MySpace.com - ZIYO - Beijing, Beijing - Alternative / Powerpop / Rock

ZIYO started sometime in January 2004, when Helen walked into a guitar shop and was conned into guitar lessons by lead guitarist Da Ming. Two lessons in, they both came to the conclusion that 1 Helen had no real talent as a guitarist, and 2 Da Ming had no great patience for teaching. But they manage to salvage the relationship by forming a band, later recruiting Mao Mao whom Da Ming had met in a subway underpass only months before with similar dreams of rock stardom. Mao Mao recruited Zhang Jie an ex-bandmate in a very briefly formed death metal band, and Ziyo was born.

In 3 short months, the band wrote 10 songs, 3 of which are still performed to this day. Because all the band members had such varied musical tastes, the result was 10 very very different songs. They ran from rough reggae, to sloppy jazz, to folk songs, to punk rock, to Emo, and even some nu metal. But everything despite the huge jumps in genres was packed full of funk beats, infectious guitar hooks, and strong melodies belted out by Helen who lived half her life in the American South.

The result was a resident gig at two of Beijing's more well known underground livehouses, the New Get Lucky Bar, and Nameless Highland. The band continued to play these 10 songs, with a new song every few months added to set for a year and a half before they realized they were getting bored as the Tuesday night house band and the filler band for gigs with bigger named bands that actually had their own "sound".

So the band went on haitus. Canceled most of the gigs for the next few months, went into the rehearsal studio to find a sound, and record some demos. Not long after the first few self-funded demo songs were sent out, Ziyo got attention from some of China's biggest record companies. In October of 2005, Ziyo signed Warner Music China as a developing band (before they found their "sound").

Wang hui, ex-guitarist from the punk band Gum, joined the band to add another layer of punky guitars, and in one short year, Ziyo wrote another 30 songs, and produced 20 more self-funded demos. They were all sent to Warner whom still shook their head at the young band. The genre's were still too broad, and they wanted the sound "poppier". But just before this still directionless band was re-packaged into a sugar-coated unoriginal faux-rock band made for pre-teens, a miracle happened. Helen fell off a wall shattered her jaw, and was hospitalized for 3 months.

During those three months, she had her i-pod on shuffle listening to everything from Bloc Party to Basement Jaxx, from Libertines to Peaches. Now with a strong sense of personal identity, still bandaged and newly rebuilt, she went to her first rehearsal post surgery with a "sound". Within days, all the various genres they had experimented with was roughly cut and mixed together. The result was 50's doo-woop melodies combined with dance and funk beats, space guitars efx, mixed with some very punk rock guitars. Don't know what it is, but it certainly was a sound. When asked what they wanted, the band simply answered "to see bodies moving underneath the stage, dancing not just pounding the sh** out of each other".

ZIYO released their first EP with Warner music in January of 2008. You can check out the EP on their Chinese website at www.myspace.cn/ziyocn