Cozy Up to the Soothing, Folksy Tunes of Beijing Native Hazel Shang

It's December already and the past month has been a dizzying one ideed. It's been so dizzying that I need to sit down and have myself a hot cuppa chill, and I’m fairly sure you could use some of that too. Good news is, nugget records have the perfect remedy for your winter woes — music.

And not just any music, mind you, but folk music from the capital. Born and raised in Beijing, songwriter and singer Hazel Shang (竹子) has been gracing the stage of this beloved, little blue temple of music often, with good reason. Her songs are sweet but not sugary, light yet full of nuance. They hit just right. 

All this to say, nugget records will be releasing Shang’s entire EP, How Wonderful, Life on streaming platforms on Dec 16. Can’t wait that long? Me neither, so today’s the day for her MV to come out. Listen here to the iconic My Heart Skips a Beat, and sit down with David Carey and yours truly for the scoop on the delightfully retro Operation Hazel.

Hey, Dave. So, nugget has always taken great pride in a DIY, retro spirit. What is it that makes this new release stand out?
So the previous nugget releases have all been a little more produced —full bands, electronic music, you name it. With Hazel, it’s the first time we’ve released something so stripped down, which I think is only right. There’s something brave about folk music; you just can’t hide behind effects or walls of sound. There’s just you and your guitar.

You’re right that it’s such a special genre. And, of course this informed your technical choices.
Yes it did! For the MV we bought this amazing Sony Video8 camcorder — which uses a kind of cassette to take video, and was an incredibly expensive gadget back in the 80s and 90s. Well, we lucked out with our purchase because it came in a never opened carrycase with the tags still attached. According to the previous owner, his parents brought it back from Japan in the early 90s but forgot about it and it was never opened. So we had the manual, remote control, all the cables, everything. The battery was dead after like three decades, though, so we had to find somebody that made new ones. Thank god for Taobao!

Long may it reign indeed. So what did shooting day look like?
Hazel and I went to the riverside by the North 2nd Ring Road very early on a sunny summer morning and just set up each shot and went for it. We didn’t overthink anything, we just let life play out around us. And as a result we got all of these wonderful scenes that were never scripted: a guy doing kung fu in the background, a granny waving a sword around, a guy playing a saxophone (of which we included a little bit of the audio in the video!).

Remember how I said you can’t hide behind anything with folk music? Same goes for shooting on an old camera. We can’t really do too much to edit the footage afterwards. A lot of it is overexposed because of the bright sunlight — but that’s just the way it is. We also only had one tape (because they’re a little expensive), so we had 60 minutes of film available to shoot everything. So each scene in the video was never done more than twice, maybe three times for the very last scene, where she’s playing between the willow branches. Mostly because they kept blowing into her face.

The one annoying thing was transferring the material from the tape onto my computer. Now that was a weird hodgepodge of various boxes and wires to make it happen. Phew!

You know, there’s something really inspiring and exciting about the way nugget records goes about music. It’s like you truly can feel your passion for music and art.
Oh thank you so much! nugget has put out a few videos over the last 2 years for our different bands, but this time felt different, it wasn’t a professional plan where we really thought about everything and sketched it out, it was just two friends in a park on a Sunday morning making something fun! And, that’s pretty much at the core of our spirit.

So, with that being said, meet up with us at the new Dashilar located Darkroom Cafe on Dec 23! There, nugget will be giving a talk about our MV making process — basically how to make things look good when you have no money, equipment or apparent skills. And for sure stay tuned for the release of the EP!

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Images courtesy of nugget records