In 2017 after I finished a tour of Taiwan and returned to Beijing, I left my hard drive on one of those share bikes and it was lost forever.

I had close to ten years’ worth of live recordings on that hard drive (I never made any backups). Since then, I’ve made sure to keep recordings of my live performances well organised. To a certain extent, it’s through live performance that I create new ideas. What I regret, then, is that every performance from different phases of my music making life will never be able to recreated.

Towards the end of 2018 I moved to Dali, Yunnan, and lived there for just over two years. I remember how I was thinking before I moved, that I was hoping to take in the different environment and create new sounds. Now that I think back on it, it didn’t quite work out that way.

My practice was to create new works during live performances, and as for the recordings of these, I think of them as ‘field recordings’. It’s interesting to listen back to them afterwards.

Some of the recordings here document my first attempts at certain ideas. In my heart these ones are the most meaningful.

Ding Chenchen
Translated by John Wilton

2017年从台湾巡演结束回北京后，我把移动硬盘丢在共享单车车筐的挎包里忘了拿出，连同挎包一起丢失。里面保存了近十年来我大部分的现场录音（没有备份），从那之后我开始注意整理自己的现场录音。现场演出在一定程度下使我产生新的创作想法，遗憾的是不同阶段的每一场演出都无法复制。

2018年底我搬去云南大理，并在那里生活了两年多，像去之前的想法那样我希望被那里的环境所影响创作新的声音，现在回想起来没有完全成功。我习惯在演出时进行新的创作，我把这些现场录音当作是“实地录音”，过后再拿出来听很有意思。这些现场录音有几场是初次尝试，它们在我心目中意义重大。

丁晨晨

Ding Chenchen is a noise musician. He lived in Beijing during 2015-2018 and had many performances there. Before that he lived in Shanghai, where he started his noise practice. Ding Chenchen moved to Dali, Yunnan at the end of 2018. The recordings in this cassette are all selected from this period. Ding Chenchen left Dali in 2021.

Ding Chenchen’s solo project has many monikers using for different projects, including: BAD-LIFE (harsh-noise-wall, 2019-present), bad-life (looptape/ambient, 2019-present), noise666 (sample/sound collage/free improvisation and more, 2009-present), 丁晨晨 (no clear directions), DINGCHENCHEN (harsh-noise, discontinued). Ding Chenchen participated in some hard-noise groups including XXSEXX and K.M.K.M.K. His name could also be found on some early Zoomin’ Night releases (Clarinet, 20150505, 2 Compositions).

Four solo project names were used in Dali Selections, 2018-2021. Most of these recordings were made outdoors.

Ding Chenchen: electronics (a1, b1), clarinet (a2), metal (a3), cowbell and djembe (a4), field-recordings (a5)

Designed by Liu Lu
Mastered by Hiroyuki Ura