Organ Tapes is Timothy Zha, an English-Chinese artist based in London. ‘一包烟’ is a music release. It’s out on OST.
The EP — whose title translates to “a pack of cigarettes” — casts Zha in downcast singer-songwriter mode, an arc set in full motion on 2022’s sprawling-yet-intimate full-length ‘唱着那无人问津的歌谣（Chang Zhe Na Wu Ren Wen Jin De Ge Yao)’. These six songs see him dwelling in the wistful, guitar-first, sample- and MIDI instrument-infused city-folk that distinguishes his musical path from his more electronic and club-minded contemporaries, as well as the recent spate of more traditional bands emerging from London’s underground scene.
It’s about life. Opener ‘Cigs’ is a meditation on the coincidence of divine and earthly love, seeking clarity in the smear and smudge of smoke plumes against a light-polluted metropolitan sky. ‘Comedown’ and ‘Gun To The World’ emerge from damage and deterioration, the push and pull between yearning mind and fallible flesh. They evoke long journeys home — weary lungs, blurs of transit, rapidly fragmenting memories.
‘蓝莲花’ (Blue Lotus), a cover of Chinese rocker Xu Wei’s paeon to freedom is preceded by the brutally honest ‘Mainlined’, a confrontation with worldly desire which ultimately locates freedom in the foreclosure of possibilities. Closer ‘Trained’ contemplates human fragility and the mercilessness of time, but its emotional weight is made seductive, even mesmerising, by Zha’s bittersweet melodies and finely honed songcraft, which locate uplift in all the heaviness and insist on redemptive potential.
The music on ‘一包烟’ wears its wounds openly, but refuses to accept defeat. Its songs speak to the virtue of endurance: the embrace of possibility, love, and faith in a world that seeks to degrade those things.
Written and produced by Organ Tapes
Additional vocals on ‘Mainlined’ by Munni
Artwork by Organ Tapes
Mastered by Ike Zwanikken
Words by Madjestic Kasual