Daniel Melfi met Osheyack during Unsound Festival in Krakow in 2019 to find out what hides behind the artist’s penchant for bleak symbolism such as the blood-riddled television set on the cover of his album Sadomodernism [Bedouin Records, 2018]. It’s a conversation that fixes a moment in time and space, as Osheyack describes his perspective on the contexts he is embedded in by living in Shanghai. We are presenting the interview, which was originally published in issue #20 of our print magazine, ahead of Osheyack’s appearance at Rewire Festival in The Hague in April. At Rewire, he will perform alongside many other artists who were featured in previous issues of zweikommasieben, such as Asma Maroof [see zweikommasieben #21], CS + Kreme [see zweikommasieben #22], Dale Cornish [see zweikommasieben #12], Malibu [see zweikommasieben #23], upsammy [see zweikommasieben #18], or Grand River [see zweikommasieben #23].

Daniel Melfi: How does your music express sadomodernism? Or is it just a title?

Eli Osheyack: I noticed a lot of parallels within underground music and what an article in n+1 magazine—“Sadomodernism—Haneke in furs”—was talking about, and what those directors were doing. I wanted to name the album that. With non-lyrical electronic music, there are only so many ways you can focus people on what you actually want the dialogue of the piece to be about. With darker music and techno in general, it gets to a point where there’s no real dialogue about what the problems are in the world. It becomes this regurgitated aesthetic that’s just polishing itself to the point of who can make the most aggressive noise sound or dress in a specific way. Or the same kinds of dance moves, hand gestures, and musical motifs get repeated again and again. I think that trivializes actual struggle when you misrepresent it in your work. And that’s what Michael Haneke and Lars von Trier also thought about the false equivalency of content. Those were the kind of parallels that I was interested in.

DM:    You think some of the aesthetically dark techno music being released these days is a bit complacent?

EO:     I think it’s complacent, yeah. And I get annoyed by people focusing on it.

DM:    Do you ever feel like there is a bit of miscommunication or exoticism linked to working in China?

EO:     Absolutely.

DM:    Do you ever experience that with bookers?

EO:     Personally, I haven’t. But until very recently, most articles that are written about what we do at [the Shanghai-based club] All Club, or the recent scene in general, they’re called, “Jumping over the great firewall” or “You’re not going to believe this rave I found…” It’s all about this flash-the-pan excitement and always focuses on government censorship or such things. It’s not that these aspects aren’t part of the scene in Shanghai, or China in general, but they never focus on the artists or the music as much. There’s already a narrative in place—more American, or, rather, more American than European—of scary China that overshadows what actually is happening and overshadows the stories and the music that is actually being made. There is a lot more than Svbkvlt and Genome 6.66 Mbp; there are a bunch of other groups and really crazy places that get no press.

DM:    Part of that n+1 essay mentions that the sadomodernist aesthetic is distinctly European and stands in contrast to America, to Hollywood in particular. Where does your music or message fit into this contrast?

EO:     I definitely try to stay conscious of being American in this place, but Shanghai is quite similar to New York or Berlin: it’s made up of a lot of different people from a lot of different places coming together in one city. I think the difference is that the club culture there is so new that there is not really a context or a hierarchy of “you need to do this” in order to play on Saturday night. So there are a bunch of people from a bunch of different places and Chinese kids—who are completely new to club music in general—and they are just picking up everything and re-contextualizing it. I try to stay conscious of being an American, but I don’t think that there is anything particularly American about the way I go about making music. If anything, it’s influenced directly by my peers there in the city of Shanghai.

DM:    Are you purposefully inverting the European image of Shanghai’s club scene? The way Haneke inverts the Hollywood aesthetic?

EO:     Absolutely. That’s the other parallel that I was trying to draw artistically; aesthetically through how I play live, more so than on the album. When I play live, it’s a lot of short, small ideas cut up and pushed together, so that it’s digestible and danceable, but it’s trying to throw people off-kilter as much as possible, to shake people out of the “dancing experience.” And I’m very much trying to make a comment on that kind of static genrefication that goes on in Europe—to try and break down rules as much as possible.

DM:    I’ve never been to Shanghai or China, but from abroad it seems to me like there are fewer rules and fewer boundaries. I imagine that this is at least in part because it’s a new, emerging market.

