Rainbow Chan
Rainbow Chan shares her latest 8-track EP Stanley, out now released vi aEastern Margins. Completely self-produced, Stanley is a celebration of classic song-writing through melancholy and nostalgia, drawing influence from the Hong Kong Weitou folk songs of her heritage, experimental club music and golden-era Teresa Teng Cantopop.
Stanley is Rainbow Chan's exploration of a love past, a farewell to a city that’s changed forever. Inspired by the recorded mixtapes of her grandmother’s bedside, Stanley is like a loving cassette, re-recorded and passed down through generations of family, but always retaining traces of its warm core.
Stanley features already told singles, Idols偶像, the lush and celestial tale of a couple lost In The Mood for Love, and the wistful and majestic Heavy沉重 in Englishand Chinese, two parallel universes, bookends to a love story.
Rainbow says of Stanley- "Over the last year, Hong Kong, my birthplace, has undergone significant changes. Not being able to travel back due to COVID-19 only amplified my feelings of loss andsadness. What would be left when I returned? In isolation, I started to write farewell songs-half addressed to a lover, half addressed to the city. I conjured the sounds of my childhood–Teresa Teng, Momoe Yamaguchi, Faye Wong. These great singers have perfected the sentimental ballad, turning grief into a beautiful flower or adelicate hand gesture. On this EP, I’m leaning into this performative romanticism. As always, there is an underlying experimental electronic spirit to my music, inspired by the sounds of Mica Levi and Japanese pioneers like Yellow Magic Orchestra. Thesesongs ultimately celebrate classic song-writing through melancholy and nostalgia– Rainbow Chan Stanley is accompanied by a cassette USB-a physical representation of the love embedded in the cassettes of Rainbow Chan’sgrandmother. The cassette USB reproduces the performative romanticism of Stanley-with an object thatre produces the past to map the future-the paradox of nostalgia."
