没腿的马（MTDM）是一个二人乐团，成员是照骏园和陶轶，他们的生肖也都是马（1978年出生）。陶轶演奏打击乐和小号，照骏园主要演奏管乐，包括各种型号的萨克斯和单簧管。在2008年前后，组建已有几年的没腿的马从欧洲回到上海，随即成为本地实验/即兴音乐场景里的活跃参与者。他们使用质朴的原声乐器进行完全即兴的演奏，无论器乐的语言还是音色与手法，在当时都是一些新鲜的事。

没腿的马当然不是最早在中国实践自由爵士/自由即兴的音乐人，但在此之前探索者大多是以个体在活动。一支演奏自由即兴音乐的团体（尽管成员只有两人）罕有先例。没腿的马把那份源自于欧洲70年代的自由爵士原汁原味地带到了当时的上海。在此之前，中国的乐迷与音乐人了解这类音乐的渠道是通过一些零散的二手翻译文献，或是那些难以获得的经典名盘。亲眼目睹现场，尤其是中国乐手的现场，十分罕见。

2009年前后是没腿的马最为活跃的时期。他们和上海本地、中国各地、世界各地的音乐人有了更多的合作，带来了一系列名目各异的三重奏、四重奏、五重奏、大乐团……比如有Alfred Harth加入的上海五重奏（成员还有徐程、卖卖），2011-2013年期间活动的上海自由音乐大乐团。不过最近十年里，以“没腿的马”为名义的活动已经很少了（尽管偶尔他们还是会浮出水面冒个头），照骏园与陶轶对于“即兴”的实践策略也与多年前有了很多偏移，但是他们依然在场。2022年，停滞多年的大乐团项目（现更名为上海自由音乐联盟）又重新开始了活动。虽说这是一个“没有团长”的组织，但不可否认的是，没腿的马是这个社群的原点之一。

就让我们也来回顾一下没腿的马的原点。没腿的马组建于2005年的德国杜塞尔多夫。那时候照骏园和陶轶都是杜塞尔多夫艺术学院的学生（主要学习绘画）。对于音乐，他们借用了激浪派先辈的探索方式：先不管到底是不是艺术/音乐，身体力行，直接行动。他们自学，自制乐器并用自己的方式演奏乐器，在工作室里演奏，练习，玩闹，把这些声音用廉价的录音机录到一些废旧磁带上。

可以说，这些录音没有任何野心与目标，甚至不是一种严肃的记录，只不过是两个年轻人想要做的事情，而在行动时，更多的思考也发生了。他们自制过三张CD，其中曾有很少一部分被转成mp3在网上传播，可能只有少数的朋友见过实体，更多的录音就封存在那些旧磁带里。从德国带到上海，这些磁带后来珍藏在陶轶的工作室的一角。2024年1月，在朱松杰的帮助下，这批磁带被转录成为数字文档。照骏园和陶轶从中甄选了60分钟，浦裕幸对这些录音进行了母带制作，集结出版馈赠大家。

这张名为《档案》的磁带，第一面是那个经典的没腿的马，或许一些乐迷还有印象：萨克斯和鼓的二重奏，火力全开，毫不拖泥带水；也有一些诙谐的小段落，照骏园吹奏着竖笛惹人发笑。然而在第二面，声音却变得幽暗神秘，让人摸不着头脑：大量的打击乐演奏，人声和一些奇怪的声响，还有吉他。吉他？这种乐器从来没有出现在没腿的马的现场中。罕为人知的事实是，在发现萨克斯之前，照骏园曾想成为一位吉他手，或许这些录音与尝试连他们自己都已遗忘了吧。由于是录制设备的简陋，在录音的间隙有一些没有被抹掉的原磁带的声音碎片，如今也一同被保留在这份《档案》中。（朱文博）

照骏园：萨克斯，竖笛，打击乐，吉他，物件

陶轶：打击乐，小号，物件

磁带转录：朱松杰

母带：浦裕幸

MTDM (acronym from the Chinese name mei tui de ma, “horse without legs”) is the duet of Jun-Y Ciao and Tao Yi, both born in 1978, Year of the Horse. Tao Yi plays drums and trumpet, and Jun-Y Ciao, woodwinds, including different sizes of saxophone and clarinet. Around 2008, MTDM returned to Shanghai from Europe, and straight away got involved in the local experimental music scene, giving entirely improvised performances using only acoustic instruments. From their overall musical style, to their approach to things like timbre and technique, it felt like something completely new had arrived.

