Formative Years 嗨，人类！

“We want to discuss the urgency of now,” says Chen Sijiang, lead singer of Hiperson. Based in the southwest city of Chengdu amidst a growing population of 15-million people, the five-person band essentially evolved in a state of hyper-acceleration. On their third full-length album Bildungsroman, Hiperson’s incisive, kinetic reconstructions of post-punk, art rock, and noise manifest with bright, new sonic self-awareness.

Formed in early 2012, Hiperson’s story began at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music and Chengdu Academy of Fine Arts in Xindu District—a bizarre clash of skyscraper-meets-farmland sprawl north of downtown, where cheap rent and lax rules gave students fertile ground to sow creative collaborations off-campus. “Xindu was a strange place back then,” says Chen, who moved to Chengdu from the weapons-turned-infrastructure boomtown of Deyang, “we felt we were exploring something new together in a completely unknown environment.”

Original members Ji Yinan—an ambitious guitarist obsessed with 4AD’s back catalog, Liu Zetong—a shy, military-academy kid with a knack for hypnotic riffs, and Chen Sijiang—an oil painting student with a peculiar reputation for drinking baijiu in class, first came together alongside a rhythm section of fellow classmates, later replaced by current drummer Wang Boqiang and bassist Wang Minghui a.k.a. Ming Ming, (formerly of electro-grrrl act The Hormones). Initially rendered as “Hi, person,” a sci-fi inspired greeting to the human race—the band quickly honed their dynamic sound of crisp, tightly packed guitars, percolating rhythms and gutsy, empowered Chinese lyrics—led by Chen’s rapid, staccato cries and Ji’s backing refrains.

Unlike the NYC-inflected exclusivity of the Beijing experimental scene, Chengdu’s musical landscape was a delightful scramble—the band cut their teeth everywhere from dive bars that featured punk, rap, and psychedelia acts to late-night parties across the hedonistic club scene. “We didn’t necessarily fit in musically; it was more about the people,” says Ji, who grew up devouring the CDs his mother brought home from her archivist job at the local radio station. “Everyone was playing together and working out how to do a live show.”

Alongside the NIN-inspired-techno stomp of university friends Stolen, Hiperson was soon scouted by Cai Ming, the booker of preeminent rock venue Little Bar to play support slots for touring acts like The Gar, Nova Heart, and P.K.14—the latter which would herald their signing to Beijing-based indie label Maybe Mars via frontman and label’s A&R manager, Yang Haisong, a big fan of the young band who went on to produce their first album.

It’s been over five years since the release of their stellar debut No Need for Another History—the record that launched the band on a pivotal, get-in-the-van tour of China and Europe and cemented a devoted fanbase from Beijing to Berlin. Now, following years of performance, experimentation, and self-produced records, including the lovely Dalston-tinged bedroom pop of Four Seasons EP released via London-based label Damnably last year, Hiperson has been connecting the dots for the story of Bildungsroman—a ten-track narrative opus that brings their sound of unwavering momentum into rich 20/20 focus.

Bildungsroman tells the story of a female protagonist on her journey to connect with the outside world following the fall-out from a breakup elucidated in the explosive introduction “Spring Breeze.” Vocals are spotlighted front and center, a key instrument and omniscient storyteller that shifts through musings on consumerism, indulgence and ambition, flourishing with the cassette sing-a-long “I Am in A Period of Desperation,” spoken and screamed words of “From Birth to Present” and lush, five-part harmonies on “Found It,” a triumphant standout that features the same string synthesizer Bowie used on “Heroes.” Ji supports throughout with smooth backing vocals and shouts of allyship to the female lead.

“When we decided to record, we started to see the songs as having something coherent,” says Chen, who penned the lyrics for “Xindu People” as early as 2013. “We had a lot of discussion about the character moving from one emotional state to another, experiencing the details of her life as she changed to a new one—even now we are still trying to picture the shape.”

Recorded over eight days at Hansa Tonstudio, the birthplace of Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy, Bildungsroman is a “bounce back” to the abrasive 8-track tape distortion on their 2018 sophomore She Came Back from the Square, which was captured in live takes from their tiny sweatbox practice room in downtown Chengdu. “After recording the last album, we knew we wanted to do something more hi-fi,” says Chen. It’s a sentiment echoed by Ji—the pair recently returning from London to Chengdu after two years of sonic arts and painting study.

“I think the key influence [from my studies] was how to change myself to a listener of the sounds, not a producer or a creator of the sounds,” says Ji, whose fascination with the meditative teachings of composer Pauline Oliveros had a deep influence on the sonic structure of Bildungsroman—embellished with instruments from sunny-side-up celestas, to big-room timpani, to absolute silence.

The listening experience is a rollercoaster of rising suspense and emotional catharsis, escalating notably on the motorik, call-to-arms “Daily March”—a near nine-minute build of impassioned cries (“fight, fight, fight!”) and ricocheting guitar spars, bolstered by a militant snare roll that bursts into soaring release with a joyous polyphony of synth swirls and shimmering solos. “[The song] is a response to what we feel in the urban environment,” says Chen, “how the body reacts to this living rhythm.”

“I Don’t Want Another Life” peaks in the epilogue, a powerful and melancholic denial of reincarnation that proves the band’s penchant for tearjerking, anthemic shoutalongs has not faded since the days of their first demo “You Don’t Sacrifice Your Innocence Here.”

While most Chinese artists choose to steer clear of any potentially sensitive content, Hiperson’s holistic artistic vision has birthed an alternate “new band power system” for the album to inhabit—donning dark-grey zhongshan suits and circulating their own coin currency ahead of the upcoming album release tour in September. “The ideas in these songs are not static,” says Ji. The band looks to historical signifiers as springboards for “continuous practice and discussion.”

Dressing like austere state leaders and performing an interpretive dance in front of a washed-out orange curtain (see: the music video for “Our Ballad”) may seem subversive, or even satirical to the uninitiated, but for Hiperson, their motives are in earnest. Observant and aware, they work to show and not tell—more interested in exploring art as a dialogue, rather than a vehicle for any overt lyrical directives.

“We see ourselves as story starters,” says Chen, “we want to start the story, and let people write the rest themselves.”

Hiperson China Tour 2020

9/4 Guiyang | JIN
9/5 Chongqing | NUTS
9/12 Xi’an | Aperture
9/19 Shanghai | YuYinTang
9/20 Hangzhou | MAO
9/24 Guangzhou | TU 凸
9/25 Fuzhou | We·Maker
9/26 Xiamen | Realive
9/27 Shenzhen | B10
10/9 Nanjing | OLA
10/10 Beijing | Yue Space
10/17 Changsha | VOX
10/18 Wuhan | VOX
10/24 Chengdu | A Flame Art Center Hall 1