Belle Chen (Interview)
Good morning. We’re doing all piano music this week.
Today we’re listening to Belle Chen, an Australian-Taiwanese pianist and producer. We first recommended her almost four years ago. She was born in Kaohsiung, raised in Brisbane, and studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London.1 Her latest record, Ravel in the Forest, was inspired by a return trip to Australia in 2021. While visiting her family, she “stumbled into an ancient rainforest” whose sights and sounds of life inspired the compositions that would come to make up this record.2 It’s a gentle, dynamic, awe-inspiring, and thoroughly original record, with Chen’s dextrous piano performance accompanied by beguiling strings and dramatic synths. We’re also re-upping her 2016 LP Mediterranean Sounds, which combines classical piano with field recordings of glamorous locations. Recommending it in March 2020, we found the record “especially useful in this time of isolation.” An interview with Chen follows the streaming links.
Ravel in the Forest - Belle Chen (50m, no vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Tidal
Mediterranean Sounds - Belle Chen (50m, ambient vocals)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube Music / Amazon Music / Bandcamp / Tidal
What were the Ravel pieces that you listened to the most / inspired the compositions on this album?
Ravel is one of my favourite composers. I love how he was able to draw a multitude of colours and timbres from the orchestra, and also how he was able to make the piano sound orchestral too. It’s hard to pinpoint my favourites from Ravel, I learn so much from his works across multiple instrumentations and scope - both in his compositions and arrangements.
There are tributes to Ravel that can be found throughout Ravel in the Forest like hidden easter eggs, include motifs from Miroirs, Jeux D’eau, the second movement of the Piano Concerto in G, and the second movement of his String Quartet in F. Other influences are less direct. For example, “Closer” and “Moonrise” take inspiration from Ravel’s orchestration techniques.
What other music were you listening to while composing Ravel In The Forest?
My other main influence beyond Ravel is Ryuichi Sakamoto, especially his earlier works like Thousand Knives, and his time with Yellow Magic Orchestra. While producing this album, there were several key artistic decisions made after listening to Jean-Michel Jarre’s Amazonia (2021), Connan Mockasin’s Caramel (2013), and Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells (1973).
The album and its track titles conjure a forest ecosystem, with foliage and weather, populated by wolves, dragonfly, chameleon, and deer. Tell us about some of the connections between your compositional techniques and these images.
One of my favourite parts of making this album was the process of conceptualising and finding ways to externalise the characteristics and personalities found within the forest in a way that is colourful and vivid, yet leaves enough space for the listeners to imagine.
Some compositional and production techniques that listeners may pick up include:
the placement of raindrops in “And It Rains” mimicking raindrops on the canopy and around the listeners (in both the stereo master and the Dolby Atmos mix),
the throaty and uncanny sound evoking a singing wolf using pedals and re-amping in “Lone Wolf,”
the singular, fast line in “Dragonfly” that abruptly shifts and changes direction to mimic how dragonflies can fly in all directions with their four wings,
the pitch bends to conjure the shifts in colours of a chameleon along with the use of synths to mimic the noise of frog and cricket calls in “The Chameleon.”
In “My Deers,” the sweet nature of the deers shine through in the piano melodic line, while their movement and behaviour is evoked through rhythm. The scene also includes bird calls (created using electric piano with chorus & wah) and a thunderous synth bass.
"Dragonfly" is probably the track we’ve returned to the most. It has this striking staccato style – how did you achieve that effect?
For “The Dragonfly,” there was a lot of time spent on the design, capture and on the sound during production by both myself in initial stages (EQ and finding the right type of attack), and also with my mixing engineer Dougal Lott (to accentuate the impact and finding the “tail” with a touch of delay). This track is comprised of multiple layers of processed keyboard playing, each with specific spatial treatment and reverb to create layers of distance and closeness. Sometimes in this track, what sounds like a singular line is actually comprised of 3-4 layers, fitting in together like a jigsaw puzzle.
In general, what are your favorite records to work to? Like when you're dealing with email, etc.
Depends on the mood, time of day, and where I am actually!
Generally when I’m doing non-creative work (like admin etc), I tend to listen to something with beats. On a normal day or if I’m travelling, it’ll likely be artists like Mndsgn, Robert Glasper, Anderson .Paak. If I’m feeling really tired and am needing to push through with a task, I’ll listen to Afro-Cuban music (Afro-Cuban All Stars, Buena Vista Social Club, Ruben Gonzalez, Irakere, etc).
If it is early evening, I’ll most likely be listening to jazz (Chick Corea, Avishai Cohen, Tigran Hamasyan, Hiromi etc.). If I’m catching up on emails very late at night, then anything goes! It depends on what the vibe is. Some artists I’ve been listening to recently late at night: Jeff Buckley, Yosi Horikawa, Cigarettes After Sex, Piero Piccioni, Jamiroquai…
Generally I avoid listening to classical music or art/experimental genres when I need to focus, as I tend to revert to analysing the music rather than simply experiencing or enjoying it.
Name an underrated musician from the past 50 years.
Yosi Horikawa
What are you working on next?
I’m currently preparing for the album launch show for Ravel in the Forest in London in March, which will be an immersive audio performance with my 8 piece modern chamber ensemble. I’m very excited about this! After this, there will be a series of live shows to support the album. I’m also simultaneously working on my next set of works, which I’m keeping close to my chest for the time being.
I really enjoyed this album. Thank you so much for your music and the interview
Great music and great interview!