"We Are Just the Tip of the Iceberg" Say Chengdu Indie Rockers Stolen Ahead of Dec 2 Gig

I must admit – it’s getting more and more tempting to jump ship and pop over to Chengdu, a city whose music scene has ignited over the past couple of years. One of the bands that is leading the charge there is Stolen, a devilishly talented indie rock outfit who mix everything from post-punk, new wave, electronica, and even arena rock in a hot sweaty heap of satisfaction. Refined, vital, and just enough off the beaten path to keep listeners on their toes, they’ve been one of the underground music scene’s most rewarding acts to follow over the years.

The band continues their descent down the techno-rock rabbit hole on their ambitious and robust sophomore release Fragment. Produced by UK-born, Berlin-based music legend Mark Reeder, there’s something both exotic and familiar in Stolen’s sound that’s hard to pinpoint but incredibly alluring. With plenty of sci-fi elements making their way into not only the lyrics, but also the aesthetics of the band’s sound, they’re aiming for something more cinematic, building a dystopian world that leaves listeners with a darkwave buzz that Mark Reeder has called "Sinomatic." I talked to the band’s vocalist Liang Yi ahead of the band's Dec 2 show at Omni Space about working with the Mancunian producer Reeder, their place in the China music scene, and changing people’s perception on the dancefloor. 

There really aren’t many bands doing what you’re doing here – how do you view yourselves in relation to the underground music scene in China?  
Maybe we are just the tip of an iceberg – the visible part of a flourishing underground life which is much bigger than us. We’ve toured China five times this year and just from that experience alone we feel the culture around the music scene is only growing. It’s taking root everywhere and developing, becoming more and more professional. It really is something. 

You seem to be leaning more into techno-rock on your latest album – what led to that choice? 
We don’t really know why but for sure Berlin's spirit affected us. From Berghain to Mark Reeder, bands like Kraftwerk – the cold, the industrial, the power of this big cultural machine and its ability to bring in a lot of different feelings (beyond the base feelings of happiness or despair) and ideas onto the dancefloor. 

Continuing on that note, how do those electronic aspects translate to the live show? I can imagine it can get pretty crazy on the dancefloor. 
Of course, it’s great when the dancefloor goes nuts, but that's the easy part. The hard part is using electronic sounds to bring our audience to a whole new level – where they can feel different shades of emotion on the dancefloor and play within that space.

What was the experience of working with Mark Reeder like? What are some of the things you took away from that relationship? 
Our experience with Mark Reeder had a huge impact on us. He helped us to reevaluate our relationship with our fans by sharing a lot of his own experience with us from his amazing life in Berlin before the fall of the wall. It was also very new for us to work with someone from such an older generation. In China, the generation gap is really wide and we just couldn’t imagine working with someone in that regard, but Mark is an incredibly open-minded person and always left the door open to new discoveries and ideas. And even though we would debate from time to time (of course we didn’t agree about everything), in the end it was probably the most productive and constructive year we’ve had ever.

What type of world would you say you’re painting with your music? 
We are simply kids playing with electricity trying to create original stuff, musically and visually, a world which can be humorous, angry, sad, and utterly alive all at the same time. If we succeed in making our own world then, we hope people will be able to give a better description to us. 

There’s a bleakness to many of your lyrics that’s hard to shake off – where do some of these ideas emerge from? Do you carry these feelings and ideas with you on a daily basis? 
There’s bleakness of course but it's mixed with positive energy to counter that balance – a mix of positivity and negativity. "Frozen Song" is a good example of this feeling. In the lyrics, the song was meant to stay in a frozen state and no one would ever be able to hear it. But now the song has unfrozen – it’s still a bit sad but in the end, people listen to it, enjoy it, dance to it, forgetting that the song shouldn't be here in the first place.

What can we expect at the Beijing show on Sunday? 
We’ll be playing songs from our new album and have some new videos to show plus a crazy light set-up that’s really something. We’ve got a big team with us on this tour (14 in total) and will be breaking up the show into different acts. We’re pretty excited.

See Stolen play at Omni Space on Sunday, Dec 2 with support from He Ling. Tickets are RMB 150 on the door or RMB 100 advance.

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Photos courtesy of Stolen