不完全自救手冊

不完全自救手冊 [Incomplete Rescue Manual], a 2024 album conceived by Arai Soichiro, brings together artists from across the C-pop world to explore solutions to thorny issues in contemporary life. “A sequel to the IMPERFECT IMPERFECTIONS project, Incomplete Rescue Manual aims to find unexpected breakthroughs in musical collaboration,” the Hong Kong-based producer tells Apple Music. “What’s different here is the theme—self-rescue—which the 29 artists document from their own perspectives to provide a handbook for the listener.” Below, the participating artists share their thoughts behind these collaborative efforts. “Aimless” Sandee Chan: “All along I’ve been rescuing myself, so I’ve never even imagined I’d be in this sort of situation. But there’s enough time in life that I should find ways of trying something different. I was intrigued by the demo because it kept moving forward even though the song involves lying flat. It felt like a tangle or a see-saw. I didn’t want to alter its original character but I wanted to add ideas of my own. Working on the lyrics, I felt like it alludes to things that could be addressed head-on. If you’re lying down, you may as well lie in a comfortable position that lets you get up quickly. But you don’t need to be too eager to get up—it’s all okay. You get a different sort of imaginative space.” 张羽涵Leezi: “I’m studying abroad at the moment, so that sometimes gives me anxiety. At times you feel oddly lonely and want to escape your mental state. So when I saw the theme, I thought of a video [from poet Whitney Hanson] I saw on Instagram: ‘I think we spend too much time being afraid of our own mediocrity… The truth is that we’re all not that good. So stop holding yourself back.’ That really resonated and provided melodic inspiration. Sandee’s version seemed to be a process of relaxing from a state of tension, the sudden realisation, ‘I just want to be aimless.’” “Offline” Cyndi Wang: “This ‘incomplete rescue’ addresses a particular condition that involves certain ills of civilisation. I wanted to use the opportunity to approach the topic in a more relaxed and humorous way. To a certain degree, everyone has information anxiety. For instance, I’ll turn on my phone immediately after my plane lands and connect to a network. Of the people around me whose phones don’t light right up, maybe 30% of them will scramble to charge them. It’s a common problem in modern society. When I first heard the song’s intro, I thought, who conveys so much information all at once? Some of the little details, like the tick-tack of a mobile phone keyboard, are all part of the atmosphere of information anxiety.” Jiji Lee: “We live in an age of complex, rapidly replaced information. And no one can say they live free of that condition. Even though I don’t really scroll social media, I’m still affected by it. It’s a vortex that pulls you in without your knowledge. When I first heard this song, I added some kalimba colour. Then Arai Soichiro added message alert sounds—you hear a fraction of a second and immediately recognise what sound it is. So it turned into something demonic.” Kafe.Hu: “I started off with my own sense of information anxiety. I’m not particularly reliant on a mobile phone can’t avoid one due to work. It’s a tool that facilitates obtaining information—lots of it, every day, whether you want it or not. When we started writing, I tried a relatively straightforward approach. We the phones we had close at hand and pressed them to our pulse—a direct metaphor for something that’s inseparable from our daily lives. The song takes us to that very real place.” “Fall” James Lee: “I once broke my hand in an accident. To be a bassist who could no longer play bass, this was really hard for me and I didn’t know what the future would bring. There were weeks I spent sleeping all day. I didn’t want to go out and didn’t want to eat—I just heard a constant buzzing in my ears. Everyone has to face challenges. This is a song about hardship and pain. Sometimes the enemy we fear most is ourselves—but we can also be our own strongest ally. We have to stand up and fight.” Ivana Wong: “Sometimes we don’t choose pessimism—it comes on its own. Perhaps a past event is buried deep and creates a biological reaction that makes us moody, sensitive and weighed down by a sense of powerlessness. I contributed the third verse to this song, which I feel is a pure, direct dialogue. I turned my impressions into a picture, a feeling of responding ‘I actually understand your pain’ and being sad together.” Von Citizen: “Listening to the demo, I felt hopeless at first but then gained a sense of survival in a desperate situation. So we used bleak-coloured chords early on that gradually brightened to match the mood the song conveys. James is like a bay of clear water, while Ivana Wong is like a fish leaping from the surface or a lithe swallow. But under that surface is a powerful support, like the soil on the ocean floor.” “F U” 三隻狗 [3Dogs]: “The members of our band have other identities and face pressures and anxieties connected to them. For us, the band is an outlet for venting. Being in a band is like adding a splash of colour to our drab and boring lives. Our songs may be a little too direct, and that directness may be too much for many audiences. But with an attitude that everything is flexible, we can show people a different side. Where anxiety is concerned, the best approach is to not be afraid. We don’t care because it can’t hurt us. We only have to adapt—and befriend it.” “Switch” Sue: “This song deals with an individual’s state of mind. Lots of things exist as a choice—by wanting too much you may feel burnt out. When Ice Paper sang on the demo, I thought there were elements of sadness and warmth in his voice, and a feeling of dazed confusion at a future that was out of sight. I’m someone who moves by instinct—I’ll do something right away if I find a sense of pleasure or participation in it. I hope everyone can have the courage to choose, to switch on or off as they so desire.” Ice Paper: “I didn’t have an image in mind in the song’s early stages but once I made the intro and added the instruments to the later sections, I got a vision of the Matrix when I closed my eyes. I could take that device and enter a computer program that would never end because time doesn’t exist in that world. There’s a lot of tension in Sue’s singing, while my singing and writing are very stable. So Sue added another layer of something audibly dark and depressing.” “Ice” Jude Chiu: “When I first heard this song I thought of a