The Jade Breaking Plan For Liberty唯利玉碎计划 is a rock band that plays around with both indie and alternative genres. The band was created in Chengdu, China in 2017. This year, they finally released their first album, “The Mystery of the Sea.”
Though they had just released an album, the band was not very interested--at all--in promoting their hard work. When asked about indulging in publicity for their first album debut and making their name widely known, lead singer Mu Gio voiced out, “Music is the only publicity method that I am interested in. It can even be said that music is originally the true core publicity method of the The Jade Breaking Plan For Liberty. That's it."
Introducing A Conceptual Album
The band identifies this album as one that aligns fictional text with vision. The theme of this conceptual album begins with a person waking up in an unknown sea. They encounter themselves on a journey from chaos to their ultimate goal. The entire album expresses the experience and emotions that are felt during this process. All the content and metaphors are hidden in the process, constantly changing as time goes by and space changes.
The conceptual design of this album derives its main inspiration from a novel that goes by the same name, The Mystery of the Sea, by Mu Guo. Each song from this album presents itself as a chapter from the book.
Mu Guo said that the album cover is a more complete and accurate expression of his original idea, so it has become the thing that can best summarize the content of this album:
"The album cover itself is a performance art idea of mine, which was born at the same time as the album concept. Finally, I found a pool in March, wearing handcuffs and fetters, wearing protective clothing and a mask, and soaking under the water for 4 hours. One, the day I looked at later was the coldest day after winter."
As a concept album, "The Mystery of the Sea" creates a multi-sensory, richer and fuller taste space together with the novel and the visual image "J".
"The motivation for this is that the album itself is also a complete story,” Guo says. “There is a common concept. This concept can be presented through music, movies, or written works. I can’t do movies now, but I can write literature. Writing novels has a lot more space to touch up on than writing lyrics, and you can better understand our music.”
Although the novel has not been published yet, Guo also plans to let everyone experience it. As for the music part of the album that was not presented due to mixing issues, the band will also present the original 80-minute album in its entirety during their tour next October.
A Deeper Look into the Band
Which song would you choose for new listeners?
Mu Guo: “Descriptive Record of Patient Wang Jianjun” because it is the best start for the album.
Li Fan: “Trap” because the arrangement of the song embodies our group very well and is very “Wei Li Jade Broken Plan”.
Hu Yang: I would choose “Lost in Guangzhou” because it is the song I personally played the most.
Ah Tie:
“Elegy of the Siege”.
What are some words you would use to describe the The Jade Breaking Plan For Liberty?
Mu Guo: Independent, heavy, and sharp
Li Fan: Ruthless, pure
Populus: Calm and serious
Through the tour and recording process of their album, the group has discovered a lot about themselves and their music abilities. Mu Guo specifically talks about how he discovered a lot about creating a spatial atmosphere when it came to his music. He played around a lot with the arrangement of the piano and experimented with different types of chords. Because of this experimentation, he was able to make the songs more melancholic.
As avid music fans, The band likes to admire other artists and bands such as Fayzz from Chengdu or Yang Haisong. Mugo goes as far as recommending an album from a French group called Slift’s titled “Ummon” which was released in February. The band likes to discuss bands with different genres and explore new types of music. One example that the band mentioned was a post-rocking band called Overhead. Outside of music, the band likes to do little hobbies such as practicing mixed martial arts or cooking.
Although the band likes to sit and admire other bands and explore different types of music, there is also a lot to admire amongst themselves. Li Fan talks about how pure each one of his bandmates is pure and appreciates how reliable they all are.
Background Colors & Elements of the Album
The band has laid out the secretive, oppressive, mad and solemn background concepts of the story they are telling through their music. Mu Guo also gave some more detailed explanations. Specifically, songs like "Trap", "She Lost Her Head", and "Descriptive Record of Patient Wang Jianjun" are a trilogy of embedded political metaphors.
At the beginning, it was a post-punk combined with a grunge-style ordinary work, and then gradually filled with funk elements and classical elements. The use of double stepping should also be relatively rare in non-metal bands.
In this album, she lost her head, Wang Jianjun, and the three songs of Siege Elegy use double stepping.
Mu Guo speaks on how he attempted to mix post-punk, experimental, and grunge elements into a unified mix. The overall integration of this song is smooth and appropriate. Guo voices out how more people will come to realize the value of this song after a while.
Guo recalls how creating the album was not as simple and easy a task as many people may think:
“The common problem of these trilogy and the whole album is that the problems during production (recording and mixing) caused the final release to be thin, and the bass and low frequency were weakened. In fact, it is different from the atmosphere and temperament that should have been presented. There is a big gap between the ground and the feeling of our original design.”
Experience Their Music Live: “Desperate Tour”
Comments