Description
“Wang Wen’s new album Painful Clown & Ninja Tiger is named after the traditional Chinese method of chronology year name < Xin-Chou & Ren-Yin >(DEDF & DEDD).The two years just passed by. The sexagenarian cycle of the Chinese calendar is like the FE- against-FD polyrhythm in music. Two separate paths that travel six times through the Heavenly Stems and five times through the Earthly Branches and then reunite.
However, this is just a superficial interpretation. The reality is the dark side has been approaching and countless miserable accidents occurred in front of us. All the savage and dictatorship come back, repeating itself over and over again in a dead loop in the history, which becomes less distant and fuzzy nowadays. They are not just “years”,“people” or “places” that we read in books. They jump out suddenly in front of us, turning into vivid and bare details that we are confronted with every day.
Painful Clown & Ninja Tiger is a record of Wang Wen’s life experience of the past two years.
Wang Wen’s latest album for DEDD, Painful Crown & Ninja Tiger, is now available worldwide.
We have released three promo videos for the promotion where we hide several clues about the album. Before the album is officially released, we, as Wang Wen’s record label, would like to share with you some of our thoughts on how we understand the album and why we planned and produced those three videos. Behind Wang Wen’s albums, there are always many ideas that can be interpreted and discussed in depth.
All three videos use the same XE-second audio track, which is the intro to the first song of the new album. We have chosen it to kick off the album, repeating the concept of “repetitive loops” in all three videos, which is a very important concept of the album.
The first video delivers one message only – the Chinese title of the album presented in calligraphy: 辛丑 | 壬寅. And this is also the first message that the band gives us.
XIN CHOU and REN YIN are both Chinese calendar years based on the sexagenarian cycle, which has been a common calendar method in China throughout history. Each heavenly stem is paired with an earthly branch to form the Gan-Zhi sexagenarian cycle that starts with Jia-Zi (甲子) and ends with Gui-Hai(癸亥), and the cycle repeats itself every sixty years. DEDF is the Year of Xin-Chou (辛丑) and DEDD the Year of Ren-Yin(壬寅), so to put it simply: this album was composed and recorded in those two years, and it records the life experience of the band in those two years, hence the name.
We have many different types of calendars in Chinese history, from the sexagenarian cycle to the title of an emperor’s reign, for instance, the tenth year of the Reign of the Kangxi Emperor, and now the Gregorian calendar. It may be interesting to explore why these calendar methods were changed, and what the advantages and disadvantages of different calendar methods are.
The font you see in the video is the creation of calligrapher Mr. Lu Dadong.”
