Dou Wei & Fm3: To Borrow Artistic Visions From Chinese Classical

Since "The Sunny Days" album, Dou Wei's music is going farther and farther away from the conventional pop/rock scene, no matter when cooperating with the "E Band", the "Not Sure Yet", "Fm3" or the "Mu Liang Wen Wang", his enthusiasm for music and appreciation of music has become so pure that he has lost the last interest of pleasing the audiences. The result is that people think his music has become more and more unpopular. As Dou Wei recalled, when they were doing live in Shenzhen in late Dec, 2001, on the first night there were more than 10 thousand audiences, but on the next night there were only a few hundred. Obviously most people were there to listen to the old "rock star" to sing, while there were only a few hundred that were there for the music itself, the two group of audiences were totally different. "What are the masses? The masses spit wherever they want!" So when it comes with music, the masses would hum along with the pop idols, or babble feverish nonsense along with the rock idols.

Break blurry borders between music genres, compose music that's out of the soul, mingle the atmosphere of Chinese classical music with the technic of western experimental music, discard daily words that fail to express the true essence of music, the newly released "The Story Between the Mirror and Flowers" together with the previous and the following album are destined to be multi-comprehendable and personal, both for the musicians and for the listeners. Especially in this new album and the previous "Mu Liang Wen Wang", the role of rhythm has been cut down more and more that the music has been set free from the restriction of time, so it helps the inner emotion and inspiration to issue forth. The tranquility and fathom leave no possibility for mass revel, but it opens the door for complete personal communication with the music and independent appreciation of the music.

All tracks of "The Story Between the Mirror and Flowers" are rearranged from "Rekindled Story Between the Mirror and Flowers" (2002), the latter was an edition for the homonymous musical, and had been let out on the internet for long, but it had not been officially released until recently. The original music from "The Story Between the Mirror and Flowers" were composed later than "One Stone, Two Birds", and earlier than "Mu Liang Wen Wang", so the music is some kind of transition in between, it sounds so Ambient as a whole (for example the 4th and 6th track) and the derived psychedelic effect continues the courage with which "One Stone, Two Birds" has twiddled with Ambient, Post-Rock and ECM-esque cool Jazz.

"Dance" and the kindred track "Ponder" sound like Jungle with a Trip-Hop appearance on the Ambient base, those who are used to western music would like them. But, it couldn't be closer to the Chinese music essence of "Mu Liang Wen Wang" than "Fallen Flowers" and "Flowing Water", it's just that electric synth are used here to incarnate the flowing water and fallen flowers, instead of Chinese instruments. We can find that Dou Wei was the conductor of all instruments in a whole, every detail should follow his idea, the Chinese music is not a concept, nor a topic nor tones, what he has wanted is to borrow artistic visions from Chinese classical, and maybe it helps to compensate the harshness and speed of modern life.

(written by: Neil, translated by krazy)