Nick: Hello Liu! When I initially reached out to you guys, you mentioned you were currently cooking up a third album which I’m incredibly excited for. What innerworkings can you entail?

 

Liu: The instrumentals are all recorded! Still working on the vocals.

 

Nick: What are you hoping to do differently with this third album, both lyrically and instrumentally? 

 

Liu: I’m trying to make my songs more straightforward while also giving them a broader public appeal. 

 

Nick: Should we expect this album to drop within 2025 or is it too early to confirm that?

 

Liu: We should be on track to finish it this year.

 

Nick: This has been the longest wait for a JaJaTao release to date. Were you more patient with honing your sound this time around or were there certain factors that became a barrier when working on this album?

 

Liu: Yeah, the constant nitpicking over sound details and this obsessive perfectionism have become a major obstacle to my productivity when working on my own projects. But I don’t really see it as a problem. Honestly, I’ve always been this way.

 

Nick: Let’s reel it back. How did you and JaJaTao in general first get involved in music? What inspired you to do so?

 

Liu: We're all just music and instrument enthusiasts—nothing that really needs special explanation, I think.

 

Nick: I saw that before forming the band, the founder of the band, Liu Yucao, was originally in Boston, Massachusetts studying at the Berklee College of Music. I wanted to ask if the idea of starting a band was already an aspiration during Yucao’s time as a student there?

 

Liu: Not really. Honestly, by middle school and high school, I already knew for certain that I'd be playing Rock music.

 

Nick: Did you first hear of genres like Grunge when living in the United States or were you already familiar with that style beforehand? What are some of your favorite Grunge Bands?

 

Liu: Actually, I didn’t start listening to it after going to the U.S.—I was exposed to rock music back in elementary and middle school in Beijing. As for Grunge, I don’t really consider it a "music genre" per se; it’s more like a label tied to an era, a region, even a fashion style. All the so-called grunge bands sound completely different from each other anyway. My favorite band is Nirvana.

 

Nick: How did you meet your band members?

 

Liu: I stumbled upon them through a series of coincidences.

 

Nick: How did the name “JaJaTao” come about?

 

Liu: It comes from the fascinating structural forms of Chinese characters – The Chinese equivalent of "JaJaTao" is "假假條." All three characters share the "人" (human) radical, while each carries distinct meanings.

 

Nick: Since many of the readers may be more familiar with the current and past scene in both Japan and South Korea, what does China have to offer? Are there any bands coming out of there,

both in the present and past, that you’d like to give a shoutout to?

 

Liu: China’s got Deepseek, haha. Actually, I lean more toward older stuff—like Chao Zai(超载)’s debut album or Cui Jian’s “Egg Under the Red Flag.”

 

Nick: In 2016 you guys finally put out your debut album, “The Rite of Spring,” which I would describe as a melodically triumphant display of genre melting Grunge with more traditional Chinese funerary music like gongs and a suonas provided by Yazhi Guo. How did the idea to bring these two worlds together come about? 

 

Liu: During my time studying jazz composition in college, I was surprised to discover that many Post-Free-Jazz masters—like Ornette Coleman and Dewey Redman—were actually fond of playing the suona. This completely shifted my perspective on the instrument. On top of that, Cui Jian’s third album, “Egg Under the Red Flag,” had always deeply influenced me, and Mr. Guo Yazhi (a renowned suona virtuoso) happened to be teaching at my school at the time. All these factors combined led me to start incorporating the suona extensively into my own music.

 

Nick: Were there any difficulties early on when trying to compose a cohesive body of work with all of these Chinese instruments present?

 

Liu: For me, writing lyrics is the harder part.

 

Nick: I know that while this album is beloved by most people who are aware of its existence, you’ve expressed a growing dissatisfaction with it. Why is this the case and what were your issues with the culture you found yourself in at the time?

 

Liu: It’s just that the vocals sound a bit immature—I wasn’t even 20 yet at the time. I had a lot of musical ideas, but I lacked the experience to execute them perfectly, so there are inevitably some regrets. But then again, maybe some people actually like that rawness. Who knows?