Photo by Shayna Fontana
IAN CHANG
Drummer Ian Chang (he/him) makes electronic music that is humanistic. In a metronomic genre, Chang takes a fresh approach that is rooted in physicality. Using drums to control and manipulate samples, he is able to realize complete musical ideas with unaccompanied and unedited performance. The result is a seamless marriage of raw performative intensity and sophisticated sound design.
When Chang describes his creative process, the phrase "third culture” keeps coming up. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Chang was shaped by the city’s diversity and vibrance. He moved to New York in 2007 to pursue music and quickly gained a reputation as a “gigantically talented drummer” (NPR). There, he built an impressive roster of progressive pop collaborators such as Moses Sumney, Joan As Policewoman, and Matthew Dear, among others, all while performing internationally and recording as a member of Son Lux and Landlady. Now relocated to Dallas, Texas, Chang's discovered an inquisitive confidence that can only come from newfound isolation. Between tours, he dedicated himself to developing his international musical language, facilitated by a home studio and a burgeoning relationship.
Chang’s debut full-length record 属 Belonging was released in April 2020 via City Slang. Chang's magic starts with his method: from an improvised foundation of sampled percussion, he follows the innate logic of a musical conversation, allowing his compositional forms to reveal themselves. The album's three vocal features - Kazu (Blonde Redhead), Kiah Victoria and Hanna Benn - weren’t anticipated at the project's outset; they arose like friendships, unpredictably complex and increasingly rare, a consequence of Chang's ubiquitous receptivity. Whereas on his EP Spiritual Leader (2017) Chang limited himself to capturing unedited performances without overdubs, on this release the percussionist expands his palate, burrowing deeper into a layered, symphonic subconscious. Consequently, Chang's formidable growth as a producer is on display. Reflecting the album's bottom-up, performance-as-composition construction, his music conveys an intuitive sense of wholeness, carrying its experimental ethos without pretense. The resulting album unfolds like a confessional exploration, complicating the lines between rhythm and melody, modernity and antiquity, exuberance and meditation.