To be sure, MTDM weren’t the first people in China to play free jazz or free improvisation, but before 2008, explorations of improvised music tended to be solo undertakings - an improvised music group, even if it only had two members, was an extremely rare sight. When MTDM returned to Shanghai, they brought back with them the energy and spirit of 70s European free jazz. Up until this point, for musicians and listeners alike, they might have only heard about this type of music through one of the translated articles floating around, or maybe they were lucky enough to have gotten their hands on a copy a classic album. Seeing a free jazz group live was rare enough. A Chinese free jazz group was almost unheard of.

2009 was MTDM’s most active period. They engaged in more collaborations with other musicians, whether locals from Shanghai, or people from across China and around the world, forming trios, quartets, quintets and large ensembles under different names. For example, the Shanghai Quintet featuring Alfred Harth, Xu Cheng, and MAImai, or the Shanghai Free Music Orchestra, which ran from 2011 to 2013. In the last 10 years however, activities under the name MTDM all but disappeared off the map – even though once in a while MTDM would resurface somewhere to give a performance. Jun-Y Ciao and Tao Yi’s improvisation practice has changed a lot since their early days, but they are still performing. In 2022, the long dormant large ensemble project re-emerged, now called the Shanghai Free Music Collective. Though a leaderless organisation，it wouldn’t be wrong to say that MTDM played an important role it its creation.

Let’s return to the beginning of MTDM itself. They formed in Düsseldorf in 2005. At the time, Jun-Y Ciao and Tao Yi were both painting students at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, but in terms of their approach to music, they were inspired the Fluxus movement. In other words, they weren’t interested in making distinctions between art, music, performance art, and direct action. They were self-taught, made their own instruments, and developed their own instrumental techniques, spending time in their studio practicing, making music, or just generally messing around. And, using a cheap tape recorder, some of these activities were recorded onto old cassettes.

Perhaps there weren’t any particular ambitions or goals behind these recordings. We might even say it wasn’t an especially serious undertaking. It was just something that two people in their youth wanted to do, and in the process, more and more ideas developed out of it. They self-published three CDs. Some tracks made their way onto the internet, but physical copies were likely only ever seen by a handful of friends. In any case, most of their recordings were on those old tapes. They were brought back with them to Shanghai and later on stored in a corner of Tao Yi’s studio. More than ten years later, in January 2024, thanks to the help of Zhu Songjie, the tapes were digitised and turned into an archive.

Zoomin’ Night is proud to present the cassette Archive, a collection 60 minutes of material from MTDM’s early recordings, carefully selected by Jun-Y Ciao and Tao Yi, and mastered by Hiroyuki Ura. The A-side is classic MTDM, and shouldn’t sound unfamiliar to some fans out there: a saxophone and drums duet, fiery and crisp, with no hint of hesitation. There is also the odd moment of humour, such as when Jun-Y Ciao plays the recorder. The B-side on the other hand is darker, mysterious, even a little bit puzzling: lots of percussion, some vocals, a few other strange sounds, and then there’s the guitar. Wait - guitar? In all the history of their live performances, they never used guitar. It’s little known that before Jun-Y Ciao discovered the saxophone, he wanted to be a guitarist. However, it’s not impossible that MTDM themselves have long since forgotten about some of these early experiments captured on tape.

On a final note, because the original recordings were made on very basic equipment, in between individual recordings you could hear sounds original tape that didn’t get erased. These have all been kept as part of this Archiv.

