COL, Pt.5, 6 (Live at Mako, Beijing on July 7, 2012)

Sichuan-based musician Baishui’s ninth album, Diary of Broken Sounds, follows quickly on the release of his first full-length soundtrack album, Einstein and Einstein. Both albums, though quite distinct, remain important signposts on the road to understanding the artist’s perpetual search for the optimal form of artistic expression. 

If Einstein’s overall feel is a heavy yang, Diary goes yin with a lighter, yet still full, sound. Though electronics are an essential part of Diary, the feeling is distinctly unplugged, in stark contrast to recent forrays into post-rock and experimental music. Diary, in short, takes a minimalist approach to the artist’s very maximalist goal: the pursuit of a new music—“Baishui Music”—with an Eastern core. 

Chimes and flutes float playfully across wide-open expanses; static-like sounds pierce the bed created by carefully-plucked strings evoking both old-time blues and new-age soundscape with an overall ambient-world-music vibe that is equal parts meditative and playful. For brief moments, the listener is rewarded with the haunting vocals of long-time collaborator Yuan Tian, transporting both music and audience to points far above ground and back in time. 

Diary is the artist’s journey—and, as listeners, we are along for the ride—through a freshly-carved yet still-to-be-fully-mapped-out terrain: “Baishui Music.” 

all music by baishui 
instruments,sounds,produced,mixed by baishui 
mastered by luo keju 
vocal & art work by yuan tian

Jihe, pt. 2

Jihe, pt. 1

Deji, pt. 2

Ziyi, pt. 2

Erya, pt. 2

Sound, which we experience in fascinating and abstract ways, is difficult to describe. 

From the three-piece prog- and post-rock sound of City of Lost to his first attempt at minimalist glitches Diary of Broken Sounds, prolific Sichuan musician Baishui has been searching for ways to describe and enable the experience of sound. In pieces or as a whole; violent or delicate; carefully-composed or improvised: The search for the balance of these, and other, opposites in the various moments of his work is what Baishui's music has been about. 

In a new series of projects -- Sound in Motion -- Baishui examines the relationship between sound and movement. Whether in terms of sound's motion or changing, the project is intentionally open-ended; Baishui lays the musical foundations upon which a range of artists from a variety of backgrounds are invited to build through collaboration. 

Sound in Motion: Prologue is the series' first release, with four musicians representing different genres participating in their own unique ways. It originates from a field recording or a photograph with which collaborators are encouraged to employ in their own ways; Baishui then combines the contributions into a final product. There is no certain end point to the project; rather, the very nature of sound emerges from the somewhat random creative process. 

More releases, as well as performances, are now being prepared for the series' future stages. A perpetually-evolving project, artists from across modern dance, visual and installation art as well as sound artists of all kinds are sought to maintain the motion essential to the series. 

all music by baishui 
produced by baishui, luo keju 
sounds & instruments by baishui 
analog synthesizer by luo keju 
mixed & mastered by luo keju 
original photo by baishui 
design and layout by sun yunfan, deng zhang, yuan tian 
guest artists: yuan tian (#00 vocal performing), lanre (#00 vocal samples), yao chunyang (#01 electronics), lin tianran (#03 vocal performing)

Sound In Motion, Prologue

Two live recording clips of Baishui's project Sound in Motion with Percussion Chen Ran at Real Live, Xiamen, Fujian. 

Baishui - Flutes, Bells, Electronics
Chen Ran - Drums, Percussion

Withered Cicada (Live at Real Live, Xiamen)

Stranded (Live at Real Live, Xiamen)

Puzzle Suite is the second full-length album of Sound in Motion Series, which is a suite composed of single sound material. Sichuan musician Baishui tried to use relatively simple improvisation instrumental recording, vocal samples as well as field recording to creat a sound poem without words.

Puzzle Suite #03 (Stone Frog River, Strange Moth, This Soul of Mine)

Months ago, I received a 120 mins Lama chanting recording by Rigzin Lamcho Gyamtso Rinpoche ༄༎ སྐུ་རབ་བཅུ་ལྡན་བའི་རིགས་འཛིན་ལམ་མཆོག་རྒྱམ་མཚོགས ༎ 任增朗秋嘉楚仁波切 who lives in Yunan, China. One of students of this highly respected teacher wanted to let me write a music work with this sound materials. The reason she asked me to do it was very simple, she just wanted to let much more people could hear the Rinpoche’s chant.

In fact, above this sound material is not a work that can make people exciting easily, in which he was reciting the simple scriptures over and over again, and the tune and melody of each track are very similar. But I like it, I don't know why, I just feel a strong sense of oppression and telepresence that could made me so tired but I was calm when I was listening his chanting. After thought about a week, I decided to try to use a unusual way to do this project. I planed to build a parallel space that is completely divorced from original recording. Hopefully established a inner connection between my music and the lama’s chant, rather than the relationship on the surface, such as melody and harmony. But you know the most important thing is that there must need to build a logical link between the the original sound recording and my music in the inner of the sounds. Depend on this idea, I completed the work, and I would like to pick a couple of tracks to a new album. But I am not sure which label wants to release it.

Works for Rigzin Lamcho Gyamtso Rinpoche's Chant, Pt. 1

Born in a small Sichuanese city, Baishui is a composer and self-taught musician who plays guitar, piano and many traditional Chinese instruments. His earliest original compositions and performances were influenced by European neo-folk and dark ambient strains, but has expanded widely his musical canvas since. With neo-folk project Bloody Woods, experiment-in-randomness One Day In A Quark and under his own name, Baishui has been crafting intelligent and creative music across many genres, with musical inputs ranging from traditional Sichuanese folk ballads to 70s prog rock, atmospheric improvisation and beyond.

Baishui

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