INTRODUCING: OU
The international music scene is at a height right now. You can find almost any artist of any size, from anywhere in the world, thousands of miles away from you and discover something amazing. While it’s been on the radar of the western scene for a long while, Beijing might not be most well known for its metal and progressive musicians. If there’s one band set to change that, its OU. Psychedelic, manic, progressive rock with metal influences, they’re a hard bunch to pin down. We caught up with songwriter and drummer Anthony Vanacore about the conception of one of the most unusual bands to emerge this year.
With more collaborative, international methods of music making, and so many influences on offer now to musicians and listeners, it’s really exciting to see a band like OU emerge into the world in all their strange and beautiful glory. “It’s a great thing,” agrees Anthony. “Now with technology it’s very feasible to work with people all over the world, even if you’re not in the same place together. There’s a lot of untapped creative energy here and I hope OU can be small part in bringing more western attention to this side of the globe!
The band have barely begun their journey into the world, but with so much potential it looks like a mesmerising ride ahead. As for us international listeners, we can only wait in an anticipation of the insane arrangements in their live form, but Anthony is certain on how that might look going forward. “The record is basically comprised of vocals, guitars, bass, drums and quite a bit of synthesizers. Vocal harmony is obviously a big part of the album so we put a lot of care into them! All the vocals were recorded and we didn’t use any vocal harmonizers. For live performance (unless we can bring backing vocalists along) the vocal harmonies will have to be on backing tracks as they are too integral to the music not to have live.”
All four members of OU are incredible musicians in their own right, and the combination of the four of them was like capturing lightening in a bottle. “I’ve known Chris [Cui, bassist] and Jing [Zang, guitarist] for a while,” Anthony explains. “They are my bros and we’ve played in a lot of projects together. They are very versatile musicians and very open minded so when this idea started to come to fruition I had them over to my place for dinner one night and we talked about it and I showed them some musical ideas. They were very into it and so we got to work!”
The complex and ethereal nature of OU is enhanced by the dramatic and ethereal vocals of singer Lynn Wu, a complete standout in her unique approach to singing. “She’s an absolute pleasure to work with as she’s down to try anything,” Anthony agrees. “Very open minded and patient, and she also has an incredibly versatile voice so there’s a lot we can do with it. There was definitely an approach to use her voice almost like an instrument in some places.”
OU’s debut record One is multi-faceted, never sticking to one method or theme; there’s always a new slant to the variations in tone and style within the record. “The goal was definitely just to be true to what you were feeling in your heart at the time when writing music,” Anthony goes on to explain, “There was never an intent to try to sound like anything, but of course you go through life being influenced by so many kinds of music, naturally a lot of it will come out in the music you write. Jing and I in particular have roots in heavy music, so there’s going to be a lot of those elements in the music for sure.”
Through the record there’s certainly intense synthesised tracks, groove-laden progressive segments, softer cinematic segments and so much more. With so many variations in what the band can do, each track fell into it’s own little universe. “Somehow every song when we finished writing it was very clear that it was finished,” he clarifies, “I feel like with this album, it couldn’t have happened any other way. The end results in many places surprised us, especially the way the vocals came out. Prior to meeting Lynn, there was just a vague idea about the vocals, but as it started to come together, we knew something special was happening.”
One is out now via InsideOut Music.
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