"Making an album itself is a journey. It's like bringing the old you to a new world, meeting new people in different continents and coming back home as a different person," Lei said. "People often tell me they have a great time working with me. I guess it's because I believe the main goal of going on a trip is to have fun."
It was during one such journey that Lei met an important influence, New York-based jazz musician Uri Caine. The two became friends after a concert in Hsinchu five years ago and in 2003 they teamed up for a performance at Taipei's Novel Hall (新舞台). Caine also collaborated with Lei on her Secret Words of Time (時間的密語) album.
Before working with Caine, Lei was self-sufficient as a musician and a bit of a control freak when it came to her work. But Caine taught Lei how to let go and improvise. "I was very nervous about the performances [in 2003] and wanted to exchange some ideas and stuff with Caine beforehand. But he just told me, 'We don't do things this way. We improvise.' So we did. It was like two friends chanting with each other on stage, feeling and responding to each other's language. It was an enlightening experience," Lei said.
After Caine, Lei's one-woman approach gave away to collaborations with other musicians from Taiwan and abroad, and the outer-spacey aesthetic of 1999's http://www.summerplanet.com (臉頰貼緊月球) was supplanted by the time-motif of Fade Away 2003 (2003逝) and, now, Secret Words of Time.
Dubbed "sound films," the two albums can be seen as a sonic representation of Lei's creative process. "When I make music, I always have a complete story and abundant images in my head," she said. "I love to dream, and dreams often come to me while I am asleep. My dreams have colors, smells, melodies and even theme songs. I use music to search for the clues of imagery, to capture the movie of the subconscious. I hope people can also view their own mental landscape through my music."
Lei wants her sound to feel unobtrusive, like subconscious thoughts. She believes music should be an integral part of a person's surroundings, quietly inspiring a change of mood and sensibility without the listener's noticing.
Indeed, a different frame of mind has found its way into Lei's newly released The Light of Darkness (黑暗之光). The album's compositions and lyrics, which Lei completed last year during a two-week bed rest after a car accident, see her heading in a warmer, more human direction.
"Given the dark times we are experiencing right now, I want to embrace people with simple melodies," Lei said. "To me, songs are like mirages, evaporating when the music stops. But they somehow remain in the memory, emerging at an ephemeral moment when your heart is being touched. Mirages are our weapons against an unpleasant reality, don't you think?"
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