otay:onii - 冥冥 Míng Míng LP

●●●IN STOCK, READY TO SHIP
●●●BANDCAMP DL CODE INCLUDED

▼WV100: otay:onii - 冥冥 Míng Míng

如渺小一般活 如偉大一起落

Finally, we brought “冥冥 Míng Míng” on vinyl format, a significant milestone in otay:onii’s musical journey and a quintessential outsider album. Often labeled as “avant-garde pop” for its experimental, abstract, yet melodic nature, this album transcends such categories. otay:onii constantly flows thru the cracks of the boundaries.

Remastered for vinyl by our longtime partner Cyril Meysson to capture the artist's primal vision, this version also includes a bonus track, “Enter the Wound”. The stunning deconstructive artwork has been reimagined by our friend Cheng Daoyuan.

“冥冥 Míng Míng” was ranked the No. 1 album in the Chinese section on Rate Your Music in 2021.

“Mausoleum wooziness oozes over you like blossoming fungus as you’re battered in crushed beats and pan-seared in lascivious lashes of noise. 𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘥! the light shrieks in your mind like a penitent, brute whiplash from calm to cruel. Soulsick on a bad vibes bender you baste your bucket with another dose of ritualware subliminals: breath in and 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘱𝘴𝘦 as your mental plane is hijacked and nosedived into the black sea of Lane Shi.” — CTM Festival

▼

“冥冥 Míng Míng” was first released in 2021, now we have brought the old journey back with new guidances.

First we start with a story:
In 2015 I toured with one of my bands Dent, finishing the whole 14-city tour in Real live house, Xiamen. A Canadian tourist named Bill was lunatic about our show and told everyone that he was going to take us to see the “real China”. Surely enough, he brought us to a westerner-only bar, with lots Chinese girls aside as drink companions. A cover band was playing Lady Gaga on the background, then Dent took over their instruments and mics, played the heaviest song “Nine Fathers” and scared the tipsy ready-to-be-gloom white tourists in room.

The “real China”, seen through the western lance and projected by western trajectory, is a narrative indeed lack of the presences of the native voices and experiences. Most dangerously, it smothered the voices with pre-determined conception and models that fit, but to many of us, it is death.

I wrote the album during a period of time when I experience the most insane denial and rejection as a Chinese immigrant struggling to stay in the US. I re-arrange the loudest cries and put a new track “Enter the Wound” as new perspectives is not only necessary for you but also for myself.

Hope you enjoy the new constructed vinyl version of “冥冥 Míng Míng”.

- otay:onii 施金豆

▼

-12" watermilfoil / sanguine / black LP
- 4mm spine 350g reverse board cover
- w* obi & insert (full lyrics)
- limited edition of 160 (watermilfoil) / 80 (sanguine) / 80 (black)

A1 - From Me II to Me 04:19
A2 - Child no.22 04:04
A3 - Through Death a Cup of Coffee 05:28
A4 - In Between Angel and Fly 03:45
A5 - Un deciphered 04:00
B1 - Subhuman Sings 02:55
B2 - Blackheart Breakables 06:19
B3 - Intentions and Emotions 06:00
B4 - Enter the Wound (vinyl bonus) 06:05

“冥冥 Míng Míng” is otay:onii’s second full-length album (after the album “NAG”), each song came out of soul ratcheting stories interrelated through her exploration of the word “冥 Míng”. As she defines it:

“Míng 冥, a Chinese word meaning a place between our world and the other world, where souls wandering around before they take turns to reincarnate. The word consists of a roof on the top, a sun in the middle and the number six on the bottom. Míng Míng 冥冥, which doubles the word and turns the meaning into a state where the inexplicable entanglement of past and future happens, a state where the gap which we describe as present opens the portal of memory in transformation, mutation and sublimation. If you are an angel, but as well as a fly, which of the 3 a-tions will you choose to describe these phenomena? The answer deciphers your 冥冥.”

Electronic, ambient, sound collage or even noise, with a heart to be mindless on the boundaries of all, otay:onii breaks down structures that chains her neck and feet, aiming to be free on the ride of acute instincts and establishing a bodily connection through the synchronization of the heart and mind. She believes it is through this particular synchronization that people are brought to the bed of honesty, in which a moment of history will be worth looking back and upon, and the light will slip out from this crack within any world of creation reverberating the loudest echos.

▼

otay:onii (Lane Shi Otayonii) was born in Haining, China, and has recently been a resident of Berlin, New York and Shanghai. Her voice is frequently compared to classics such as Janis Joplin, Björk, Hope Sandoval (Mazzy Star), and Beth Gibbons (Portishead). Her own talent distinguishes itself from these greats as her own voice delivers a sound that ranges from ghostly ethereal to brutally powerful to chillingly dreamy.

otay:onii graduated from Berklee College of music in 2016, honored twice with “Laurie Anderson Women in Technology” awards. She has also received many other honors and accolades including a bronze prize for “Best Female Vocalist” from Global Music Awards and “Best Sound” from the Audiovisual Arts Industrial Incubator Awards. She was rebellious while in school, frequently testing the limits of the learning environment and continually questioning the institution’s business model. She said she would “drop out of school if as a foreigner I can stay there without a visa”. Soon after she got the “alien of extraordinary ability” artist visa. She considers the opportunity of getting to know her bandmates and life time friends as the biggest achievement received at school.

▼

“Lane Shi Otayonii mostly sticks to cleans, but the register of her voice and her off-kilter inflection means the vocal sits above the riff-swirl in a way that never lets you ignore it. And she’s constantly doing weirdshit: sing-song playfulness melts into a jazzy drawl, syllables rolling around her mouth until she finally lets loose with a wail, while the songs beneath go in every direction but straight ahead. At every turn you’re reminded this is something you haven’t heard before.”

- Stereogum

“Nocebo plays like a single epic work, thanks largely to Lane Shi’s vocals. (For a rough approximation, imagine an amalgam of Diamanda Galás, Julie Christmas, PJ Harvey, Judy Garland on the best night of her life and John Motherfucking Coltrane.)”

- Decibel Magazine

“It’s impossible to deny that Lane Shi’s vocal performance is incredibly unique from the off; you could reference Joanna Newsom or Regina Spektor as a vague comparison, but she is tapping into something that’s totally her own on these tracks.”

- Echos and Dust

"otay:onii’s vocals here are retro and dusted with grit, almost smokily cabaret. The nuances and inflection in her singing are connected deeply to flexible filaments of emotion.”

- Boston Hassle

“with vocals that sound like a banshee version of Amy Winehouse.”

- Rolling Stones

releases July 31, 2024

CD version released February 22, 2021

Music composed & performed by otay:onii 施金豆
Lyrics & painting by otay:onii 施金豆
Recorded between 2019 & 2020 at Studio in Ridgewood, Brooklyn
Mixed & CD mastered by Seth Manchester at Machines with Magnets
Vinyl & Bandcamp streaming version mastered by Cyril Meysson
Insert photography by Mauricio Padilla & Wenkai Wang 王文楷
Artwork rearranged, design & layout by Cheng Daoyuan 鄭道元

© & ℗ WV Sorcerer Productions 2021-2024
巫唱片 WV100

www.facebook.com/wvsorcerer
www.youtube.com/@wvsorcerer
www.facebook.com/Laneshiotayonii
www.youtube.com/@otayonii

Instagram:
@wv_sorcerer_productions
@laneshiotayonii

巫唱片