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Photo credit Capsule48 // @capsulefortyeight

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Praise for RAINBOW CHAN

“a welcome return and uncompromising slice of art-pop” – The Guardian

“[Rainbow Chan] shifts between exposed, refined songwriting and dominant electronic tones” – The Age

“a vivid audio love letter… Chan transmut[es]loss and grief into a beautiful remembrance” – Dazed Digital

“sheds light on cultural history with thoughtful dexterity” – EARMILK

“genre-bending art pop” – NME

“[an] avant-garde approach to pop experimentation” – BAESIANZ

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Multi-award-winning Naarm/Melbourne-based vocalist, producer and interdisciplinary artist RAINBOW CHAN (she/her) today announces her forthcoming third album The Bridal Lament (due for release in 2024) and its accompanying solo theatrical debut, also sharing her palatial lead single and video ‘Seven Sisters’. The Bridal Lament is a rich, nuanced exploration of Chan’s Weitou heritage (the first settlers of Hong Kong); a modern feminist reimagining of the folksongs traditionally performed by village women in the lead-up to arranged marriage, and is assisted by the Australia Council for the Arts. ‘Seven Sisters’ is out independently now, stream HERE; Rainbow Chan is set to share further details of The Bridal Lament’s stage debut later this month.

Working across mediums of music, painting, performance and installation, Rainbow Chan’s multifaceted practice explores themes of cultural representation, (mis)translation and matrilineal histories through stories of love and loss. As a musician and producer, she crafts captivating melodies and off-kilter beats from field recordings and found sounds drawing from golden-era Canto-pop, driven by a DIY spirit and expressed through her bell-like “gymnastic vocals” (The Guardian). An intrepid researcher and lifelong lover of learning and refining new skills, Chan has earned a reputation as one of the most innovative creatives in the country, now set to step into character for her first foray into the world of experimental theatre.

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Inspired by a Hong Kong folktale, the mesmerising ‘Seven Sisters’ is the first offering from Rainbow Chan’s new album and performance work; a celebration of female empowerment, resilience, and the unwavering strength of sisterhood that floats gracefully and stings with insight. Atop a bed of minimalist but impactful alt-pop production that blooms into a multi-sensory, many-layered space, it tells the story of a young village girl who courageously flees from an arranged marriage, banding together with a group of devoted sisters who plunge into the roaring ocean as an act of rebellion, giving rise to the legend of 七姊妹: the Seven Sisters.

Of the release and new project, Rainbow says: “哭嫁歌 or “Bridal laments” refer to a female custom that was performed by the 圍頭 (Weitou) people. As marriages were arranged, becoming a bride signified a kind of death for a woman. Not only would her ties to her natal home be severed, but she would remain an outsider to the groom’s family. To mourn this profound sense of loss, Weitou women would perform a bridal lament cycle before their wedding day, a ritual which involved singing and weeping in front of family and friends over the course of three days. Since this tradition ended in the 1960s, the last group of women to embody this knowledge are in their 80s or 90s today. I have Weitou ancestry through my mother who never learnt the laments. To learn more about this ritual, I’ve been working with elderly Weitou women in the Caritas Lung Yeuk Tau Community Development Project over the last few years.”

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Directed by Capsule48 creative director Anne Berry, who Rainbow Chan previously collaborated with for her ‘Oblivion’ (2019) visuals, and shot on location in Hong Kong during the artist’s residence at Eaton earlier this year, the single’s decadent, striking visuals builds on the artist’s reimaginings of the bridal laments and the ways in which bitterness towards arranged marriages and patriarchal rule has been traditionally expressed. Following a cinematic and deeply symbolic journey that seamlessly weaves beauty and gloom, the clip finds Rainbow surrounded by crimson-clad handmaidens, her fate already decided by a powerful matchmaker; Weitou village elders who lived through this history themselves look on in the distance as she enters through a shrine gate in an outlying ancient walled city, juxtaposed with the contemporary city as desperation builds.

Conceived as a song cycle, The Bridal Lament brings to life intergenerational and cross-cultural perspectives on diasporic identity and the complex history of Hong Kong in an emotionally-resonant and sumptuous listening experience. Rainbow Chan draws on over five years of intense research across the project, having established a collaboration with Caritas Lung Yeuk Tau Community Development Project, a Weitou-led conservation program in the New Territories of Hong Kong, learning skills from the last holders of cultural knowledge including ritual songs, cooking, rice harvesting and weaving in an effort to connect with the disappearing culture. The album and theatre production is the culmination of Rainbow’s multiple creative investigations into Weitou history and culture, which have also included her ABC Radio National documentary Songs From A Walled Village (2021) which was a finalist in the Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union Awards, and Fruit Song, her multi-channel installation/traditional weaving/silk painting work for the NSW Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship, which has just been acquired by the Art Gallery of NSW. Directed by Tessa Leong, another trusted collaborator of Rainbow’s (who composed the score and sound design for Leong and Merlynn Tong’s 2022 work Golden Blood, The Bridal Lament production will tour nationally with Contemporary Asian Australian Performance.

Rainbow Chan‘s carefully considered, boundary-pushing art-pop has seen her perform around the continent and internationally at Sydney Opera House, MONA FOMA, VIVID, Iceland Airwaves, Gallery of Modern Art and most recently in SXSW in the US plus a string of shows in Hong Kong and Seoul. Chan’s work has found strong support with triple j, Double J, Dazed, The Guardian, The Age, SBS, ABC Radio National, rage, NME, Bandcamp, Junkee, Acclaim Magazine, Nowness Asia, EARMILK, The 405, Purple Sneakers, Pilerats, Broadsheet and more including community radio around the continent. Of her previous records, from debut Spacings (2016), Fabrica EP (2017), Pillar (2019) to the Stanley EP (2021), Pillar boasted a nomination for the Australian Music Prize, her single ‘Let Me’ won the FBi SMAC Award for Best Song, and Spacings received a Record of the Year nomination in the same as well as for Best Dance/Electronica Album via AIR. Her subtle, refined approach to songwriting has seen her compose music for ABC documentary The Glass Bedroom (2017), a live score for Art Gallery of NSW’s Starburst, Chinese Film Season, the theme song for 7am’s podcast Everybody Knows, and the original soundtrack for short film Butter (2022) directed by the late icon Anita Lee. Her artworks have been exhibited at Artspace Sydney (where she was part of their One Year Studio Program and selected as the Performance Space x West Kowloon Exchange resident artist), National Art School, Liquid Architecture, and Penrith Regional Gallery among others. In 2022, Rainbow was recognised in the Asian-Australian Leadership Summit’s 40 under 40: Most Influential Asian Australian Awards for her contributions to arts and culture, and also won FBi Radio’s Artist of the Year. The Bridal Lament will be released in 2024, with the accompanying theatrical dates set to be announced later this month.

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Rainbow Chan – ‘Seven Sisters’
Out Now
Stream

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Follow RAINBOW CHAN
Website – Youtube – Instagram – Spotify
Facebook – Twitter

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AMNPLIFY – ML