#38: ODD
on the rapper's berserk new album, GRANDSTAND, a jumble of ideas in electronic riffs, looped mantras, and mania
I meant to do this last month—well, I meant to do this the month before—but it slipped my mind. Here’s some stuff I’ve written this year, most of which is written with other people:
I wrote about some of my favourite K-pop tracks from last year for Kayla’s Pop Excellence K-pop singles list. The results are probably to be surprising—probably one of the dullest years for K-pop in a while, the best of which seems to revolve around one group—but a lot of fun writing with friends on this and you can really tell the care Kayla put into it.
I wrote about Mom’s “Bad Days on Fire,” off one of my favourite albums from last year, for the friends feature on my favourite newsletter, Ryo’s This Side of Japan.
I wrote a two blurbs for Tone Glow, hardest working (and best) newsletter right now, on NÂN’s XT-TX and Murumba Pitch’s Isidalo.
(Read my friends’ work—they’re the best.)
Lastly, I started a new blog! I’ll be writing about the top one hundred or two hundred Chinese albums of all-time, very sporadically, very much long-windedly. Right now, there are three posts up, including last month’s on Totally Giving Up by Na Ying. It’s going to be a long-term project that I probably won’t promote much at all—I’ll just get an occasional post whenever I get a chance to write. I really like the flipcard format and think it’ll be a lot of fun as it gets filled out.
ODD - GRANDSTAND
Chen Sijian has done the reality television circuit—perhaps one too many rounds of it—but the rapper’s music proves he has more ideas than ambition. Like any musician hoping to make a career out of performing, Chen appeared on survival shows prior to releasing his debut album: at just nineteen, he was a contestant on the first season of the The Rap of China; later that year, he’d appear on the first season of idol survival show, Youth By You, finishing just outside the final lineup. He’d return for the third season of The Rap of China, but this time, perhaps as a means of promoting his debut album, 这里没有大人!!! (There Are No Adults Here!!!).
As its title might imply, 这里没有大人!!! sounds like a teenager tasting freedom, like a kid running through an empty candy store—though the album’s electronic show better suggests a flashy club as its setting: Chen recruits the stately singer Huang Qishan and electronic producer FACEVÔID in what sounds like something ripped from a manyao mix. Chen continued to experiment with these electronic textures across his second album, but the results feel like someone curious and tentative rather than an oddball maniac. On “ICARUS FALLS (2021.7.14 22:14)” off of FALL FLAT, the synths that decorate its standard boom bap beat are occasional and relegated the background, their flat sheen is pretty, but undemanding. For his third album as ODD, GRANDSTAND, it’s as if he’s throwing everything at the wall, not waiting to see what will land but forcing it all to stick, glued together with a hyper manic energy.
Perhaps the album’s opening one-two punch best exemplifies this spirit. On “BE PULLED DOWN,” Chen raps about doomsday over industrial noise, his voice coated in autotune as he’s surrounded by thrashing guitars and pounding drums. The opener is stuffed with ideas, including a chanted warning in Hungarian—“but my friend,” he intones, “despair is just as deceiving as hope”—and a freakout built on the sound of metal clashing against metal and the glissando of plinky keys. “NORMAL NORMIE” is even more gripping. “I’m normal,” Chen repeats, the phrase in Mandarin awkward and choppy on the tongue. The track oozes like a glob of sludge as it spews noise and folds in on itself. But still, the rapper lets out a scream, revving forward, rather than being crushed inward. The track’s gradual collapse is thrilling with flashy displays like a rapid and brief set of kick drum triplets that act as a shot of dopamine.
ODD is at the top. His assertion that he’s normal isn’t about putting himself on equal ground, but that he’s in the right state of mind. Only on “NOITATIDEM” (“meditation” backwards), does he attempt to pull himself back a step. It’s an exercise in what he calls negative mindfulness, his words full of vitriol as he directs that at himself: “you want people to like you,” he sneers, before laughing it off, “do you even deserve it?” This feels like a practiced regulation. His performance passes from cold and conversational to the drawled showiness of a traditional priest before the ending arrives with him just attempting to remember his script. Purposefully, it’s paired beside GRANDSTAND’s most dizzying track, “CHINESE MONEY SPELL,” where bitpop synths and other dial-up era sound-effects put his dirtbag brags in conversation with the low-pitched growl of an advertising salesman.
“TOO MUCH OF A ***”1 initially sounds like a reprieve from the noisiness of the industrial noise of its openers. Just the strum of an acoustic guitar before the noise creeps in, the glitchy electronic beeps and synths the warped musings of Chen’s voice. “My manhood is probably a woman,” Chen sings, and the diversion from its starting point feels like a euphoric embrace of his different sides. Unlike previous experiments that felt tentative, Chen doesn’t sound cautious but his beat-hopping seems to move on his whim. Produced by BRAINFREEZE’s clef, you can just trace the patterns before they disappear—a four-on-the-floor manyao thumper, a UK Garage beat—before they trail out of the song’s picture. GRANDSTAND is constantly morphing; not just shifting beat patterns, but ODD himself. On “I LOVE KINDERGARTEN,” his voice jumps higher and higher in pitch until it truly sounds like a child-led campfire singalong. At its peak he admits, “I’m afraid of forgetting / afraid of missing out / I’m afraid.” “Can time go slower?” he ponders, before listing a bunch of elementary school drilled rules, his voice shredded and distorted again. Even on “NOBODY ASKED YOU,” despite being just the same titular phrase repeated ad nauseam, the song powers through glittery synths and harsh pyrotechnics, its resolution sounding like a system rebooting.
