XIAO ZHONG/PAIRS INTERVIEW - PART 1

Pairs are a noise-rock duo formed early last year in Shanghai, made up of F on guitar and Xiao Zhong on drums and vocals. Not content with playing numerous shows in their home city, they have taken their distinctive brand of explosive musical expression far and wide (you can find their 7''s and CDs on sale at Rough Trade in London, as well as having label representation in six other countries, including New Zealand and Chile), made an impact in the global music media and are already set to release their second CD, with plans for a third to be recorded later this year.

Their new 14 track album is entitled 'Summer Sweat'; if you've stuck it out over the last couple of months in Shanghai you'll surely empathise with that. Here is the first song to be revealed from said CD; it's called 'Christmas' and comes with a video made my Xiao Zhong:

Pairs - Christmas

We met-up with Xiao Zhong to talk about 'Summer Sweat', his troublesome hernia and generally not giving a 4X about what people think…

*Please note, this interview contains numerous C-Bombs throughout. If you're sensitive to such things, please click here instead.

Pic credits go to Sevena and Jessica - you can find them all on the Pairs Douban page - http://site.douban.com/pairs/ and don't forget you can download the previous album 'Pairs' on Bandcamp here - http://pairs.bandcamp.com/

Xiao Zhong: Wow, you wrote questions down!

Shanghai 24/7: They’re more like scribbles to be honest… So, how did you hook-up with ­Yang Haisong (producer of the new LP)?

XZ:  Yeah, well we played in Beijing; he wasn’t overly clear on what he wanted. What he said was, “I produce for Modern Sky and Maybe Mars, I have to do X amount of albums per year for them, I’d love to do one with you; if you want to go down that avenue then it’d be cool”. So I said, “Do you do freelance work?”. He said yes, I asked him how much? And he said, “Well, if I like the band it’s very cheap, if I don’t like the band it’s more expensive”. So I kinda thought about it for a few months and then sent him an email and saying, “We’re ready, you wanna do it?”. He said yes…

He’s an awesome guy to work with, works super hard; we just emailed each other loads, bouncing ideas etc. But I’d heard he really liked drum machines, I’d heard he likes to fix things a lot. You know, we wanted to go down the route of, “If we fuck up then we fuck up and that’s fine”, but I’d heard he would fix things with Pro Tools or whatever. So I really stressed it to him loads, basically months of me bringing it up again and again. He obviously got it but I kept on at him! He was down with whatever after that. We went down to Beijing, booked the studio for two days; we did it in like four hours. At 5pm we were like, “What are we going to do now?!” – I think F went and ate donkey or something.

So he sent a mix, and he’s like, “Yeah this mix is good, it’s done” - done within a week! Then two weeks later he’s like, “I’ve changed my mind. I’ve got it in my head, this is what I want it to sound like”. So he remixed it all, sent it to us again and we thought, yeah, this sounds good! And kept it… He’s also been playing them at D22 on his DJ nights; he says that the crowd like it!

24/7: So essentially the recording’s all done in one take?

XZ: Yep. Drums and guitar all done in one take, vocals done separately. I couldn’t do the vocals while doing the drumming, I just get too tired and plus I had this hernia, it would keep coming out every time I strained - I’d have to then put it back in, it’d come out again… Then it got to the stage that when I was doing the vocals I had to do it in a crouching position and put my hand here (proceeds to crouch on floor and re-enact singing position with grimace)… so we did the vocals like that! I’ve got a video of it; it’s online! It was fucking painful like.

Xiao Zhong with hernia!

We also did one over-dub because F was like “I fucked that up”, and I’d already packed up the drums or whatever. Then he (Yang Haisong)asked us if we wanted to some over-dubs, and I thought yeah! We can add little ‘coo-eee’s’! Then I picked up the mic and thought, hold on, this is opening a can of worms. I thought, no, it is what it is, you can hear that there’s so many fuck ups but you know, that’s what we wanted.

24/7: How was that for him, considering that he has a rep for perfection?