EO:     Right now, when you tour China, you do Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing. Each has a significantly different vibe, depending on the acceleration of each city. Hangzhou is a pretty sleepy river town outside of Shanghai with an art school there, so you play to a different crowd than you would in Shanghai. I’ll be out for a month on tour and I’ll go back to Shanghai and a bunch of businesses will be gone and there will be buildings that have been built in their places.

DM:    It’s that rapid?

EO:     Yeah, it’s that kind of constant push. I think that definitely pushes the BPMs and the general vibe. Berlin DJs would come and try to play the way you would in a 3-hour set: that you start with something and build that up to get to a point. It doesn’t work in Shanghai. You start with a bang! In your face. And then you just go because people don’t have the time. I feel that’s pretty reflective of the city. Shenzhen is pretty similar. 20 years ago, Shenzhen was nothing. The whole city is brand new. This is the first generation of people who live there. The club culture is insanely new. Their culture is new. It’s a huge manufacturing hub. It’s right on the border of Hong Kong where all this shit is happening.

DM:    Do you feel like the music in Chinese club culture is also changing quickly?

EO:     It had these kind of older or longstanding people who have taken care of the scene, like Gaz Williams, who ran The Shelter and now runs Svbkvlt; Tzusing has been there, doing quality nights and inviting the right people for a long time. When it was a 70/30 ratio of expats to Chinese kids six years ago, they still stuck it out and held out until eventually things started to change. Then Genome 6.66 Mbp came along. Genome 6.66 Mbp started because Kilo Vee used to work at the bar at The Shelter and practiced DJing and then started a label, and then all of a sudden the demographic of who went to the club suddenly switched and the Chinese kids took control. That’s when there was definitely a shift in music. It’s like there were people already making a bunch of different crazy things, but didn’t know that they could go to the club to play them. Now, they know that it’s their scene and not some French house DJ’s.

DM:    All Club is an important place for that community of dancers and DJs, but is it a place for only the harder streams of alternative dance music?

EO:     Occasionally there will be people who will play straight house and techno, but it doesn’t really hit. You kind of have to have someone like Hodge, or Parrish Smith [see zweikommasieben #14], or somebody like that who throws a lot of other shit being combined. Even for the experimental stuff too, nobody really likes to listen to a set that just has that. It’s very much a DJ-set culture of people wanting to hear a bunch of different shit mixed together.

DM:    What brought you to Shanghai originally?

EO:     Initially, in 2012, I was just visiting a friend, and then just stuck around. I got a job teaching English and then weaned myself off of that by doing music projects for commercials and fashion and stuff like that.

DM:    Had you always been working in music?

EO:     I’d always been making stuff, but I didn’t play in Shanghai until 2015 or 2016. I kind of felt weird being a white dude. I didn’t really want to be another one of those dudes to try and take a spot. I was lucky in that I wanted to wait until I was asked by someone who already had a night there and that’s kind of what happened, and then it went from there.

DM:    Are people open to newcomers in Shanghai?

EO:     Yes. I think, recently, there are a lot more promoter-type people who are arriving, or trying to make a name for themselves as a DJ or whatever, so people are trying a little bit more to make sure our shit doesn’t get fucked up. But for the most part, yeah, it’s still a thing. Tzusing’s original night was called Stockholm Syndrome, which he ran with Elsie Liu, another DJ who’s been doing stuff for forever. Now, Elsie and her friend Difan Xu run a night called Cosign every Wednesday, which is just like an open decks night. Basically, you go as a new DJ, you play Cosign a few times and you introduce yourself and you show up at shows and you’ll get a support slot on Friday or Saturday. It’s not like a thing where you have to be cool or you have to even have to know your shit. There is this girl who’s like 16. She is sneaking out telling her parents she was going to a sleep over but in fact was learning to DJ. She supports huge acts now.

DM:    What kinds of challenges do you encounter in Shanghai?

EO:     With the way that the Chinese government works, it’s always like, “what’s going to happen next?” Because the rules are never really set in stone, things can change. There could be a national holiday and they want you to close the club at 8 pm every day for two weeks. Sometimes that happens and the scene has to adjust. For the most part, Shanghai is not as intense as Beijing. This past year, there was a huge crackdown on drugs in China and so that took a toll on the scene for a second.

DM:    Overall, it appears that the community is resilient and the youthful energy is propelling it through this period.

EO:      For sure. There’s just an overabundance of work being made but the community isn’t big enough yet so that there’s jealously. Everyone still has a spot to play and everyone is pretty supportive of everybody else. Nobody is like, “oh that person made it and I didn’t.” Everybody is still kind of on an equal footing, or feels that way.