Calling Otay:Onii prolific doesn’t even come close. Acting, dancing, improvisation, singing, producing: these are just some of the things she does to keep active. From Haining in China, via New York, Lane Shi – aka Otay:Onii – now lives in Berlin. Over the years, she’s collaborated with metal bands Dant and Elizabeth Colour Wheel, received numerous awards and performed at Harvard University, SXSW and CTM Festival. In Berlin, she co-founded the heavy-electronic band hu66in6, while also working and performing solo. Love Is in the Shit
is the artist’s fifth album in three years. It’s a troupe of magic sounds, folk dissonance and pulsing energy, all tied together by her love of screaming. She falls into a category inhabited by Björk and Joanna Newsom: experimental music that moves beyond genres and reflects what concerns her – finding vulnerability in art. Ahead of the album’s release, we discussed the thought processes behind it, what we can expect from her live shows and the role she’ll play in the controversial Florentina Holzinger production
Sancta. Tell me, who is Otay:Onii? I’m a musician and a performer. I’m part of Florentina Holzinger’s opera Sancta. I make metal music. I’m a screamer. I’m a musician and composer trying to understand life better with my music, swinging through this philosophy that I created for myself and learning to live and appreciate life better. What’s your philosophy when it comes to music? Since my first album, NAG, it’s been about the non-binary of things: black and white, the two extremes that are always
moving, being fluid and not fixed in a spectrum. If you see black, there must be white. If you see evil, there must be kindness. This has allowed me to see beauty in many difficult situations. People ask me what my new album means, Love is in the Shit. You need to be able to see beauty in every situation, even if it’s tough and breaks your bones. You need to see the beauty to continue living in the life around you and to appreciate
people and yourself. And that is hard. I tend to see love in this pile of shit, and the shit provides a grounding for me to see that love is everlasting. It tests my friendships. It tests my partnerships, and my working situation as well. For me, that’s precious. In what way? It allows me to see deeper, to drum out with a humorous side. You can hear it on ‘No Talent’, this jokey song on my album. The title is a bit of a
tease because I heard many peers describing myself and others as talented. I do believe everybody is talented, but maybe they’re not honest enough. We do all have our talent, and some people tear themselves apart because they haven’t found their real talent yet. We live such short lives, and we’re unable to see our collective memory as human beings. I think talent is just like DNA. It’s a parallel loop; it allows you to extract memories and skills. There’s no such thing as talent.
There’s only this ability to gain the memory from this chain. That’s why the lyrics of the the song go: “I have no talentJust a story out of another storyA fool will gain some wisdom in some relicsThe talent that you callIs the long memory after all.” How would you describe the sound of your album? It’s been about the non-binary of things: black and white, the two extremes that are always moving. It’s definitely a dreamland with roller coasters. It’s like the music video
for ‘No Talent’, which was shot in a dystopian amusement park. You see a lot of interesting statues, like a girl with three faces. ‘No Talent’ comes from a dream-world wasteland. It allows you to enter and explore, but it will crush your soul if you’re not careful. The other track, ‘Love from Survivors’, starts with a lot of screaming, because to be able to recognise love, you need to recognise pain. If you’re a person over 30 and you’ve not been broken before, then
you must be a psycho, or a sociopath. How do you go about creating the music for all this? What’s your starting point? Sometimes I’ll be lying on the bed and I hear a melody. I record voice memos or I’m noodling on my piano. The real starting point, however, is where the story starts, where the emotion comes from. And in the end, that’s also where it needs to go, to release from. How did you end up on Pelagic Records? I went to
a hot pot at Robin’s place [Robin Staps, Head of Pelagic Records] and it turns out he had seen me performing at Roadburn Festival with Elizabeth Colour Wheel. He was interested in what I was doing in Berlin, musically speaking. I think it’s a good fit. The whole thing is an experiment, so let’s see how it goes. What are the main differences between your life in Berlin and your life in the US? Different places feed you different energy. Berlin is quite good for
artists who are independent and want to learn new stuff. The US is the real battleground for musicians to taste life and experience it in a more vivid way. The Berlin techno community is really inspiring. My experience going to Berghain is great. The people there are super kind. It’s so different from New York, for instance, which is so tied up with capitalism and money. What’s your role in the Florentina Holzinger production? It’s called Sancta and based on an opera that faced censorship.
It was only performed 100 years after its initial running at the Stuttgart Opera House. But this time, it’s by Florentina. It’s been heavily criticised and caused a scandal. It’s about a nun being immured into a wall because she had expressed interest in sexual feelings for Jesus and other nuns. I play the nun who’s immured. As the opera progresses, my character breaks out of the wall and then screams her butt off. Then there’s another scene, where I climb the wall and then
make a cross pose, with lots of blood pouring down. It’s called ‘the blood fountain’, and it’s one of my favourite scenes. You perform opera, metal and experimental music. What else do you do? I’m a heavy improviser. On my previous albums, I collaborated with Eric from ThisQuietArmy. It was really a great experience because it was just two musicians talking to each other. I also performed at this festival called Dedicated, run by Audrey Chen at Morphine Raum. You get randomly associated with a
new different musician, which is the fun part. It’s all about synergy and chemistry and the need to break structures. You need to be able to see beauty in every situation, even if it’s tough and breaks your bones. Now that I’ve been around Berlin for a while, I think I’ll continue to challenge my performance art and bring it more to the underground scene. Since I’m surrounded by such like-minded artists, that’s really inspiring for me. At Roadburn Festival this year, I’m going to
be flying during my performance using cables and a harness. It’s a lot of work. One of the characters I’ll be portraying is a turtle with snakes, and the snakes symbolise ancestral memories, which is why the turtle has wisdom. I’ll be hiding snakes on my turtle shell and when I go up, I’ll release the snakes, which will drape all the way down. I’m also thinking about assembling a band, something inspired by Clown Core, that’s very energy focused. I take it you like
to keep busy then? It’s a condition, not a wish. I will have to take some downtime because I think I’m too busy. I need to downsize some projects and take care of my health. Also, I already have another album of things to go. So let’s see. Love Is in the Shit was released on May 8 on Pelagic Records. Follow Otay:Onii on IG @laneshiotayonii and listen to her new album below.
Otay:Onii, Lane Shi, Love Is in the Shit, Pelagic Records, Sancta, Florentina Holzinger, metal, experimental music, screaming, Berlin, Roadburn Festival