XZ: He was with that, he knew us, he got a sense of our personality. After every take you could hear us say, “yeah, that’s fine” and you could hear him say, “wanna do it again?” and we’d be like “nah”. Actually, there was one tune where he reckoned we could do it better so we thought OK, lets do it again - and we did do it better. Then we changed one in the studio and played it slower, it was pretty much “fuck it, let’s just do it”.

24/7: Is that the attitude that you’ve had from the start with Pairs?

XZ: It’s actually the attitude I have with life, to a degree. You know, give it your best, then leave, don’t give it too much thought, don’t worry about it too much as you won’t then get much done - it is what it is. It’s kind of what my take on most things is!

Of course other parts of Pairs we do push, you know, like blogs to websites in Chinese and English. We just put one up yesterday, basically titled ‘Ask us anything you want’. You know, it sounds a bit focussed on us but the questions you can ask are things like ‘How do you book a studio?’, ‘How do we get in touch with so and so?’. But in general, you know, too many bands fuck around and take forever to do something. I think, c’mon, just do it, who gives a fuck? I’m already thinking about the next one (recording).  I look at most things as a snapshot of where I am just now, ‘Oh, that was me when I was 25, in March’, you know?!’ Especially these conversations, it just means when I go home, you know I’ll probably never see you guys again, you know other people too, but I want to remember that Shanghai was awesome. It’s all a diary you know. The DVD that comes with our new album, it’s just a diary, all the other videos I’ve done, all just a diary. When I’m 50 years old I can put it on and think, shit! I remember that! Not false, not edited. It…is…what…it…fucking…is.

24/7: You said you were making a lot of effort to guide Chinese bands etc. – are there any in particular that have made an impression?

XZ: Errrr… it’s all these fleeting meetings you get in various places, it’s like backpacking or something - best mates for two days then never see each other again. There are some Guangzhou bands, there’s a band called Paris! With a lead singer called ‘Xiao Zhu’ or something, which was very confusing for us all. There was another band called ‘Your Boyfriend Sucks’ that was interesting. Colourful Zebra in Xian, who were awesome; these sorts of bands, I want to try and get their info and try and get them to Shanghai. I know Split Works and Wooozy try and get artists over, but they’re (the bands in question) not at that level yet. And they don’t have the money to come here; I don’t have the money to bring them here…

24/7: Good enough to play here but no one’s going to stump up the cash for them to come…

XZ: We lose money every fucking time we play. Flying to Beijing is like 2000RMB. I have to fly after work or whatever and we get 200 kuai for the show… you’re going to lose money. Most of these bands either can’t afford to lose money. I mean, sometimes their parents don’t even know what they do.

24/7: You’ve said that you’ve already started on new stuff - how old are the songs on this CD?

XZ: Well, there was one of them that was meant to be on the first CD and we forgot we had it, so that one we recorded last July. Some of them were written a week before going to the studio; some of them are around about 6 months old. You know. We go through spurts where we write loads.

24/7: You were talking about how, initially you were teaching F chords, or saying do this, do that - does she now come with riffs or does most of it come from your side?

XZ: It’s basically all me. She comes round here specifically to learn some stuff, I’ll show her something, then she’ll go away and forget and then she’ll come back and be like “Oh yeah, I remember” and we’ll kind of play around with that. I’ll maybe send her stuff and ask if she likes it and if she says yes that’s great, it’s done. Or she’ll say things like, “I like that first part”, and I’ll take that and put it with something else until we have something cool. She’ll come to me with tiny little riffs, really just two chords or whatever and I’ll be like, “OK, I can work around that”, then I’ll write around it. She’s written maybe… two songs?

That sounds totally arrogant right? But I think she’s happy with that; she’s told me that the songs make her excited. For a girl who hadn’t really played in a band before, who hadn’t really played the guitar? You know, after six months to play the Modern Sky Festival, that’s pretty amazing. It used to be I would set up all the amps, sound check everything myself, because she didn’t know how. It’s amazing now to see her go to any amp, any equipment and be like, “No, no, no, that needs to be set like that” etc. etc. And in Next Years Love, they’re like “Play a C sharp” and she’s like “OK, done!”. It’s been awesome to see.

