Shanghai's Peach Illusion Brings Their Wanderlust Sound to Comic Book Life, Sep 20 at Yue Space

It doesn’t matter what kind of music fan you are – you could be a metalhead, a hip-hop aficionado, a punk rebel – but when you’re in a KTV and you hear those synths swell up and the first notes of the keyboard hit it’s game over, all of a sudden you can recite every line of a Mando or Cantopop song by heart. It’s a reflex really, both a testament to how much music influences you at a young age and to the timeless quality of a proper good pop song. This reverence for the music we grew up is one of the driving factors of Peach Illusion’s punch-drunk love sound.

Fueled by sparkling youthful energy, an old school Cantopop swagger, and a high-hued sense of sound design sourced directly from the beach, the now Shanghai-based outfit has been at the forefront of the indie-pop scene resurgence since their flawless debut EP in 2018. Since then, the band, led by guitarist C.C and vocalist 圈圈 (Quanquan), has gone on to capture the hearts of countless music listeners with their earnest and fizzy indie-pop. This summer they expanded their wanderlust universe with the release of their concept EP, Let Me Enter Your Eyes, which comes complete with a complimentary comic book and collectible figurines. The band is in the midst of a joint tour alongside Guangzhou indie rockers Hoo! and Hangzhou city pop singer-songwriter DizzyBoy. They close out their tour with a stop at Yue Space on Sunday, Sep 20.

I spoke to C.C and 圈圈 last week about their humble beginnings, paying tribute to the music they grew up with, and how the intergalactic story behind their new EP came to be. 

How their university years and the coastal city of Xiamen shaped their music... 

C.C: We met during 2017 – we were college mates at Xiamen University – she was at the law school there and I was in economics. We worked a little together musically, put together a few acoustic songs. After that, she went to Shanghai for her master's degree and I went to Singapore. A year later, she sent me a demo and there was one song inside called Peach Illusion. We completed that song remotely, with 圈圈 realizing the lyrics and melodies, while I worked on the rearrangements, the mixing, and the mastering – this is what led to the first EP. 

圈圈: I’m a songwriter so my job is to always pick up on all the affections felt through life, through city life and how I feel in Xiamen, Shanghai, or anywhere. So it will of course influence my music. 

C.C: The years we spent in Xiamen, you know it's a very southern city right on the sea, all the vibes of this city and the life we spent at Xiamen University influenced us a lot. Not only the vibe of the city but the things we saw in the university and all the other local musicians who played up there. For example, in Beijing, it’s very different – Southern China to Northern China. The stereotype is true, the north of China is tougher and harder, it’s "anti-something." Southern China has more of an urban vibe, enjoying the things around you and sharing that intricate feeling of living in a unique city. Also, Xiamen is close to Taiwan which has a really big musical influence on the south of China. As you can see, in our music the melodies and the lyrics are influenced quite a bit by the music of Taiwan. 

On paying your respects to the music you grew up with...

圈圈: A lot of what influenced me was from Hong Kong. The music my parents listened to, the music they played during my childhood. In Peach Illusion, we write not only in Mandarin but in Cantonese. It’s all connected. 

C.C: For local Chinese, this is the kind of music that’s in everyone’s blood, it’s what we grew up with. So while music from the West is cool and everything, it’s not our thing. It isn’t what we grew up with. 

On storyboarding their music and giving the emotions within their song a visual counterpoint... 

圈圈: I wrote the story and put together the script, then we had a comic artist (touyeye) illustrate the story. It was our first time working with her. 

C.C: It’s always going to be difficult to do this kind of thing, but if you find the right way to communicate and get along with the designer then it gets easier and easier.  

圈圈: The fourth track on the album (透明色) was a demo from 2016, and it was a song that I kept in the back of my mind when putting together the story. Especially the emotion of the song, which I interpreted onto the image of the flower in the comic – a transparent flower. 

On the concept and story within the comic book that accompanies their new EP, which follows our protagonists C.C and O.O as they're whisked away to a place (naturally) called Peach Planet... 

圈圈: The story very much comes from our lives, at least in the sense it's connected to the human world and how we see it. We imagine a planet outside of Earth called Peach Planet, a place where we’re able to leave something from our hearts behind. But really, Peach Planet represents two sides of our world and how we view it. On one side you have the thrash – the boring things, the mundane things. The things we commonly see in our lives like tall buildings, car-filled streets, and everyone hustling, and moving so fast. 

C.C: So we forget something. And after we meet the small peach (Editor’s Note: I refer to this little delightful fella as Peach Boy) it’s through his eyes we see the other side of the planet. Where there is life and there are still beautiful things. Life is a gift, you need to celebrate it. This is our concept. 

圈圈: The slogan, "When you love life, life will love you back."

On being more than a band... 

C.C: The band is not only a band. It’s important to have a value to present. And now that we have smartphones and the internet, people look more than listen. It opens you up to a lot of possibilities, and as long as it's connected to what we want to say we can do it. Anything is possible. 

圈圈: One of the great things about doing something like this is that it will make our audience think more about our music, not only the melody or the one lyric that sticks with them. They will remember the story. 

And what a story it is – an intergalactic emotionally rife anime-stylized coming of age story that is as existential as it is fantastical – Peach Illusion proves once again that they’re a band in complete control of their image and are willing to expand on their universe whilst getting the heart and soul of their music intact. Don’t be surprised if you hear one of their wanderlust songs playing in a KTV ten years from now. 

Peach Illusion's Let Me Enter Your Eyes is now available on Spotify and Xiami. You can also check 'em out on Bandcamp (albeit not the new EP).

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Images: courtesy of Peach Illusion