Pitchfork Lucinda Chua Yian 乐评&翻译

On her debut album, the London-based cellist and composer explores her experiences as a child of the Chinese diaspora. Musically and conceptually, the record evokes hazy, in-between spaces.

在她的首张专辑中，这位居住在伦敦的大提琴家和作曲家探讨了她作为华人侨民的孩子的经历。在音乐和概念上，这张唱片唤起了朦胧的中间空间。

The word yian, or yàn (燕), refers to a swallow, the migratory harbinger of spring that in Chinese culture appears often inmaobi paintings, children’s songs, girls’ names, and superstitions. In her largely self-produced debut full-length,YIAN,Lucinda Chua is both the swallow—the bird in flight, in search of home—and the swallowed, a body succumbing to something greater than itself.

yian 或 yàn (燕) 一词指的是燕子，在中国文化中，春天的迁徙预兆经常出现在猫鼻画、儿歌、女孩的名字和迷信中。 Lucinda Chua 在她主要由自己制作的长篇处女作《YIAN》中既是燕子——一只飞翔的鸟儿，寻找家园——又是一个被吞下，屈服于比自己更庞大的存在的身躯。

The London-based cellist and producer has spent years excavating the delicate interiorities of melancholy and longing. Her previous EPs, 2019’sAntidotes 1 and 2021’sAntidotes 2, captured tender vignettes of shifting moods and moments in time.YIAN, by comparison, expands outward, offering not just vignettes but stories, often rooted in the artist’s own experiences as a child of the Chinese diaspora. Born to a Chinese-Malaysian father and white British mother, Chua seeks both a relationship to her roots and release from its inherited traumas. It follows that much of the album is spent navigating—and redefining her relationship to—hazy, in-between spaces.

这位居住在伦敦的大提琴家和制作人花了数年时间挖掘忧郁和渴望的微妙内在。她之前的 EP，2019 年的 Antidotes 1 和 2021 年的 Antidotes 2，及时捕捉了情绪变化和时刻的温柔小插曲。相比之下，YIAN 向外扩展，不仅提供小插曲，还提供故事，这些故事通常植根于艺术家自己作为华人侨民的孩子的经历。蔡美儿的父亲是马来西亚华人，母亲是英国白人，她寻求与自己的根源建立联系，并从遗传的创伤中解脱出来。随之而来的是，这张专辑的大部分时间都花在了导航——并重新定义了她与——朦胧的、介于两者之间的空间之间的关系上。

Haunting these spaces is the classic diasporic question of home. On the elegiac “Autumn Leaves Don’t Come,” glassy strings playedsul ponticello criss-cross like flocks of birds.Chua’s voice thickens like rope, and she casts it outward, as if in search of anchorage. Here, as throughout the album, Chua creates landscapes out of the hollow spaces within her. Each track becomes its own kind of home, or at least a safe harbor. The orchestral “Meditations on a Place” evokes both the impressionistic warmth of Ravel and the icy panoramas of Sibelius. A bass drone pulses gently; low strings swell; and the tremolo of violins shimmer like light on water. Meanwhile, “Grief Piece” drifts through the lonely expanses of its namesake. Digital distortion glitches the matrix like sorrow short-circuiting the brain.

困扰这些空间的是关于家的经典散居问题。在挽歌“autumn leaves don't come”中，玻璃般的琴弦像鸟群一样交错地演奏着 sul ponticello。Chua的声音变粗了，像绳子一样，她把声音向外抛出，好像在寻找锚点。在这里，就像在整张专辑中一样，在她内心的空洞空间中创造了风景。每条赛道都变成了自己的家，或者至少是一个安全的港湾。管弦乐《meditation on a place》唤起了拉威尔印象派的温暖和西贝柳斯冰冷的全景。低音嗡嗡声轻轻地跳动；低音弦膨胀；小提琴的颤音像水面上的光一样闪闪发光。与此同时，“Grief Piece”漂浮在它同名的孤独广阔的土地上。数字失真使矩阵出现故障，就像悲伤使大脑短路一样。

Over the course ofYIAN, Chua gathers the threads that link home, history, and their relationship to the body. Lead single “Echo” is a quiet declaration of independence from ancestral trauma. In the single’scover art, she reaches out her hand in the shape oflánhuāzhǐ (兰花指)—a primary hand gesture in traditional Chinese dance, based on the lánhuā (兰花), or orchid. Yet the way she holds it (wrist barely bent, head and neck stock straight) is a departure from tradition. In dressing her wounds, Chua finds a need both to draw such boundaries and to reach across others. On“You,” aquatic backing vocals bloom and give way to a vibrating cello line. Chua’s voice arches like a bridge, seeking connection to a relationship rendered distant by time and past circumstances: “I want you to know/ That all of your kindness/ Is all of my kindness./ I hope that you find this.” The suggestion of a shared psychic space is also echoed on“Do You Know, You Know?” As a train-like whistle blows through a veil of synth reverb, the artist intones, “Help me […] I don’t want to hurt you/ It’s hurting me too.” The dissolving of personal borders hints at the possibility of new growth, even if a clear resolution is out of reach.

