搬运译Pitchfork评李化迪 2021年专辑《Birdy Island》

搬运自：网易云音乐专栏【All About Music】（在原文基础上添加了英语原文与排版调整）

翻译：Bromantique_Victime

The soundtrack to an imaginary theme park where people reconnect with nature and spirituality, the Beijing producer’s album combines traditional Chinese references with wild electronic experimentation.

作为一个存在于想象之中的主题公园的原声带，在那里人们重新构建起自然与精神世界的桥梁，这位来自中国北京的制作人的个人专辑将传统的中国元素融汇进疯狂的电子实验乐之中。

There’s a reason rural escapism in China has risen over the past several years. Millions are drawn to lifestyle vloggers like Li Ziqi and Dianxi Xiaoge, who portray idyllic countryside lives spent creating everything from food to clothing from scratch. There’s even a small but notable group of young people called fanxiang qingnian, who, in a departure from China’s mass rural-to-urban migration of the past four decades, have opted to return to farm life. Of course, Chinese nationalism and the state’s push to promote Chinese culture do play a role, but the fact remains that China’s rapid economic growth, not unlike that of its American counterpart, has left its people wanting something more.

在过去几年间，在中国桃源主义的兴起是事出有因的。数百万人被李子柒和滇西小哥所描绘的田园牧歌式的乡村生活方式吸引，从食到衣全部从零开始创造。甚至还有一小部分被称作“返乡青年”的年轻人，他们一改过去四十年来中国从农村到城市的大规模迁移，选择回归乡农生活。当然，中国的传统民族主义和国家弘扬中国传统文化确实发挥了作用，但事实上，中国所取得的快速经济增长与美国的经济增长并无大异，其中心仍位于满足中国人民对拥有更多东西的渴望。

On Birdy Island, producer Howie Lee takes this desire and projects it into the future, applying it to the question of what follows society’s collapse under capitalism. The artist imagines a scenario that is by turns dystopic and hopeful, in which a Chinese investment company has decided to fund a theme park aimed at reconnecting people with nature and spirituality. The park is located on a floating island (the album’s namesake), where birds and ancestral spirits commingle. Lee, as a character in this musical metafiction, has been hired to score its soundtrack.

在《鸟岛》中，制作人李化迪将这一愿想投射到未来，应用于资本主义下社会分崩离析后的情景。艺术家想象了一个兼具神秘感和希望的场景，在这一场景之中，一家中国投资建设公司决定资助一个主题公园，旨在搭起人们与自然和精神世界的桥梁。这一公园坐落于一个悬浮小岛上（即专辑的名字《鸟岛》），那里栖息着鸟类和人类祖先精神魂魄。李化迪，作为这一音乐小说中的一名角色，被聘请来为其配乐。

In reality, the Beijing producer, née Li Huadi, began piecing together Birdy Island in late 2018, between multiple albums, EPs, and single releases. Since 2011, when he co-founded Do Hits as a club night, and later an independent label, Lee has pushed the bounds of what Chinese electronic music can be. Like much of his work, Birdy Island concerns itself with the social and economic questions of contemporary life in China, while looking to the (admittedly bleak) future. At once fine-grained and expansive, Lee’s work combines traditional Chinese music and historical references with wild electronic experimentation. But where past releases (2020’s 7 Weapon Series, 2019’s Tian Di Bu Ren, 2018’s Natural Disaster) were more abrasive, tongue in cheek, and club-influenced, Birdy Island admits more daylight, often conveyed through washes of ambient sound, even as it continues to cast long shadows.

实际上，这位来自北京的制作人李化迪，自2018年年底开始就在多张专辑、EP和单曲发行的间隙中逐步拼凑出《鸟岛》。自2011年，当他联合创办了俱乐部 Do Hits，以及后来的独立音乐厂牌时，李化迪的作为已经为推动拓展中国电子乐的界限贡献力量。就像他的大部分作品一样，《鸟岛》聚焦中国当代生活的社会、经济问题，同时也展望着（公认的暗淡）未来。李化迪的作品既精细又开阔，将传统的中国器乐和史料与疯狂的电子实验乐相结合。但是，过去的作品（2020年的《某种武器》、2019年的《天地不仁》、2018年的《自然灾害》）则略显粗糙、口无遮拦，颇受俱乐部音乐影响；而《鸟岛》接纳了更多的日光，选择通过环境声波的冲刷来传达，即使它相继会投下更为漫长的阴影。

