To think is to be human, and to be human is to have a perspective. Akini Jing touches on these ideas frequently during her hour-long chat with NME, an unsurprising preoccupation once you consider the subject at hand: her new EP ‘Villain’, a fantastical saga blending mythology and technology, at the heart of which are characters who are not quite what they seem.
But even before ‘Villain’ was created, the notion of a human perspective was a cornerstone of the Akini Jing project: a cyborg persona, creative medium, and reflective tool all at once for Chinese singer-songwriter Zhu Jingxi. While Zhu is planted in her own reality, Jing transcends space, time, and humanity, observing those around her from an impersonal, almost scientific point of view – in turn providing her creator with epiphanies that her limited human self might have missed.
Forging a music career as a normal human hadn’t been working out for Zhu Jingxi. It was 2017, and Zhu was stuck in a creative rut after almost a decade making music (she released her first solo album in 2008). “The experience was wild,” she recalls. “At the time, my personal life and my creative life were stuck. [I was] numb and lost. I wanted to get out.”
An endless wasteland of uncertainty loomed ahead – then came an unconventional offer.
“I got the opportunity to work with Microsoft to train their AI to compose, to write poems, and also [in] some visual skills. That experience inspired me to observe myself [from] a different perspective.”
Zhu’s experience on the project laid the foundation for Akini Jing. Though an alter ego and an elaborate self-awareness exercise, Jing isn’t completely separate from Zhu, she says. Is there any chance Akini Jing, like many cyborgs in popular science fiction, could go bad? Jing smiles slightly, but it seems an amusing idea and nothing more. Charles Tso, chief executive and producer of ‘Villain’, chimes in to say: “Akini Jing was created for the [betterment] of humankind.”
So far, Jing’s explorations of the intersection of humanity and technology have coalesced into something she calls ‘Eastern Cyberpunk,’ a space where her Chinese roots, sounds and art forms merge with futuristic electro-pop, AI visuals, interactive installations and avant-garde dance – a project about human nature that can be meditative and joyous or weird and anxious.
Take her 2022 track ‘Over The Bones,’ from the album ‘Endless Farewell’, where each song represented a parallel world. On ‘Over The Bones’, heavily distorted, noise-laden beats pump as if injecting tension into the veins, electronic loops pulled apart. Visuals of alien warships and eclipses add to the unease. Only then does Jing cut in, singing calmly about the joy of reclaiming her personal identity as a woman: “You will know this night / no longer anyone’s lover / wife, daughter, or mother / Just a woman I am now.”
While ‘Endless Farewell’ took her across space and time, Jing’s latest release ‘Villain’ is more of a grounded homecoming: a project within the Chinese genre of storytelling called Wuxia. Originally a form of literature but now spanning film, dramas, operas, and even webtoons and games, Wuxia blends reality and fantasy to spin tales of martial artists and righteous, chivalric heroes.
‘Villain’ follows Shadow, a deadly assassin who sets out to bring down the ‘ruthless and cruel’ leader of the Red Lotus sect Black Widow, but soon finds herself mired in doubt about her own goals and identity. Jing developed the album’s story herself, looking to works like The Assassin by Taiwanese cinematic pioneer Hou Hsiao-hsien and historical characters like Nie Yin Niang, an assassin from the historic Wuxia novel Tang Chuan Qi.
“Wuxia has a lot of historical elements and human philosophy across time – it was hard to express such complex ideas in such a short album”
All her life, Shadow has been laser-focused on upholding her code of honour and eliminating the traitorous Black Widow – but as the record progresses, finds herself in a moral dilemma: are people inherently bad, or just burdened with society’s prejudices?
Shadow and Black Widow are more alike than they think, Jing says. “They’re very lonely deep down in their hearts, because their destiny [was] not chosen by them. Other people put it on them, but in the end they find their own way to rebel.” Black Widow may have been cast as a villain, but could even be considered a “role model” for Shadow by the end of the story – the characters merely “different stages” of a single life.
