Interview: Streets Kill Strange Animals

LiveBeijingMusic and Loreli, the creative platform for budding artists, writers, and musicians in China will be bumping beds in the future. We’re not entirely sure how yet, but we’re mightily excited about the possibilities of this matrimony. To kick off our open relationship, Loreli has been kind enough to share an interview Amy Daml conducted with Beijing post punk shockers Streets Kill Strange Animals, when they performed last week at our event Schoolhouse Rock Vol. 1. The band is seriously one of my favorites bands, a band beloved by hardcore music fans and yet have yet to get their due elsewhere. Enjoy the interview below in written form as well the band’s closing (and new) song ‘Carnival’ —- better yet, head over to www.loreli-china.com/listen to listen to the interview along with the band’s set.

AD: Can I get you to introduce yourselves and the band?

LM: We are Streets Kill Strange Animals. I am Leng Mei.

YD: I am Yang Dan, the bassist

ZY: Zhang Yao

 

AD: So how long have you guys been around?

LM: The band started from 2007 and we [three] are together from…

YD: 2011

LM: 11?

YD: Maybe 2010, the end of the year.

LM: Maybe 2012?

YD: We can’t remember.

AD: But you’ve [Leng Mei] been in this band for a long time and just had different members in the band?

LM: Yeah. I formed the band. I’m the first man. She’s the second bass player. And I don’t remember which number drummer he is. Maybe the fifth? Or sixth?

YD: Fourth! Maybe.

 

AD: Wow, that’s a lot of drummers. What is it with the drummers?

LM: Yeah! Because it’s harder to find a good drummer in Beijing.

AD: Why do you think that is?

LM: Because our music is not the kind of good skills, and not a good voice, and not smooth. It’s just hard and weird for somebody. So that’s why the drummers don’t like our band. Maybe.

AD: What do you think makes your music so complicated then?

LM: I think we just play the indie music with some noise rock and some experimental. Yeah. Maybe we started from noise pop to noise rock. And maybe some bands are like from pop to rock just like a kiss to an old man. I dunno.

AD: A kiss to an old man?!

LM: A kiss to…I dunno. Just maybe we’ll be more electrical in the future. Maybe.

AD: Really?

YD: Really?!

LM: I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s a maybe.

AD: You guys like to experiment with a lot of different kinds of sounds in your music? Try different things?

YD: Yeah, yeah, yeah!

LM: Yeah, yeah. We all write all our songs in different ways. And I think it’s more interesting. Because we three are so different, so maybe the six songs we played today will be in the new album. It’s different from the first album because we wrote them in the rehearsal room. But the first, we just wrote all the songs and then went to the rehearsal room and just added the bass and drums. It’s so different. It’s more difficult for us to finish them, but it’s more interesting.

 

AD: Was your first album the same people?

LM: Different drummer.

AD: Obviously! With five different drummers…

LM: Obviously yeah.

 

AD: When does your new album come out?

LM: I think in the fall. October?

YD: Maybe September or October. It’s hard to say. We will record it in May.

LM: Next month.

AD: What’s the recording process like for you? Do you already know who you’re going to work with and which studio?

YD: Yeah. A producer from Shanghai, named Li Wei Yu. He did the albums for Muscle Snog and Duck Fight Goose. Our 7” vinyl Through and The Bridge is produced by him. He’s a very good producer.

LM: I think Li is the greatest producer in China. I heard about him mixing Muscle Snog so we wanted him to produce our first album but something happened. It’s a long story.

 

AD: What do you think people outside of China think about Chinese rock and roll?

LM: Chinese rock and roll…it always changes. And change is very hard because it is in China. You know? I think the most important factor is political things because of the media and because of the education about our lives maybe make it very hard to make something open. In another way, it’s more interesting for us to do this thing – to make rock music – because we should make the moral strength to do it.

AD: Do you think Chinese rock is very political or not?

LM: Political? Not at all. But I think some rockers are very political but some are very open. Some are very…I don’t know how to say it in English – Chinese maybe say ‘ying hui’ (how do I say it?). Yeah. Maybe your meaning can be underground and not so clearly. Like PK14, they are very clear to make the political music, I think. They are the greatest one in China.

 

AD: Are they sort of an influence for your band?

LM: Maybe in the lyrics there’s a great influence from PK14 and the singer Yang Haisong because we’re all from Nanjing. When PK14 began playing in Nanjing, I’d just learned the guitar, so it was like some little brother watching the big brother play rock and roll. They were the first post-punk in China, I think. I didn’t like post-punk in that year. I was just a kid. I was a heavy metal fan – like Metallica, Megadeath and others. But in 2000, I heard Yo La Tengo and many Matador bands and Sonic Youth. We just began to do some indie rock from about 2002. We just started bands in Nanjing, but it was always too difficult to find musicians so I moved to Beijing in 2007 and started Streets Kill Strange Animals.

 

AD: Why did you choose this name? It’s a very strange name.

LM: Yeah. I wrote this sentence because I saw a dead animal’s body lying on the ground. You couldn’t see which kind of animal because it was crushed by a car, so I think the nature – human beings and animals – it’s a very hard condition to survive for animals or some trees or the wild, so I think it’s a kind of ‘streets kill strange animals.’ Human beings always make more people to make more buildings, more streets, more cars, more and more to destroy the homes of animals and anything else. So I wrote this sentence. Then I found this sentence again and I thought it’s a good name for a band, so I made it but the drummer and bass player didn’t agree with the name.

YD: Not me! The former bassist. I like the name.

AD: Is there anything else coming up in the future for Streets Kill Strange Animals?

LM: Yeah, we will just cut the new album next month, and we’ll have the tour from October to November.

AD: Where will you tour?

LM: Around China. About 13 cities.

 

AD: Thanks so much!

LM: Thank you.

YD: Thanks!

 

 

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About Streets Kill Strange Animals:

 

－乐队简介

“他们的音乐风格被归为噪音摇滚和实验摇滚，受到美国九十年代另类摇滚的影响。有人称他们的现场拥有一种’不甘平庸’的激情，却没人能够确切地描述出他们。”——Noisey

街道杀死奇怪的动物的音乐难以用一种标签去完全定义。在他们的现场，你会发现置身于一种难以言表的音乐空间，吉他噪音墙和捉摸不定的编曲走向让他们的音乐显得异常丰富，同时街道杀死奇怪的动物的现场有着异于外表的激情和冲劲。

街道杀死奇怪的动物乐队成立于2008年；2009年开始在D22崭露头角，2011年底签约摩登天空；2012年发行首张专辑《B计划：回到模拟时代》；2013年与黑胶厂牌根茎唱片合作发行7寸黑胶单曲唱片《穿行》；2016年预计将推出第二张专辑。

 

－Artist Biography

Streets Kill Strange Animals formed in 2008 and brought their experimental/noise music performances to many venues in Beijing and impressed quite a few audiences. In 2010, they attended Modern Sky Music Festival and played in the ‘Badhead’ stage.At the same year,Vice invited them to film the Creative Project documentary. In 2011, their single song called \”Tian Qiao Xia\” was collected in Modern Sky 6 which was a collection of young and talented bands in China, after that, they were signed in Modern Sky Record Label and began to work on their first album.

After half a year spent on the recording and mixing of their first album, Plan B: Back to the Analog Era has been released. It appears a little bit alternative, full of noisy and experimental factors.

In 2013,Indie vinyl records label Genjing Records released their 7’’ single named Through.And they are working on their second album these years,which would be released in 2016.