Next Years Love - Smash The Pink Bugs

24/7: So does she share your attitude about doing everything on the first take, not taking things too seriously, just having fun with it?

XZ: To be honest, she keeps me in check. I’m more of the social butterfly; I’m more into that stuff. I’ll talk about our band etc., F kinda likes to keep her head down about that stuff; she likes to talk about food and bands she likes. After a show she’ll go and sit with her friends and smoke and I’ll go out and meet people who want to meet me! You know, someone will go to F and say “Where can I get a CD” and F will be very nice to them, but it’ll be me who’ll speak to everyone.

24/7: How did you get together as a band?

XZ: Yeah well, I originally was playing guitar. I met a few people through expat websites, started playing with them… First fucking warning - anyone who calls their drum beats ‘chops’, fuck ‘em. I said to this guy, “Why don’t you play drums like this?”,  and he’s like “Well why don’t you play drums?”, and I’m like “Well why don’t you fuck off?”. Another guy says, “I can play guitar”, and he’s all like ‘dum de dum de de dum’ (proceeds to mime walking baseline). I said I didn’t want to play that shit so I asked them to play Pairsy kinds of stuff; you know, it’s fun! But these guys couldn’t play it, and plus they were fucking cunts.

So… I met F and I asked her to come and sing; I was just going to play interesting chords with the delay pedal and a loop pedal and I wanted a girl singer. She said “Yeah, OK”. But one day she picked up the guitar, started strumming and we wrote a tune that afternoon. So I’m like ‘great’, but she couldn’t play slow and she could just use two fingers. But you know what, it’s awesome to be being creative but have that limitation; you can only work in this frame. I’d write something I really like and then I’d think ‘how can I get that to one finger and it still sound great?’. My girlfriend asks me “Can’t you play something relaxing”, but I can’t! I’m writing for F!

All our songs are written on an acoustic guitar and then we change it for F. To be honest even when we write a slow song we’ll speed it up in the end. F is awesome because she is able to get shit done and have fun, whereas I sometimes just want to get shit done - she’s better at balancing I guess.

24/7: What do you say to people when they say you need a bass player? Do you get that a lot?

XZ: People don’t say shit to us about our music!  I’ve heard that once or twice from close friends. No one will come up and say anything. Basically we have an unspoken rule that when people come up to us after gigs and say, “Hey man, really love the music”, we’ll ask them how their day was, who they are, shit like that. You know, basically say that they don’t have to blow smoke up our arses, sever that connection and actually just have a normal conversation. Some guys - well, the drunk guys - will say things like “You guys sound like Mars Volta. ‘We don’t, you’re drunk, let’s have a proper conversation…’ Then they’ll say it again and you realise the conversation’s going nowhere.

So people don’t say shit to us! Which is great, and I can’t read the Chinese blogs so I have no idea what other people are saying. Actually, people in Shanghai are generally too nice, so they won’t say shit to you. Actually didn’t you guys write a review that we needed a bass player?

24/7: That’ll be Phil…

XZ & 24/7: FUCKING PHIL!

XZ: You know, I was really for you guys before I learnt about Phil.

Anyway – being two-piece is fucking awesome. It’s cheaper; it’s too much hassle with a bass player. You know if you want to practise you’re like, “Ring Phil the bass player, get him down here”.

24/7: Shit don’t ring Phil, you know what he’s like.

XZ: Yeah, fuck, don’t ring Phil! He’s a right cunt.

We’ll play with anyone though, we have this thing that if you want to play with us just ask and we’ll do it; we’d love that.

24/7: F has obviously got Next Year’s Love, do you have any side or solo things going on?

XZ: My girlfriend would break my face if I had any other projects; I get afraid to tell her when I have a show! There was a six-week period where we played Zhuhai, Guangzhou, Dalian, Beijing, Wuhan, Zhenjiang, and Shanghai. I’d leave Friday and come home Sunday, and on Sunday I’d be too tired to do anything. Monday I’d be promoting the shows and so on and doing my proper work! So I wasn’t here a lot of the time. And to be honest Pairs fulfils every musical need I have, every indulgence I have I can do it through Pairs. The reason F is in NYL is because she wants to show her skills, grow apart from me I guess, and the other girls in NYL are her best friends, they needed a guitarist, they asked her, she said yes.