Like many works of science fiction, Birdy Island blurs the line between the natural, supernatural, and man-made. The result feels something like a mash-up of a Daoist landscape painting and Coney Island, situated on Ghibli’s Laputa. There, during the day, feathered life forms announce themselves via digital blips and whoops. At night, bits of industrial debris rattle down alleyways, as if suggesting the presence of unseen forces. On opening track “Time to the Sun,” a tottering medley of machine parts, synthetic owl hoots, and tama-like drum licks gathers in the glow of dawn. An otherworldly voice (belonging to artist and frequent collaborator Yehaiyahan) emerges, singing in Mandarin, “Push open the door of aspiration/Hide the chaos of yesterday [...] It is time/To face the sun.” Here, as throughout the album, the human voice serves as a touchstone to both earthly and spiritual worlds. “Wave, Wave, Wave,” for example, follows a jaunty synth-based accordion melody over unstable percussive terrain before resolving into a choral arrangement reminiscent of Daoist temple chanting.

同许多科幻作品一样，《鸟岛》模糊了自然、超自然和人为之间的界限。其最终塑造出道家山水画和科尼岛的混搭效果，而立于吉卜力的拉普达——天空之城上。在那里，白天，披覆羽毛的生命形态驾驭数字脉冲和呼啸声宣告着自己的存在；晚上，工业碎片在邻里间响起，仿佛暗示着无形力量的显现。在开场曲“Time to the Sun 光阴向太阳”中，由机械零件、合成猫头鹰啼叫和塔玛舞曲般的鼓点组成的摇摆不定的混合体在黎明光辉中汇集闪耀。一个另类声音（来自与李化迪常常合作的艺术家 YEHAIYAHAN）出现了，用普通话唱道："推开神往的门/祈望隐藏起昨日的混沌……光阴/向太阳"。在这里，就像在整张专辑中一样，人的声音是通往尘世和精神世界的敲门砖。再例如，“Wave, Wave, Wave 波、波、波”在并不平稳的敲击声中紧随着一个欢快的合成器手风琴旋律，随即演变成让人想起道教寺庙的诵经合唱声。

Yet while the park attempts to manufacture an experience that provides respite from capitalist destruction, it is also inherently tied to those very forces. As a result, it is impossible to shake a creeping sense of discord. (“The Door of Aspiration”). In “Island Birdy,” the trills of a yangqin (Chinese hammered dulcimer) needle over washes of ambient synth as a low, pulsing synth foreshadows the ominous dagu war drumming to come. At other times, Lee taps into easily identifiable sonic tropes, such as “Caribbean” cruise music or video-game soundtracks, to evoke alternate realities (“Feather Signifier”). These constantly shifting settings trigger a sense of disorientation that reflects the strangeness of his elaborate sonic fictions.

然而，虽然公园试图制造一种体验，来为资本主义的破坏提供喘息的机会，但它也同与这些破坏力量有着内在联系。因此，也尚不可摆脱一种蠕动蔓延的不和谐感。在许多情况下，一个玩偶盒主题下的变体便现身了，这其中包括一个从左声道插入的听起来像古筝的不和谐演奏音（“The Door of Aspiration 神往的门”）。在“Island Birdy 岛鸟”中，扬琴的颤音在环境合成器的冲刷下变为一个低沉的脉冲合成器，预示着不祥的达古战鼓即将到来。在其他时候，李化迪则利用更易辨认的声学套路，如“加勒比”游轮音乐或电子游戏配乐，来唤起另一现实（“Feather Signifier 羽毛能指”）。这些富于变化的环境音引发了一种迷失感，也正是他精心设计的虚构声学的怪异之处。

Despite all of this, the album is not exactly nihilistic. In the end, Birdy Island proposes a kind of hopeful syncretism, reaching back into traditional Chinese spiritual practices and finding a place for them within the destructive wake of neoliberal economics. It is also a documentation of both the beauty and the corruption of a culture that is sometimes romanticized, frequently villainized, but always human.

尽管如此，这张专辑并不全充斥着虚无主义。在最后的尾声，《鸟岛》提出了一种颇具希望的融汇论，回归中国传统的精神实践中，并在新自由主义经济的破坏性灾况中重新为其寻得立身之所。它也同是对一种文化中美好和腐败的记载，这一文化有时极具浪漫色彩，又常常被描述为恶棍，但内核始终仍是人。