Surfing over the noise, GRANDSTAND is ODD’s way of finding paradise in the delirium without losing himself to it. He savours the feeling of constant chaos, of bending to his urges and whims. The album’s closer is one final miniature epic, the tumultuous sound of thorny pop rock and energizing synths clashing together before he takes it into a stadium singalong. “Once again, I feel free,” he shouts above the crowd. One last triumphant fist pump before he has to remind himself to breathe.
Listen here: Apple Music // Spotify
Singles: “TOO MUCH OF A ***”
toe, Cheer Chen & OOG - “Looonely”
Fortune Coookie Records—founded by Buddha Jump guitarist Howe Chen and behind-the-scenes personnel HLK and Ziya Huang—have been releasing a string of cross-national collaborations, now compiled together as Overseas Calls, Vol 1. The label’s had a knack for pairing together interesting sets of artists—Sweet John pianist and vocalist MANDARK, Japanese producer De De Mouse, and South Korean singer-songwriter Crystal Tea are a fascinating billing, with a sweet, electrifying track in “Merry Go Round”—but “Looonely” might be their most head-turning assembly. A dreamy indie pop remix by anonymous Taiwanese producer OOG of the Japanese math rock band toe’s “Kodoku no hatsumei,” with feather-light vocals by Cheer Chen. OGG drowns out the intense clatter of the drums with a glossy pastel palette, while still letting that bright guitar riff remain fully intact. And then there’s Cheer Chen, sounding just as young as she did twenty years ago, cooing in wisps and breathy sighs. “But I have a crush on you,” she hums, sounding free of nerves despite having previously unloaded all her anxieties. It sounds like first bloom.
LIU KOI - “what 4”
With his debut album, LIU KOI treated club sounds with the intimacy of a quiet night in rather than a sweaty, anonymous dance. It’s the same on “what 4,” his voice often just barely above a whisper as he reckons with the anxiety of realizing deeper feelings. “What about you?” he asks, “what would you do?” The question is laid out over sharp triplet kicks on the track’s bridge as if voicing it aloud has sent his heart into overdrive. When the beat returns to something familiar in a soft thump paired with sweet and playful bitpop synths, it’s as if LIU is attempting to set his head on straight. “I’ve been so cynical turns on its head: “I won’t be cynical,” he promises, the lovelorn delivery coming with the same rush as when the song was nothing more than an anxious thought.
Ginger - “像是中了你的毒”
Ginger wants this to build to some massive payoff: the ticking time of the intro, the passing mention of danger, the question of “why haven’t I seen his face?” Her realization sounds like it arrives on a small scale—her voice doesn’t stray from that sweet lilt—but it’s the appreciation that life could always be like this. She’s found her worldview shifted: “I seem to have been poisoned by you / happiness can’t be hidden again,” Ginger sings. “像是中了你的毒” (“Like Being Poisoned By You”) is the realization of how a crush changes you.
Lil RAD - “我明白即使挽回你也不會在 (feat. DD)”
By the second verse, the rapper already sounds utterly defeated, his heavily-processed vocal melody only just treading water over the hollow drums. “Every day I think about what I should do if you left me / the nights without you are like a dream dyed dark,” he croons. “I understand that even if I save you, you won’t be here,” goes the title, goes the first line, but you can’t stifle that desire nor can the understanding make it easy. The pair kick into overdrive by the song’s last legs, their emo-rap production moving into punk territory: Lil RAD and DD’s voice overlap into screams and autotuned wails; the drums and guitars fire off just as intensely. Fitting the order of what dies out, their voice, the pain, the sound of a heartbeat, then finally, the piano.
Extra Listening
It’s been a while since I’ve found my attention captured by anything that strictly falls under the idea of adult contemporary in Mandopop, but Xian Zi’s latest, Sunset Odyssey, is frequently gorgeous, switching between dramatic string arrangements and dreamy productions. The clear highlight has to be “Sofa Lounger”—a twinkling city pop-esque number with bright synths and horns—but “Indigo Twilight” features some really lovely harmonies and subtle call-and-response melodies with singer-songwriter Zheng Xing.
Yoga Lin released his first album in eight years and it sounds like a Christian album.
Yu Ching—half of the Berlin-based duo Aemong—has her upcoming second album, The Crystal Hum.
LAY, from EXO—apart from reportedly having a Korean album on the way (?)—seems to somehow have got a reality show? where he’s got five international girl groups doing random stages? I don’t know either, here’s Malaysian girl group, DOLLA, performing a Spanish song. Watch more here if you want.
Yuehua Entertainment group, BOYHOOD, announced their second mini album last October. And then announced a delay, the day it was supposed to release. Almost six months later, it’s finally out. The song is fine, but I’ll probably spend more time wondering why they delayed a three-song project half a year when they had already released a highlight medley and a music video teaser (both of which suggest no further editing was done). What a rush! Truly a company known for their self-sabotage.
Sandy Lam has a new song out. It’s pretty. But don’t think of it as her comeback. It’s part of a series called Incomplete Rescue Manual, with additional artists contributing, including George Chen, Cheer Chen, Sandee Chan, and more and more and more.
Find the latest Canto Wrap and Mando Gap playlists on Spotify and me on Twitter here.
Really bad English translation for this track—the music video uses the title “He Likes a Girl,” which also isn’t really it, especially when the track is about rejecting Chen’s masculinity and feeling more aligned with the traditional “feminine” characteristics