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Chinese art-rock band Guiguisuisui returns to Korea

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Guiguisuisui
Guiguisuisui

By Jon Dunbar

Two-piece art theater performance project Guiguisuisui is returning to Korea for the first time since 2014 ― and it will be member Dann Gaymer's third tour here since he left Korea in 2011.

The band's name is quite a mouthful, but Gaymer says the simplest translation is "sneaky."

"But the characters are related to ghosts as the supernatural, so it's kind of like you're sneaky due to supernatural powers or something beyond this mortal realm, which ties in with the aesthetic of transcendent rituals and oblique HP Lovecraft references," he told The Korea Times. "The choice of this name came from the fact that my dad has been performing with various lineups under the name Sneaky for over 30 years so as an ode to him I chose to be Sneaky in Chinese."

Gaymer started Guiguisuisui as a fairly standard foreign rock act, but after adding his wife as his musical partner, the group has undergone a complete transformation.

"It happened very organically," he said. The band used to be a solo project and was very much centered on Western music, yet when it became a duo the transformation took place quite rapidly. At various points we might talk about it, but we have some common interests that it would just kind of synch up without planning it out too explicitly, such as our shared interest in electronic music, science fiction, folk religions and rituals."

Gaymer brings his academic anthropological background, which gave him a lifelong interest in different forms of music, dance, art and theater. His wife brings a context of Chinese classical and minority folk music, as well as her artistic influence of crossing Chinese folk art with Japanese manga and European expressionism and surrealism. Her mother was a professional pipa (Chinese plucked instrument) player in orchestras.

"Ultimately if it's interesting to us ― we try it and more often than not it works by chance," Gaymer concluded. "It's only when I try to sit down and create something very methodically using a concept diagram that it doesn't."

Their performances are quite different from regular bands, and they never know where they will end up. This time they are bringing "Shining Soundscapes," a performance series that debuted this year.

"It's semi-improvised and no two performances are ever the same," Gaymer said. "At the start of the show we invite a member of the audience to pick between two flowers, red and white. This then chooses between two sets with different songs, visuals and costumes. Then within these the set there are options of songs and at various junctures audience members are invited to pick from a set of tarot cards to choose the next song. In between we also improvise over evolving samples; it's a journey the audience joins us on. For this tour will be incorporating elements of the new EP we're touring, which has forest soundscapes, doom drone elements, and also some ambient dream pop. On the visual side, when we have access to a projector we'll be using the Tagtool software but also combining this with a program called Isadora that will allow us to use premade loops for the different songs as well as add effects to visuals triggered manually and by sound. Oh, and my wife has a new costume ― it's very old school Chinese and blue."

Gaymer originally came to Korea in the 2000s. He worked for two years in Daegu and then spent a year in Seoul, during which time he played in the bands Dirty 30s and Sensation Gonzalez ("both terrible names," he added). Bands he was familiar with from back then include Axcutor, We Need Surgery, Gogo Star, Tengger, Used Cassettes and Jet Echo. He also started painting in Seoul, which led to co-organizing an art walk in the Haebangchon/Gyeongnidan area, back when that sort of thing was not happening all the time there. He also started AWEH.TV, a platform for introducing and networking music acts across Asia.

After his time there, he ended up in Changchun, China, which was a shock to his system.

"I was pretty dismayed by the nightlife the foreigners I met introduced me to: bad clubs, acoustic Pink Floyd covers, fake alcohol, prostitutes," he said. "It was really a massive culture shock, not that I was in China, but I didn't have something comparable to Seoul or even Daegu. So I decided to start the kind of project I wanted to hear, which at that point was lo-fi punk blues. Around the same time I also met Chinese musicians in Changchun and discovered there was a scene, just at that time it was a bit hidden. So long story short, Korea had a big influence I feel because there was enough interesting stuff going on around me that I was content to observe and write about it. Coming to China encouraged me to be the one making the interesting art, or at least attempting to."

Being in China has been mostly good to his music career.

"China is a bigger market in that it's a bigger place; even if the demographic for experimental music is smaller than other countries you're still talking about thousands of people and dozens of places to play," he said. "I enjoy touring and China is a good place for epic tours, again given the size and the relative ease of travel thanks to the bullet train network. Recently the rock, hip-hop and electronic scenes have become quite mainstream thanks to competition-style TV shows, yet all this has done is over-saturate a few bands and venues and left a lot of other shows lacking in audience. This coupled with stricter regulations and fees means that while on paper the market is bigger, if you're a foreigner and or making more avant garde art you're not going to see much of this success ― the government isn't really digging anything to do with mysticism or trippy philosophy these days."

On his two returns to Korea in 2012 and 2014, he has noticed changes to Korea's music scene ― not all good. His old stomping grounds, the venue Yogiga, had a decline in regulars between his two tours, and the Hongdae area started losing its edge.

"I don't want to be that now older guy harping on about how much cooler the scene used to be ― it's all resting on the beat of butterflies' wings anyway," he added. "Also Makgeolli Man turned up at Yogiga, so that literally made the tour for me."

This time, the band is returning to support the release of its latest mini-album, "33 Trees." The album is named after the band's plans to donate toward the planting of 33 trees in Australia.

Guiguisuisui is in Seoul this Wednesday and Busan on Friday before continuing its three-country tour in Japan.

Visit fb.com/guiguisuisui for more information.


Jon Dunbar is a copy editor of The Korea Times.




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