen and No Party for Cao Dong tracks are clearly the best, Accusefive again has no business being here, and that it’s really funny that the a-mei track is even included because I have absolutely no recollection of it.
Lexie Liu’s got a music video nomination for “delulu.” Track’s good, should have also got a song nomination. Think SHOU’s “Runner Runner” music video was really great. All cool, all cool, anyway, why is Japanese girl group ATARASHII GAKKO! nominated here?
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.
Also just learning now that he’s got another three hour album on Spotify! That’s not on Apple Music! If you make it through it, let me know how it is!