piece of performance art [by Francis Alÿs] titled Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing). The artist pushed a block of ice through a city until it turned to water under the blazing sun. But if the ice is going to melt anyway, why not enjoy its cool touch? This song may express certain long-suppressed emotions—the more they’re suppressed and left unsaid the more they build up, until the situation is hopeless. I’m a pretty reserved person, so it’s really hard for me to shout things out. But I try my best—and it can end up being pretty fun.” Constant & Change: “The process of making this song was special. We didn’t handle the lyrics but did the composition and arrangement first. It started out very calm, but later on we felt that in a standard verse-chorus structure its energy would be used up the first time round. We’d have to boost the energy the second time—but would that work? So ultimately we decided to gradually build up energy from the start and then release it all at once at the end.” “Another Dream” Hush: “We all toured last year so we were always in motion. Singing the same songs at every stop got old. When the days repeat one after the other, you may have other dreams you’ve never attempted. A long time ago I happened to grab one of Tseng Kuo Hung’s old notebooks. The early pages of his writing gave way to my writing practice or draft lyrics. It felt like exchanging journals. So in this song, the lines ‘Are you still writing songs?/Are you still performing?/What are you still doing?’ get into that sense of an exchange of greetings or concerns.” Tseng Kuo Hung: “Our section of this song is very simple and straightforward. Of course, we still brought ideas to the music, like the swell of the strings and the layering of lots of delicate sounds. We actually hope it feels a little indistinct, that certain notes seem like they ought to appear in a particular place but don’t. It’s our way of embodying the little surprises or thrills that life can bring.” Masa: “During the pandemic years, life may have gone a little beyond the plans we initially imagined for our lives. None of us really knew what position we actually occupied in this world. In this song, you’ll hear two people singing in dialogue that seem to be separated by a vast distance. We specifically tried to emphasise that sense of unmoored loneliness.” “Time” Zhou Yunpeng: “This is a healing song. It’s a little bitter but it may be able to heal the wounds in our souls—and rescue others as well as ourselves. Life itself is like that, with joy found in suffering. Being able to express happiness despite the pain is a form of resistance and transcendence and ultimately lets us rescue ourselves from the abyss.” 圖靈音樂實驗室 [Turing Music Lab]: “When we first read the lyrics, there was something in them that moved us. So we thought about magnifying that feeling. We hope to give listeners a feeling of flowers blooming in springtime, of something beautiful and touching, of getting back up and starting again. We took a western work from the relatively distant Baroque period Bach’s “Air on the G String” to use as an intro, as a sort of prologue. Before the curtain goes up, you’re anticipating what the song will be like when Zhou Yunpeng’s voice enters.” “I’m a Little Fish” Wang OK: “The inspiration for this song came from a primary school text of the same name which tells the story of thousands of little fish that turn up on a beach following a rainstorm. A passerby notices a boy picking up the fish one by one and throwing them back into the ocean. He asks if his efforts are worth it when there are so many fish on the beach. The boy picks up a fish and says, ‘It matters for this fish.’ And he picks up another one and says, ‘It matters for this fish.’ Many situations that seem unimportant to other people may be immensely important to us—we’re all little fish for whom it matters.” Pei-Yu Hung: “The text OK sent over at first was a passage from a primary school reader. I’d probably do the same thing as the boy in the story—any life is important, so I’d want to let the fish keep living. When I listened to the demo, it had me on the verge of tears many times. It was like a special person was beside me reminding me of what was important. My response: If someone has the strength to die, shouldn’t she also have the same strength to keep on living in this world?” George Chen: “When I first thought about my collaborators, I decided on Pei-Yu Hung first. Then I had a stroke of inspiration—I really love hearing Wang OK’s voice and songs online. I like how the two of them have low, raspy voices. When producing this fish-related song, I wanted it to feel like two little fish were swimming beside each other in the ocean. The lyrics describe someone weary—either physically or spiritually—who is waiting for a companion, waiting to be able to see or sense the sun, sky and clouds outside. So my approach was a simple one, basically just a guitar and double bass. The key thing was for the voices of those two little fish to lead each other from a tiny space out into the wide ocean.” “Liberty” Sophia Huang: “This song tells of how peace and coexistence can be found in a relationship. Most importantly it describes directions, mental models and an enlightened attitude. To resolve issues of the human heart, you can only address yourself, not anyone else. Everyone wants to be the focus of attention—the struggle is over the right to that attention. We need to abandon the notion that we have to change or convince others and instead lay down that struggle ourselves.” JIHU: “The yoke we wear on our shoulders may come from various intimate relationships. It’s easy for us to take lots of things for granted—and it’s a real shame when the other party does so too. Sedar Chin exercised immense restraint on the arrangement. Most of the time the song is propelled by just a piano and Sophia Huang’s voice. I go through clash after clash until I regain the resolve to examine myself and locate ways I’ve harmed myself or others.” Sedar Chin: “Although I didn’t know that familial love was JIHU’s starting point, that wasn’t an obstacle for me. I made it more general and set up a relationship between two individuals—a dependent relationship, or a rapport or breaking away. JIHU’s voice starts off soft but ends up very loud. He’s like a shadow that gradually materialises as it runs out from where it’s hidden behind someone. He struggles with whether to extricate himself. Liberty is a mindset. The key is that you have to set yourself free. You can only change yourself.”