In the album’s visuals, this character development plays out through a gradual infusion of vibrant colour. When we first meet Shadow, a dark, muted environment captures not only her professional identity, but her repressed soul. Black Widow, on the other hand, stands tall in the centre-frame bathed in brilliant red, as if embodying the freedom just out of reach for Shadow. Jing plays both characters, showing her range: tension laces ‘Call Me Shadow’, where she opts for a more high-pitched delivery over restrained drums. On ‘Black Widow,’ she switches it up with agile rap, dismissing violence with an unsettling nonchalance: “Fight scene, fight scene, fight scene, Fight scene / This part was too graphic so we skipped it.”
The most satisfying song on the album, however, is the eponymous ‘Villain.’ It follows an encounter between Shadow and Black Widow in a dreamscape – Black Widow recounts her own story and fall from grace, precipitating Shadow’s crisis of belief. Featuring on the song is UK drill MC TeeZandos, who sucker-punches her way through the introspective track.
Jing and her team wanted someone who would be a foil for Black Widow in “a face-off chapter that is archetypal in Wuxia” – and went through “probably a hundred rappers” to find TeeZandos, says the album’s executive producer Nathan Lim, who’d worked on the record alongside Jing’s longtime collaborator and producer, Chace.
“We were referencing the ciphers of Wu-Tang Clan, but these days nobody actually has a villainous badass rap vibe, like they’ll actually cut your throat with their lyrical incision,” he says. “When we found TeeZandos, it was like ‘Wow, she’s rapping but she’ll murder anybody on a beat!’”
“Artificial intelligence can be a tool, but it cannot be the spirit”
Jing’s concentrated search for TeeZandos speaks to the perfectionism and attention to detail that informed the entire making of ‘Villain’ and crafting of its sound. Jing reveals that she often wanted to quit in the two years of making it.
“At first I thought it would be easy, because I know this culture very well. I grew up watching Wuxia TV shows, Wuxia movies and reading novels, so I thought it would [come] easy to me. And electronic music is my thing! When I started, I [realised] it was so difficult. Wuxia has a lot of historical elements and human philosophy across time – it was hard to express such complex ideas in such a short album on top of presenting essence in chapters via short pop tracks.”
On the vision board for ‘Villain’s visuals were the works of the influential Hong Kong studio Shaw Brothers, which popularised martial arts movies in its golden age of the ’60s and ’70s and delivering classic hits like Come Drink With Me and Five Deadly Venoms – both of which were referenced on ‘Call Me Shadow’ and ‘Black Widow’. Helping Jing realise her vision on ‘Villain’ were director Joseph Le, whose credits include Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings and Everything, Everywhere, All At Once, and stunt coordinator Andy Cheng (Rush Hour 1 & 2).
Jing would have loved to unfurl more of Black Widow and Shadow’s story across more videos, but she’s ultimately happy with how it went – even her gruelling wushu training.“A few years ago, I went to the Shaolin temple to try and practise martial arts, but after that camp, I [couldn’t keep] practising because I didn’t have time or a proper schedule. So, when I started to create these characters and stories, I practised mentally, but I thought my body should also get ready for the fight. So I trained with a Shaolin monk in Shanghai for half a year. It [wasn’t] that long, but kind of intense.” Jing kept at it even after the album and trains two to four times a week when she’s in Shanghai.
As our conversation winds down, we go back to the genesis of Akini Jing and ask the obvious question: when Zhu first developed the character, artificial intelligence hadn’t permeated music to the extent it has today. Has the mainstreaming of AI and the criticism of it in the creative community made Zhu rethink Akini Jing’s future?
Zhu continues to believe in the utility of AI – but is also equally clear-eyed about its limitations. In fact, as the lines between Zhu Jingxi and Akini Jing have blurred, the cyborg persona has edged away from technology and closer to the artist’s own humanity and creativity.
“When I first created Akini Jing, she was like a separate persona. Now, more and more, it’s like they have become one,” she explains. “AI can give me a fresh perspective when I’m thinking about something new. For example, if I want to make my own script, or a comic, or [get] some idea of the visuals, I’ll use AI to help, but I don’t like to rely on AI during the creative process. AI can be a tool, but it cannot be the spirit.”
Akini Jing, after all, is the extension of the very human Zhu Jingxi, created not to attain an unachievable standard of perfection, but to understand and embrace the follies of her own humanity. Having lived with and as Jing for as long as she has, Zhu has learned one thing above all.
“I’m just a human. I’m fragile, but I’m infinite.”
Akini Jing’s ‘Villain’ is out now via 88rising