Author: Deng Ke (music critic)

Link: /question/35521988/answer/79579695

Source: Zhihu

Luhan is Reloading

A few days ago, a female anchor from European and American music FM gave me a ride, and I was playing "Penthouse Remix" in my car. She asked:

"Teacher Deng, do you also like this kind of Chill?"

"I was asked to write a manuscript recently and I have to do homework."

"Now I am abroad. Musicians have also begun to ask for Chinese music critics."

"This... is Lu Han's album"

"What?"

Then I cut to the Squareloud Remix

"O…..M….."

Then came the lead solo of the chorus

"woca... ”

Fortunately, I have always adhered to the principle of “don’t just listen to the songs you want to hear” and “don’t evaluate the work before listening carefully”, otherwise I would often face this kind of embarrassment. And if you have a slightly bad intention (for example, pick a verse without Chinese and play it to your high-profile friends around you, "I heard that Skrillex has a new singer"), this "Reloaded I&II" is definitely a slap in the face album.

Of course, if you know the production team of Lu Han's new album in advance, you may be more prepared to avoid making hasty judgments. The production team of Lu Han's album includes famous American producer Djemba Djemba, Canadian musician Matthew Tishler, British singer-songwriter Jamie Scott, as well as emerging domestic electronic musician Squareloud, and musician Zhu Jingxi (Jing) (these two (who is also the main lyricist on this album). The team is quite young but professional enough, and has diverse cultural backgrounds and artistic concepts. And, the production fee will not be cheap.

However, the final judgment on music must be based on the work. My overall feeling about "Reloaded" (including the two EPs "Reloaded I&II" and the four singles "To Love", "Super Champion", "Medal" and "Promise") is: This is Zhang Xianfeng, fashion, Exquisite album. Although there are reservations in the form of music due to public acceptance, many subversive aesthetic orientations and expressions have begun to emerge in the work - such as "Somewhat Interesting", this is A very hip-hop song. The straightforward "I got that good / I got that good good" is used as the chorus of the song, using a sample collage creation method (that is, cutting out a certain singing or performance clip and copying and pasting it repeatedly), which is a typical "Electronic music thinking". This composition method of constantly repeating rap sample fragments and changing and superimposing various voice textures has strong anti-melody and anti-harmony characteristics: emphasizing rhythm, downplaying the textual meaning of lyrics, pursuing uncertain extended connotations, and aesthetically reflecting A sense of traditional rebellion. The street violence that often accompanies American hip-hop music is replaced by Lu Han's relatively refined appearance and dance, as well as the relatively step-by-step verse (what are they still standing there arguing about) and the pre-Chorus section (I 'll tell you about) has been neutralized, and the painting style is quite energetic without being aggressive.

The other two remix versions of "Something Interesting" (Penthouse Penthouse & Squareloud) and a purely instrumental version (Instrumental Version) are completely electronic music - mixing elements of Trap and Dubstep. There is absolutely no EDM rhythm like house or trance that can easily be misunderstood as "square dance".

Here it is necessary to explain "electronic music thinking", which is another type of music creation that is not mainstream but is developing rapidly besides the "keyboard thinking" and "guitar thinking" mentioned earlier. The idea is to no longer regard melody and harmony as the main driving force of music, but to make music through internal changes and conflicts in a regular cycle by copying, transforming and superimposing a large number of sections (Pattern). To achieve the advancement and explosion of emotions. In this way, music is liberated from tonality (even melody-less music can appear, such as hip-hop, noise music, etc.), melody and harmony gradually become marginal, and the importance of timbre and rhythm gradually becomes prominent.

Electronic music is undoubtedly the most eye-catching label of Lu Han’s album, but it is by no means the entirety of his album. We cannot even use the existing electronic music style to summarize or define it. In fact, for many rapidly developing fields, most generalizations are just markers, because we have no idea where the boundaries are.

What we can do is to constantly summarize, analyze, and summarize, and then provide artists with new ideas and perspectives - such as "Deep", another song in the album that I like very much. It has many of the characteristics of "Kind of Interesting" such as collage-like development and simplified lyric text, but the feature that surprised me even more is: the amount of information.

