Matthew Lien begins his most ambitious concert tour of Taiwan to date this evening, when, along with an ensemble of 19 musicians from Canada, the US and Taiwan, he takes to the stage of the Hualien County Cultural Center (花蓮縣文化局演藝廳) for the first of a series of eight concerts that will see the hugely popular eco-musician perform at some of the nation's largest venues.
His most extensive tour of Taiwan in over three years, Lien will be bringing his fluid cross-cultural brand of music and environmental messages to stages in Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung, Chungli, Hsinchu and Tainan to promote his recently released, A Journey of Water, which hit record store shelves earlier this week.
In contrast to the earthy sounds employed by Lien on last year's Arctic Refuge album, the North American native returns to his tried and tested format of Taiwan-themed music and sounds for his latest album.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
His ninth album to be released by Wind Records (風潮), A Journey of Water is a musical exploration of Ilan County, in which Lien blends his innovative and predominantly piano-driven style with an assortment of musical genres and sounds, both manmade and natural.
The album includes the sound of rivers, trains, a bustling fish market, Hakka tea picking songs and the strains of a logging tune not heard since the end of Japanese colonial rule. He even manages to blend Beiguan opera, a musical form he likens to the "earliest form of heavy metal" and one that "will rip your head off if your not ready for it" -- with some Steve Vai-styled guitar.
Lien said Journey of Water is a musical record of Ilan County and its people and places. The album tells the story of water as it meanders its way from atop Ilan's mountains, plummets down the many waterfalls, enters rivers and becomes part of the county's rich agricultural tradition and finally flows out into sea.
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
"The CD explores Ilan by following the journey of water from the pillars of cloud to the subterranean rivers and revolves around the people who live in Ilan and the way they interact with this environment," Lien said. "Obviously the most important aspects of this album are the people and places it represents."
Commissioned by the Ilan County-based Lan Yang Cultural and Educational Foundation (蘭陽文教基金會) and with the backing of Wind Records and the Ilan County Government, Lien's latest eco-aware musical offering is the result of a journey that took him and his microphone from the lofty heights of the Nanhu (南湖大山) and Lan (蘭山) mountains to volcanic vents and subterranean rivers that lay beneath the ocean at the foot of Turtle Island (龜山島).
"It was a lot of work, as I've never been tasked with the challenge of following one geographical path to another, musically, before," Lien said. "The result is not just another CD. Instead of just simply creating an album of musical and environmental sound recording of Ilan I have created an encyclopedia of the place."
PHOTO: GEORGE TSORNG, TAIPEI TIMES
From recording all the many varied materials needed to complete the album, to the final production stage, A Journey of Water was a mammoth project that took Lien almost two years to complete. The most difficult stages of production, according to the artist, were the field-recording
sessions.
In order to record enough material and to ensure recording sessions weren't brought to an untimely end by inclement weather, Lien divided 12 weeks of field recording into two six-week blocks over a two year period.
During these field recording periods Lien spent many long days and even longer nights on lofty mountain tops with his field recording gear, he visited waterfalls, hot springs, tea fields, temples and Aboriginal villages in order to record what he saw and heard. By the time he entered the studio in California last month he had amassed well over 100 hours of recordings.
"It was a relentless challenge and one that involved a lot of traveling around. Recording natural sounds can be difficult for obvious reasons, but recording people in a natural environment can be even more problematic," he said. "It is as much physiological as it is technical. You need to make the subject comfortable and try to get them to not think about the microphone."
Unlike many of Lien's previous field-recording ventures in Taiwan where time constraints often meant that he could only record specific pre-arranged sounds, his recent trips allowed him the freedom and leeway to search for previously unheard sounds, songs and music.
With the help of his cultural consultant, Yo Yuan-keng (游源鏗), Lien recorded an ancient three-piece Attayal head-hunting dirge and a song sung by loggers during the Japanese occupation for the first time.
"I guess I'm one of the few people to have heard the Attayal head-hunting tune and lived. Listening to it changed my stereotypical idea of what a headhunter was. The three songs pointed to headhunting as being a deeply spiritual act," said Lien. "The music was very moving and there was a genuine human quality to it as opposed to savagery and aggression."
Lien might have walked away from his visit to the village of the once notorious headhunting Attayal tribe, but there were a couple of incidents earlier this year when his field recording work did almost cost him his life.
The first of these occurred while recording the sound of the volcanic vents that release boiling water from the subterranean rivers around Turtle Island. Lien's diving gear malfunctioned and he was almost dragged away by the strong underwater currents off the Ilan coast.
The second and, according to Lien, more frightening of the two incidents took place at a waterfall near Tatung when, along with a friend, he found himself trapped in circular current.
Needless to say, he didn't meet his maker and, while he wont be jumping off any waterfalls in the near future, Lien is ready to take fans in Taiwan on a enjoyable and moving musical journey from Ilan's lofty peaks to its shoreline in the coming week.
Performance notes:
What: Matthew Lien: `A Journey of Water'
Where: Nationwide from this evening, June 11 through June 20.
Today, Hualian County Cultural Center (
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