"It's a bit of a freak," says Boojii's SanSan of their forthcoming album Reserved. "It's extremely sweet and extremely cold and bitter at the same time." Maybe so, but together with Muscle Snog's release of Mind Shop, the record is another important milestone for Shanghai's experimental indie scene.Boojii have been around for a number of years, gigging sporadically, but with more consistency in the last 12 months. The band's name, says SanSan, doesn't really have any meaning. "There's no link to the band or the music or sexy films stars or anything like that - I just like it because it sounds cute. If I could choose another name it'd be 少女呕吐物 [Girl Vomit]."
SanSan was formerly in 33Island and Boojii's other members - Sun Ye, Damen and Jiang Zhendong (also formerly of 33Island) - have all been, or are currently, involved in other prominent bands in Shanghai. SanSan is currently also part of Muscle Snog and Duck Fight Goose (together with Damen) two of the city's other leading experimental indie bands. So how does Boojii compare? "The main difference is that in Boojii, everyone has to listen to me!" she jokes.
Yet given the array of talent involved in the band, there is naturally plenty of collaboration. "I usually write the songs at first," says SanSan, "and then we'll play around with them when we practice and the others will all add their new ideas and thoughts. Once Sun Ye adds his guitar parts, there's more finesse to the songs. The process of putting together Boojii songs has always been very inspirational."
While the arrangement of their songs is somewhat experimental and
collaborative, SanSan says that the band didn't feel restrained by
being in the studio. "The recording went really well," she says, "we
were in Beijing for nine days and every day we'd wake up on time and go
to work happily. The mixing took a little while, but I only had to go
back there for another two days after that to finish it off." The album will follow the band's recent performance at the Modern Sky Festival in the capital, which SanSan feels went well despite the reported problems with the festival's international roster, and she is looking forward to it bringing the band to a wider audience. "It's important for us," she says, "once it's out more people will hear our music and more people will like us."
With this in mind she says the band will consider touring, but points out that it'd have to be at weekends because all the members have day jobs Monday to Friday. In the meantime, SanSan says her plans are "to continue making music - with Boojii, with Duck Fight Goose and hopefully, if we can find a drummer, we can get Muscle Snog to start up again." Not only that, but she has already begun to turn her mind to a follow up to Reserved. "I'm already writing new songs," she says, "so hopefully you can look forward to a second Boojii album as well."
>>> Catch Boojii live this Saturday (17th) at 3pm at NeochaEDGE's Search for Creative City event. More details here. No release date has been set for Reserved yet, but the record is expected to be out at the end of this month or early November on Modern Sky.
Leave a comment