Text by Zhu Wenbo, and translated by John Wilton

Jun-Y Ciao: saxophone, recorder, guitar, percussions, objects

Tao Yi: percussions, trumpet, objects

Tape ripping: Zhu Songjie

Mastering: Hiroyuki Ura

《自述序言》

鲁迅先生在《集外集》的序言开篇即说“中国的好作家大抵是’悔其少作’的”，然而他自己对其少作是“愧则有之，悔却从来没有过”。那么，正巧我们也正面对着同样的问题。既然鲁迅先生已经开了这个先例，那么我们就厚着脸皮也说一声，青春无悔吧。

早年的磁带确实被扔在一边很久了，回国之后就再没有听过。重新听一下，勾起了昔日的记忆，不禁感慨也觉得好笑。记得，当年在工作室弄点声音出来是我们生活中的重要部分，除了乐器之外，我们自己也做了不少打击乐器，当然也包括锅碗瓢盆这样的现成品。打击乐器是最容易获取的，因为任何物件都可以被打击。我们尝试了在工作室周围一切能找到的东西，包括垃圾堆里可再利用的物品，也包括同工作室艺术家的雕塑，那些巨大铸铁雕塑的声音真棒啊！哈哈，不过我们没有告诉他我们打击了他的作品。最后这些美妙的声音还成为了我毕业展览中的一部分。

因为所做一切都是即兴的，没有一天会重复，所以记录成为了一种日常，或者说是可以捕捉一些美妙瞬间的方式，有时我们自己也不知道怎么会弄出一个有意思的旋律来。好在，陶轶有不少不再听的磁带，其中摇滚乐居多，正好可以用作记录的材料，我们也以实际行动完成了向摇滚乐的告别。

工作室是没有观众的，我们可以任意胡闹，纯粹是自娱自乐。这些磁带现在听来，当然是十分粗糙的，无论从演奏还是录音的质量，不过从另一个角度来说，也是天真和质朴的。我们在最初的乐团介绍上是这样写的：“乐团致力于一种纯粹的自由音乐，一种纯粹自发的音乐。亦如早年的FLUXUS先辈们对艺术形式的跨界探索，MTDM的身体力行可以被认为是对先辈们的致敬。没了腿的马似乎是废物的同义词。在所有的西部片中似乎无一例外，当马的腿折断之后，所得到的唯一结果就是被其主人结果性命。“没腿的马”这个似乎自嘲式的名字恰是暗合了两位艺术家对于没了腿的马该如何行走的问题的思考。”的确，我们当时想着，既然人人可以是艺术家，那么人人也可以是演奏音乐的人。应该说，演奏音乐本就是人的天性，想想早期的人类，难道他们没有通过敲打石头，甩动树枝，从而获得听觉上的快感吗？

鲁迅先生在“集外集”序言中，虽然坦言不悔其少作，但是他在编选出版时还是做了些修改和删选的。我们也做了同样的工作，在听了所有素材之后，我们挑出了一个小时时长的录音。一些因为时间久远的问题而对音质产生影响的，如磁带走音，颤音等等问题的素材自然就不选用了。有相似段落的，我们也就二者选一。尽量选取长的素材，现在听到的两面，每一个单面基本都来自同一盘磁带中的录音，尽量少地做了后期的编辑。为了保持原有的状态，我们保留了录音时间隙的瑕疵，可以仍然听到原有磁带上的一点点音乐，这是真实状态的呈现，这种真实呈现对于我们来说是重要的，我们没有什么需要去修饰和遮羞的。我想，只有在这样想法下，也许它的所有的粗糙和天真是可以被容忍和再次被听的，同时，我们也把这个出版的标题定为“档案”，希望是一个客观的标注。记得起初朱文博提议出版这些二十年前的录音时，我也曾有所迟疑，不过自问，难道现在的我们真的超越了过去吗？显然我们无法再回到过去的状态，想着，也就坦然了。（照骏园）