The development of many literary and artistic works can be regarded as the development of information volume: those born in the 50s and 60s like to watch procrastinating TV series (they will not miss important plots even if they are distracted by cooking and washing dishes), while those born in the 70s and 80s like American TV series. (The plot is more exciting and brain-burning), and after the 90 00s, things like barrage finally appeared with a huge amount of information (even if there is no barrage, young people still like the kind of talking and firing machine guns in "Qi Pa Shuo" similar programs). The first time I saw the barrage, I was confused. Can I understand so many things? Then think about it again, Internet content can be viewed at will. If the amount of information is too much and you can’t read it, just read it a few more times (if necessary). However, if the amount of information is insufficient, it may not be attractive to users who are accustomed to overloaded reading. . Do we have to get so much information? We may simply enjoy being bombarded with information.

At least in music, information bombardment is very exciting, and this is also one of the important directions for the development of future music trends. For example, the debut EP "My Name is Skrillex" by popular producer Skrillex, who is leading the world's electronic music trend, is an album with an overwhelming amount of information: he has greatly increased the collage density of samples (his material editing accuracy is even reaches the sound envelope level), the texture and rhythm parts change at a much higher frequency than usual electronic music. The internal structure of music still exists (ups and downs, echoes, progressions), but the speed of interaction is too dizzying to capture, and the messy fragments make it impossible to think rationally, so the sensory stimulation becomes more pure and thorough.

Of course Lu Han is much gentler in his implementation. "Deep" still retains a relatively well-formed melody line in the verse and pre-Chorus section, but the chorus "Just let me fall." "Deep, deep, deep, deep, deep" is already a rap passage with a very thin textual meaning and a more prominent rhythmic color (the bilingual rhyming pun of "deep/deep" is really interesting). The backbeat trap sound is connected in series with a large number of sound samples (two iPhone default ringtones, low battery notification sounds, cell phone signal interference sounds), as well as arpeggios, lead fills, dazzling structures, and sometimes filling the entire song. Lu Han's voice sometimes superimposes on itself during solo, which is a perfect information overload. With my ears (which I rely on for my livelihood), I have to listen to it dozens of times before I can roughly figure out the structure and context of the song. It is really not easy for ordinary people to hear the reason at the musical level.

But it sounds really cool, perhaps just like how young people enjoy barrage.

This is the new aesthetic. Not necessarily mainstream, but really fashionable. Stripping away the past and appearing in such a pioneering manner in the new album, the word "Reloading" is really worthy of its name.

There are some creative trade-offs in several other songs in the album (after all, he is still an idol singer and has to consider his acceptance), but the production details and quality are there. Although it is not so avant-garde, it has an aesthetic orientation. It’s also relatively uniform and the quality assurance is pretty good. This cannot be solved by collecting a few good songs and hiring a few music producers. It requires systematic thinking, balance, and even compromise. Although Lu Han cannot be called a "musician", this is indeed an album that reflects his musical interests and ideas.

In fact, it stands to reason that I should also find some shortcomings and make some "objective" criticism. Weaknesses do exist, such as weak melody shape, too many changes in arrangement that give people a sense of virtuosity, and some song MVs that are inconsistent with the songs themselves (not just "Under the Sea"), etc. But when I think about it carefully, many shortcomings are no longer shortcomings after changing the aesthetic orientation (that is, the basic principle in artistic acceptance): the melody is not pleasant, but the melody is not his focus in the first place; the arrangement shows off his skills, But he just wants to dazzle you and make you faint; as for the songs that are not catchy, they are not prepared for you to sing in KTV... So these problems may not be a problem in his world. It seems that the only problem... is that the dissemination of his works in the outside world (that is, the difficulty of attracting pure music fans) is still relatively limited.

I have never denied that Lu Han, as an idol, has a large number of fans whose emotions overwhelm rationality. Even after consciously understanding it, I became more and more aware of the huge energy contained in this organization (Lu Han fans) despite its seeming self-restraint (100 million comments!). So I am even more pleased with Lu Han's shaping of the fans' aesthetic orientation: a fan who can truly accept non-melodic and informative songs (although he may accept them in an irrational state), and who can rationally face other forms. When it comes to pop music, it is easy to have a more tolerant and open mind. After all, the former is relatively avant-garde, abstract and high-end in aesthetics.