在 YIAN 的创作过程中，Chua 收集了连接家庭、历史以及它们与身体的关系的线索。主打单曲“Echo”是从祖先创伤中独立出来的安静宣言。在单曲的封面艺术中，她以兰花指的形状伸出手——中国传统舞蹈中的主要手势，以兰花或兰花为基础。然而，她握住它的方式（手腕几乎没有弯曲，头部和颈部挺直）与传统背道而驰。在包扎伤口的过程中，Chua发现既需要划清界限，也需要跨越他人。在“You”中，水生背景的人声绽放，让位于振动的大提琴声线。 Chua 的声音像一座桥一样拱起，寻求与因时间和过去的情况而变得遥远的关系的联系：“我想让你知道/你所有的善意/都是我的善意。/我希望你能找到这个。”共享心理空间的建议也在“你知道吗，你知道吗？”中得到回应。当火车般的汽笛声穿过合成混响的面纱时，艺术家吟唱道：“救救我 [...] 我不想伤害你/它也伤害了我。”个人边界的消融暗示着新增长的可能性，即使明确的解决方案遥不可及。

In a sense, by sublimating the self—by unlearning and unbecoming—Chua is able to return to herself. On album standout “An Ocean,” she finds freedom not in earthbound love, but in the tides that carry her away from its shores towards a home of her own. The sea between the two, once a source of hurt, churns instead into a site of power. A muted Rhodes figure bobs along an undulating piano line as violin strings like wings scythe through staticky rain; her voice emerges, a lighthouse: “The waves swallow me whole,” she intones. “Tides carry me home.” By allowing herself to experience loss and be lost, she invites the possibility of renewal, of spring. “I Promise” is also born of loss. Chua’s breathy vocals catch like cotton on splintered driftwood: “I, I, I promise under—,” she repeats, as if searching for the vow that will heal her. Over soft dissonance and unresolved chords, she articulates a desire not for an object of love but for love as an object, untethered to any human form. Of course, this produces a tension, as the idea of an objectless love is not unlike that of a placeless home. The creation of both necessitates imagination.

从某种意义上说，通过自我升华——通过忘却和不相称—Chua能够回归自我。在专辑杰出的“An Ocean”中，她不是在世俗的爱情中找到自由，而是在将她从海岸带向自己的家的潮汐中找到自由。两者之间的海洋，曾经是伤害之源，现在却变成了力量之源。一个柔和的罗兹人像沿着起伏的钢琴线摆动，小提琴弦像翅膀一样在静止的雨中掠过；她的声音出现了，一座灯塔：“海浪吞没了我，”她吟唱道。 “潮汐带我回家。”通过让自己经历损失和迷失，她邀请了更新的可能性，春天。 “i promise"也是在失去中诞生的。 Chua 气喘吁吁的嗓音像棉花落在碎木头上：“我，我，我保证——”她重复着，仿佛在寻找可以治愈她的誓言。通过柔和的不和谐音和未解决的和弦，她表达了一种渴望，不是对爱的对象，而是对作为对象的爱，不受任何人类形式的束缚。当然，这会产生一种紧张感，因为无对象的爱与无家可归的爱并无二致。两者的创造都需要想象力。

Yet it is precisely ephemeral and imaginary spaces, rather than any physical roost, that best hold the poet. And if imagination is a pathway to embodiment, then surrendering to the skies can also be a way back to one’s body, one’s original home. On album closer “Something Other Than Years,” Chua duets with the ethereal-voiced Yeule—two voices at once uprooted by and rooted in diaspora. Warm harmonies like thermals buoy the sparrow higher and higher, until in a crystalline blaze, she disappears once again into the fog whence she came.

然而，恰恰是短暂和想象的空间，而不是任何物理栖息地，最能容纳诗人。如果想象是通向具身的途径，那么向天空投降也可以是回归身体、回归本源的途径。在专辑收尾曲“Something Other Than Years”中，Chua 与空灵的 Yeule 进行了二重唱——这两种声音同时被移居国外的人连根拔起。像热气流一样温暖的和声将麻雀浮得越来越高，直到在水晶般的火焰中，她再次消失在她来的地方的雾中。