Escapism Frequency Laughing Ears: “现实是我们的疾病“

For some, nightclubs are more than they appear.

They’re not just places for drunken ragers or finding one-night stands—they’re sanctuaries where our loneliness and insecurities are forced to take a backseat as we dance into the late hours of the night. Electronic music producers are more attuned to this side of dance culture than many may give them credit for. Shanghai-based music producer Laughing Ears, whose given name is Li Jingping, is one such artist. With a penchant for avant-garde sounds, she creates riveting music based on her dreams, sadness, anger, and powerlessness. These emotions, framed by pounding rhythms and crisp melodies, whisk listeners off into sonic terrains far outside the bounds of reality. “People aren’t two-dimensional,” she says. “We’re the amalgamation of our emotions, and we’re all in search of an outlet to express them. My outlet of choice is music.”

Though Li was born in northern China and previously released several records under Beijing-based label RAN and Hangzhou-based label FunctionLab, setting up base in Shanghai was an obvious choice. Shanghai’s electronic music scene has developed a breakneck pace in the past decade and received global accolades following the rise of labels such as Genome 6.66 Mbp and SVBKVLT. Today, the city has become a thriving nucleus of Chinese electronic music. “Shanghai is an inclusive city, and the music scene here is diverse,” she says. “It’s influenced my music quite a lot.”

Listen to Laughing Ears’s Metamorphosis EP below:

This influence has resulted in a musical output that’s difficult to define. Li’s soundscapes are everchanging, containing traces of IDM, Bass, Tribal, Footwork, Ambient, and more. Her open-minded mentality towards music is what’s helped her craft her distinctive sound, ones that unabashedly rearranges a myriad of influences to create music fitting for today’s globalized world.  “A sense of ‘fusion’ was my original intent,” she says. “My music feels unique because it doesn’t follow any particular style. I want my music to demonstrate the diverse possibilities of what ‘club music’ can sound like.”

Listen to Laughing Ears’s Blue Dusk EP below:

Outside of her Laughing Ears persona, Li works full time as a video-game sound designer. Though she doesn’t believe her career bears an influence on her music, there is an obvious connection, in that both lines of work are facilitators of escapism. Her approach to music-making can often feel like a game in itself, she says, one in which she’s the all-powerful protagonist, and her quest is to collect an inventory of rare, disparate sounds. Despite this intimidating arsenal of sounds, it’s important to note that they’re only the foundation on which she can pile atop deeper concepts and raw emotions. She believes that these are essential ingredients making music sound more human.

Her two recent EPs, Metamorphosis and Blue Dusk, released on Chinabot and DECISIONS respectively, ambitiously interweave different emotions and themes. The former, across its six tracks, capture different states of interpersonal relationships; it’s also a demonstration of her instincts-led approach to songwriting, in which sounds organically collide and combine with one another in surprising ways. One of the best examples of this can be seen in the opening track “Unstable,” where bright saxophones spill out over the menacing synths.

Blue Dusk, on the other hand, is more cinematic than emotions-driven, designed to conjure imagery of a sprawling sci-fi universe. Across the four short tracks, her pulsating rhythms and futuristic textures infuse the EP with an undercurrent of mystery and danger. One of the most transfixing tracks is “The Smiling Mask,” which features woodwind flutters that pop out amidst the erratic arrangement of instruments.

Whether it’s her musings on interpersonal relationships or her barren visions of a cold dystopia, Li’s music thrusts viewers into the deep recesses of her imagination, a place where fantasies and emotions co-exist in an audible form. She believes being in touch with our emotions and indulging daydreams are crucial in modern times, and being overly stuck on life’s routines can strip away individuality and throttle the imagination. For today’s youth, dance music can be a much-welcomed escape from reality, and nightclubs may just be one of the last remaining places where people can be themselves and exist in the present moment. “Our disease is called reality,” she says. “Clubs may just be the panacea.”

You can catch Laughing Ears live at the upcoming Jungle Beach Festival in Tianjin, hosted by Zhaodai. The festival will kick off on August 28th and run until the 30th. Click here for details.

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Instagram: @laughing_ears
Bandcamp: laughingears.bandcamp.com
Soundcloud: ~/laughingears

供稿人: Pete Zhang
摄影师: David Yen
视频摄影师: Damien Louise, Paul Gardette