Imagine moving to a new country as a child and being told to choose which of your favourite belongings to bring. You’re only allowed to fit them into a single box, and the selection could define the pieces of your childhood you’ll cherish for years to come.
For Rainbow Chan, when she moved from Hong Kong in 1996 as a six-year-old, the choice was simple.
“When I moved to Australia, I brought a box of VHS tapes with me – before the internet was a thing. These music videos and anime programs that would take up the TV were stored in a kind of time capsule. I would watch that with my sisters over and over again – it helps me to keep reimagining myself as coming from a particular place and time.”
These memories and influences still play a large part in Chan’s musical process today, in which she takes snippets of ideas from a wide pool of sources, then pieces them together much like a collage. After some more chipping away at the ideas, the result is her nostalgic, layered electropop compositions that often provide a direct window into her soul.
“I try to draw influences from things that are not just music-based,” she explains. “So I will go and try and see performances, or sit by the beach and just look at the waves roll in. I just try to make it a bit more holistic and not just fixated on sounding like a particular genre.”
Starting out from more conventional beginnings, first learning the saxophone and then using the piano and her voice to write, Chan’s music began in a different place altogether – one she describes as “traditional” and “minimal”. Her interest in electronic music arose when she started observing similarities between live instrumentation and particular elements of electronic music, and her compositions began to take quite a different path.
“I think for me it’s seeing musical sounds as a spectrum and not as a dichotomy between technologically based sounds and organic sounds,” says Chan. “How can you play the piano so it doesn’t sound like a piano? How can you play the saxophone in a way that it sounds like it’s growling or industrial rather than a saxophone?”
The idea of breaking down the foundations of sound has naturally led Chan into various opportunities, like doing the sound design for art installations. At the moment, she’s particularly interested in counterfeit culture, and how certain industries and markets affect creative output. She’s been able to investigate these kinds of statements even further through making sound art.
“Within the pop realm, there’s only so much space to make comments on that without the song sounding contrived,” she says. “So I think being able to do it in an installation or in a performance art context is more conducive to those kind of comments.”
Turning to the stage, and after taking out FBi Radio’s Northern Lights prize in 2011, Chan has had the opportunity to perform at a number of festivals, including the Iceland Airwaves Festival in Reykjavík, known for unearthing new artists from all over the world. 2016 will be her third year performing at Vivid Sydney, and she’ll take part in two events – Heaps Gay’s Festival Of Queer Delights and a Women In Electronic Music Showcase at the Museum of Contemporary Art.
For Heaps Gay’s party, she’ll be teaming up onstage for the first time with Moon Holiday (best known for voicing ‘Insane’ on Flume’s debut album) and techno keyboardist Corin. “They [the Heaps Gay organisers] liked the idea of having an all-female band as part of their lineup,” Chan says, “so that was nice for more representation of female artists.”
She also feels honoured to have made the lineup for the Women In Electronic Music Showcase, spotlighting a section of the music industry where there certainly needs to be more representation for women. Chan speculates that there are pressures surrounding image that prevent some women from entering the industry, and especially in a genre that is perceived as more “traditionally masculine”. However, as Chan herself has gotten more experience, she’s learned to face this issue head-on.
“I take a lot of control over the way I’m presented,” says Chan. “With more experience, there’s more dialogue in general about the fact that it’s important to represent yourself in an image that you’re most comfortable with.”
Alongside these upcoming performances, Chan is also preparing to release a new album. Like much of her work, it is strongly linked to emotional experiences and lessons learned as she gets older, piecing together memories and feelings.
“[The album] came from a very specific time in my life where I did a lot of growing and I was kind of shedding this very young adult skin into something that was a bit more formed and tough – emotionally and musically, I think.”
She has already released two tracks from the album, each exploring the human experience: ‘Nest’, a song about accumulating experiences from a failed romance, and ‘Last’. The album will arrive as a whole in the next couple of months.
“Musically, the songs range from ballads to more dancey numbers,” says Chan. “But I think thematically it’s about accepting failure into your life.”
[Rainbow Chan photo by Romain Duquesne]
Rainbow Chan playsHeaps Gay – The Festival Of Queer Delights, as part of Vivid Sydney 2016, at Factory Theatre Sunday June 12; and also MusicNSW’s Women In Electronic Music Showcase at the MCA Rooftop on Saturday June 18, as well as Art After Hours at the Art Gallery of NSW Wednesdays in June.
