Lane Shi | Otay:onii
Troubadour / Sound
Installation Performer
This album archived songs written from August 2020 - March 2022 in China, Through the milligrams of excrement's molecules, I found a whole dimension of universe.
This is an album released in 2023 by Bié Records (Vinyls, China) who is collaboration with WV Sorcerer Productions (cassettes, France) and No Gold (US).
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({Photo by Mars)
“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.”
This is an album released in 2021, distributed by WV Sorcerer Productions.
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({painting by Lane Shi Otayonii, cover designed by Ruòtán)
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NAG • background
In 2013, I was traveling for the first time to Niagara falls NY. It was once a land of the native Americans habitancy, but today it became a tourist site that requires tickets for entries. One of the censored performance was an indigenous ritual dance turning into a vaudeville: LED hula hoop performed by the remaining native American descents. I was attracted by a flute playing far away from where I was standing, traced the sound I found a vendor with the flute player. He saw me from a distance and waved his hands. I came close to chat with him, immediately he asked: ”May I choose a name for you?” “Sure” I said. “Otayoni! It means wolf. And my name is Koda, which means bear in my language.” Inspired by the name otayoni, I wrote 2 characters named otay and onii(doubled the “i” for binary simulation), constructed a fiction fantasy exploring a world questioning the theory of binary opposition. The native Americans remained living(hope, light), however the reality is penetrated with dark shades of conditions. There’s an inseparable relationship between the two opposite subjects in the theory of binary opposition such as darkness and light, despair and hope, hell and heaven, etc. [NAG] is an abbreviation for the term “negativity” (self declaimed), at the time I was writing the album, I absorbed polarized sides from people in conversational debates, either black or white is pushed upon, negativity as an aftermath remained more than gradual kept-up solutions.
Negativity is the shadow of hope, the entrance of light lays behind a pitch-black alleyway.
NAG • Story
Otay was troubled by the nature of negativity and the aggression and self harm that it comes with. In an effort of getting rid of it, O has tried numerous ways but failed with confusion. Later received a dream: a red plate swirling down and morphing into drooling beak creature. Otay woke up, saw a letter by her left ear side--
To otay:
For a complete rid of darkness, light, too, rid.
onii
Otay then sank a set of bow and arrow into a dead dear, waited for vultures to finish the flesh. Then O runs 2052013 miles to the top of a mountain, take the bow and shoots the sun.
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(photo taken by Sam nandan He)
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{Molelipop: lick it when it's benign} is a live album released in 2019. It is a 20 - minute single track comprised of songs written by me from 2010 to 2019, recorded by Sasha Patsfall at artifact studio, maspeth ny, later layered and designed.
The track contains an improvisation bridging the timeline together in memory of the soon-be-gone mole on my chest:
Since 5 years old, this mole has been part of my body, starting as a sesame print, it grows bigger day by day and now it is a half-centi diameter oval shaped circle.
It has no physical impact until recent years that it begins to shimmer inward pain as if 3 pins are digging into the skin for 4 seconds, this usually happens twice a week. To prevent canceration, I have decided to remove the nevus as soon as possible, the whole event therefore contributes to the title of the track: Lick It When It's Benign
{Da Birdi} is a live single released in July 2020. Sang in Chinese, this song is an elegy to the birds in birds, colors in coloreds, humans in humanoids.
Record: Ray McNamara
Mix & Master: otay:onii
Album Cover: Effy Xiaofu Wang
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7 Yearster is a single track album released in 2016 under the solo project name Mother Of Fuck I Love, later changed into otay:onii. The track used samples/resamples technique for drum beats and ambient patches. Besides vocals, these recordings are all low-fi phone collected during these 7 years living in the U.S. first as student, later as “aliens of extraordinary ability" from 2009 -2016. The track resembles a sense of change and growing, most prominently shown in vocal performance, along with deliverance on the issues of race and cultural conflicts and value differences in the middle session drone tone. It is rather a sound journal than musical composition. The album cover is taken of the bottom of a rustic year-around used fried pan, later being digitally edited for textural alliances.
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Score/Sound Design reel
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