24/7: Some of the places you just mentioned, we didn’t even realise you’d gone there with Pairs. Dalian for example?

Dalian was awesome. There was a free festival, we played in front of all these migrant workers and all these pretty girls; a two-day festival, great festival. We had a great slot; we played really well. It was great!

24/7: Do you get invited to play these gigs or do you put yourselves out there?

XZ: We have been very, very lucky in that we have been invited for nearly all the shows, bar Wuhan I think. It’s got to the stage where I can say “Can we come?”, and they say yes. It used to be that we’d have to send stuff to them but now they just say yes. But also we’re very active in that regard to be honest. And we get invited to Beijing a lot, but they’re (the shows) never really worth it. And all the Shanghai shows, we also generally get invited, we’ve only put on one or two, we’ve been very, very lucky.

So when people ask us how to book shows we tell them, but it’s not how we did it; we were asked to play pretty much from the very start.

24/7: You said before that you had ways and means of getting your stuff out globally - what about that MTV Iggy thing? I suppose in China there aren’t too many bands doing your thing, so does that give you an advantage with getting your stuff heard?

XZ: Hmm, yeah… Fuck MTV! That Iggy thing was really weird. I basically got an email with subject: ‘MTV Request’. I opened it and it said, “We need a picture for an article we’re doing”. So I wrote back and asked them if they wanted a quote, an interview, anything. They basically said nope, we’ll write the article. So they wrote the article and I read it - it was pretty cool. I wrote back to them and said that next time they should come along to a show. But they lived in New York! So they’d never seen us. They basically get different info from different blogs. They then said to give them some advanced warning before we released anything. So… I was like ‘OK, here’s your advanced warning, we ‘re doing a CD, what do you want to do, an interview or something?’. Then she says “If you win ‘Artist of the Week’ we can do an interview”. What the fuck? What the fuck is ‘Artist of the Week’? So I looked it up, and saw what it was! I sent it to (Jake) Newby as a joke. I said, ‘I don’t care who people vote for as long as it’s not that bitch Tulipa, she’s got a kick arse street team!

24/7: 99%! (at that point Tulipa had 99% of the vote)

XZ: I know! Those things don’t mean shit to be honest. We’ve also had other things, a New York radio podcast – 100 questions, went on for two hours, asked me the most intimate things and I of course answered them like an idiot because I was in that kind of mood. We’ve had other things in the press in Australia because I know a few bloggers and writers. We’ve also had some stuff from Italy - some Italian blog was after us a while back - Japanese stuff. I just don’t know how they know!

24/7: You’re out there though aren’t you? You do a lot of promo, going to all these cities.

XZ: We’re very, very approachable. Whenever we meet people we always want to do something, something a bit different. Generally any idea we’ll be up for, especially if it’s different… interesting interviews, different stuff.

The worst fucking question that I get asked, and I apologise if you’ve asked this (we have…lots), is ‘Why should people go to your show?’. And I always say ‘You shouldn’t! Who cares?’. If you want to come, come. If you don’t, don’t. It’s not going to be a life changing experience. Don’t feel pressure to come and see us. If you don’t know anyone, come find us, we’ll speak to you, find out about you, we’ll buy you a beer, introduce you to people. But don’t feel that pressure to go anywhere to be seen.

24/7: We’ve definitely asked that question.

XZ: But a lot of bands would be like (in an boxing announcer’s voice) “We combine big rock riffs… and YOU WILL HAVE AN AWESOME TIME!”. I don’t understand it. We play three chords, you know? Why do I need to be an arsehole? Up there for 25 minutes a week. Why does that give me the right to be an arsehole rock star? It doesn’t. But, especially in China, they’re very into the hero worship, they think “I saw you on the stage so you must be this!’’.

24/7: It must be a bit weird coming of stage and then being asked to sign stuff and get photo’s taken.

WORDS: Shanghai 24/7