"Chinese Are More Receptive to New Stuff. I Wish Other Places Were Too" -Q&A with British Chillwave Star Chad Valley Ahead of Apr 29 Dada Gig

"Chinese Are More Receptive to New Stuff" Says British Chillwaver Chad Valley Ahead of Apr 29 Dada Gig

Kyle Mullin | Apr 28, 2018 12:00 pm | Add a comment | 2185 reads

Be it the cultural differences or the distance it takes to get here, gigging in Beijing is by no means a breeze for many Western acts. Yet British chillwave star Chad Valley can't wait for his slated Apr 29 gig at Dada. During his last stop in the capital, in 2011, he found Beijingers to be far more openminded and enthused than audiences back home. Better still: his Asia tour was much less drab and generic than his circuit around increasingly homogenized midsize Western towns. He tells us about all that below, along with his thoughts on the decline of remixes, and his forthcoming album Imaginary Music (due for release on May 25).

On your new single, "Up Again", your delivery of the line "I can’t hold on so long" is particularly moving and powerful. What inspired that?
It's about being on tour, specifically the tour in 2016 where our van was broken into in Texas and I lost all my possessions. We were driving out of Texas into the desert the following day and I was close to breaking down and giving up on the tour, just booking a flight home and canceling all the shows. But we ended up pulling through, mostly thanks to the kindness of friends and strangers. I remember feeling like I was hanging off a precipice and how easy it would be to just stop holding on and just give up.

The emotion in "Up Again" was obviously received well by other musicians, going as far as to be remixed by rising New Zealand band Yumi Zouma. I spoke with their frontwoman, Christie Simpson, a few months back (see here), and she turned out to be one of my most compelling interviewees in quite some time. Tell me about working with them and how you complement each other as artists.
I love that remix too! That song came about because we were doing some shows together on the West Coast. We both had new material out so it seemed like a perfect idea to do a remix swap. We are signed to the same label (Cascine Records) so we have always been friends, really. They played their first US shows with me and we’ve played together countless times since. I guess we are probably taking inspiration from each other and from the same places. I don’t know many other people who aren’t afraid of mainstream pop music in the way they are, and that’s something I’m very attracted to. They were recently doing some recording in London so I jumped in the studio with them and did some backing vocals for them. Their new stuff sounds next level.

What other artists would you like to collaborate with or remix someday?
I would love to remix Nicki Minaj. That’s my current obsession. I very rarely get excited by rappers but Nicki is just a different kind of beast, and it would be a real challenge to put her in a new context. That’s what remixes are all about for me: placing music in a new context that’s somewhat unexpected. I find that kind of thing a really exciting challenge.

I’ve done over 60 official remixes since I started in 2010 so it’s hard to get really excited by the prospect of remixes, to be honest! They seem more and more like a means to an end and increasingly irrelevant. In terms of collaborations ... I have always wanted to work with David Fridmann [producer for Flaming Lips and MGMT] because his way with bass and drums is really unlike anyone else. I can always recognize a Fridmann production and I always love it. Also, Hudson Mohawke is someone who I really love. Every time he does something with a singer it really speaks to me but he doesn’t do it enough! So I would love to get in the studio with him and sing all over his stuff.

Tell us about your forthcoming album, Imaginary Music.
It’s been 1.5 years in the making and I produced and performed it all myself, so it’s consumed my life for that time! It’s really different from the last album. Much more positive and less introspective. I was trying to write from the perspective of someone else – an imagined pop star from the '80s. I wanted to write not from my own experiences but from classic pop music themes. I have spent my life referencing music from the past so I wanted to make that clearer this time.

Why is that?
I feel so disassociated to music of the present day. So much stuff these days feels reductive and so po-faced. This album is fun and forward and unashamed.

When I interviewed you a few years back, you told me about touring American and how "despite traveling huge distances all over the country, nothing really changes, and there is actually a lot of comfort in that.” Do you still draw such comfort from the homogeny of these cities? And do you feel that homogeny has increased during recent tours?
Well, now that I've toured North America many many times over, I can tell you that definitely nothing changes that much. Certainly compared to traveling all over Europe or Asia. It makes touring easier to be honest. I’ve stopped getting excited about going to new places, partly because I’ve been nearly everywhere, but mostly because I never can tell where I’m going to have a great time. I’m surprised so often by cities that I’ve stopped trying to guess what a place will be like. It’s more about the people that I meet. Every time, I get so much more out of people than places.

For instance, one of my favorite places to go on tour is Springfield, Missouri. It's a small and incredibly nondescript town with very little going for it except for this amazing group of friends who are working hard to help the music scene there, and that’s all that it takes to be a great place to play for me. I wouldn’t say that the homogeny has increased. In fact, the more I tour the more I notice the differences between cities in the US. Obviously touring in Asia is hugely different because I usually only play one or two shows in each country and it’s usually such a whirlwind that I don’t have time to really drink in a country. I like to get to know places through food and drink when the time is short!

So what did you chow down on in Beijing when you played here last time?
Sichuan food at 2am after the show is a good memory from the last trip! Best mapo tofu ever.

Tell us more about your fondest memories from your last trip to Beijing, and how was that a stark departure from the tours you've had in the developed/Western world.
One major highlight was a hungover trip to the Great Wall the following day and some really excellent soup dumplings. I loved the people and the food.

And yes it’s really different from driving around f**king Iowa going from gas station to gas station. People are far more receptive to hearing new stuff in China. People will come out to a show just to check out something new and I wish that other places in the world were like that. I love Beijing so much. I could really imagine myself living there, to be honest.