Photo credit: Erika Kamano
interview by Maisie McDermid
As a child, London-based artist, harpist, vocalist, and model Xiaoqiao spent summer days watching water lilies on a pond near her house in Hefei, China. These early moments of “fluid and empty” time beside water have leaked into her earthly music characterized by angelic vocals, fluid harp, and electronic effects. Her debut EP, Weltschmerz, composed of four songs— “Lethe,” “Magnolia Dream,” “Weltschmerz,” and “Fleur de Sel—” flows through lost and re-encountered memories.
Each song, vibrating with contemporary sound effects, reimagines ancient feelings—tales from Greek mythology and Taoist parables. In “Lethe,” Xiaoqiao reflects on the Greek river of forgetfulness in the Underworld. Her second single and title track of the EP, “Weltschmerz,” comes from one of Xiaoqiao’s poems and her interest in Renaissance polyphonic choir. “Magnolia Dream,” her third song, references one of Xiaoqiao’s favorite childhood stories, Zhuangzi's Butterfly Dream—a tale about a man who is not sure whether he dreams about being a butterfly or if the butterfly dreams about being him. “Fleur De Sel,” Xiaoqiao’s final piece, honors her studio cat, Fleur, whose recorded purring sounds appear on the track itself.
Here, Xiaoqiao dives into her first glimpse of a harp in a music store, the making of her otherworldly music video, “Lethe,” and existing between London’s fashion and live art scenes.
MAISIE MCDERMID: Tell me about the underground live music gigs in Beijing you went to when you were younger—these atmospheres and your first exposure to music.
XIAOQIAO: I'm in a very typical Asian family situation where your parents have you pick an instrument to learn. I studied piano. But I didn't really enjoy it because it felt like I was forced to do this.
But then, when I was fifteen, I wanted to learn guitar. I met my guitar teacher, who is a bassist in an underground band. I was never exposed to that world before because I was raised in a very, very strict traditional Chinese family. He would tell us stories about them doing crazy stuff, and it was just a new world unveiled to me. And I was so crazy about underground rock music. In my adolescence and uni, I was not really going to school. I was always in Beijing, seeing all these bands. The freedom of the spirit behind it sparked me. It made me want to make music. I wanted to be one of those people.
MCDERMID: Did you want to be in this underground scene or just to create similar music?
XIAOQIAO: It’s about creating something out of the norms. It was intriguing; they were writing new chapters of themselves, of the culture. Especially back then, the underground artists were not seen. But I can see all the love and belief in their work. That moved me, even when I didn't know much about the music.
MCDERMID: Was it difficult getting your parents to understand your interest in this experimental music?
XIAOQIAO: It was definitely very challenging; they always thought I was going to some random nightclubs. I mostly did not share this music with them; it was kind of a secret. But then I started making my own music when I was 25 or 26, and things really changed.
I was also doing modeling at the time. Once I had some savings, I bought a harp. From there, I decided I had to do this thing that I always dreamed of. My family is probably one of the voices in my head that would hold me back in the past. But then, I told myself that if I don’t start doing this right now, I might never be able to. Now, they’re actually kind of fans of my music.
MCDERMID: I was somewhat surprised to see that you went to London to study cinema and film rather than music. Tell me about your interest in visual storytelling.
XIAOQIAO: I chose film because it balances my parents’ expectations of me with what I love. I think cinema is one of the very big oceans of inspiration for me doing anything in general. When I was taking my course, my teacher played Maya Deren. She’s one of the pioneers of experimental Surrealism in cinema, and she’s one of the first female filmmakers. Seeing her film at that time changed my life. It’s like you don’t know whether you’re in a dream or you’re awake. Everything dissolves—time and space dissolve, and reality and dreams dissolve. That fluidity and feeling is something that inspired me in so many ways.
MCDERMID: The line between reality and dreaming appears a lot in your work. Have you always been interested in this distinction?
XIAOQIAO: I feel more able to connect to it and articulate it because of cinema. I am a big fan of Andrei Tarkovsky, Maya Deren, and this Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul. I remember when I watched the film Solaris from Tarkovsky. It's about a guy in a spaceship who visits his past life, and Solaris, the planet, is covered by the ocean of subconscious memories. The ghosts are like hidden undercurrents that keep visiting you.
I'm very drawn to all these worlds because I think dreams are so important to us. They are like everyone’s cinema at night. In dreams, you get to meet your most hidden echoes and discrete voices, which are lost in the misty forests of everyday life. As humans, we need cinema. We need to be in the darkness and lose ourselves sometimes.
Photo credit: Erika Kamano
MCDERMID: Do you feel like your harp gives you access to these dream-like spaces?
XIAOQIAO: Yeah. I remember when I was a child, my dad took me to the music shop to buy me a piano. When I went in there, there was a huge, golden harp in the middle of the music shop that I’d never seen in my life. It was just completely mesmerizing. And, of course, we didn't get a harp; we got a piano.
But then, I discovered Alice Coltrane’s music, and she kind of approached the harp like a portal rather than a classical instrument. And there was no structure. It's like this feeling of everything being dissolved, and nothing is concrete. She played it like ocean waves of sound, and I feel like it's transcending you to a dreamscape. I wanted to create this sound around me. In my music, I use the harp with all the contemporary electronic effects, like watery, soaked reverbs or echoes. I want it to sound like a ritual of dreams. The harp really sounds like water, like streams. And it's almost like the ocean of mind, the streams of consciousness. And I feel everything is sinking.
MCDERMID: How many harps do you now own?
XIAOQIAO: I have two. I have one that is slightly smaller, which is very easy to carry for live shows. And then I have a big, dark red, mahogany one.
MCDERMID: From the videos I've seen of you dancing, your hands seem to move very naturally in the way that your hands move when you’re playing the harp. I’m curious: did the physical experience of playing the harp come naturally to you—the delicate hand movements? How did you begin to learn?
XIAOQIAO: At the very beginning, when I was first able to afford a harp, I was full of excitement. I was fully experimenting with it because I had been waiting for that moment for so long. I have a background in guitar and everything, but I have never felt as connected to an instrument as I do with the harp. Even before I had a harp, I already had all these ideas in my mind that I wanted to create a new sound on a harp. For example, all the electronic paddles make it super watery, like you're in the underwater world or something. It was very intuitive for the first several months. Nothing was right, but I felt good.
It got to the point when people started asking me to perform. And then, I was like, Okay, I actually want to learn the rules. Not to rule your instrument, but to be friends with it. To have a deeper connection with your instrument, you have to know the rules, right? And so I was having online courses. I remember I had to play a set for my friend’s brand at the ICA. It was for their Fashion Week presentation. And that was the first main show I had to play, and back then, my fingers were still very silly. And I did have a phase where I would sit there for at least ten hours a day just to do it. And then, I actually almost hurt my finger because I was practicing it so much. But once I knew the rules, I was able to have a much deeper conversation with my baby.
MCDERMID: I’d love to hear about the making of your EP. How did it come together and were there any surprises along the way?
XIAOQIAO: We started the EP in late 2022, so it's been almost three years. This one is basically my first release work, and it was the first time I worked in the studio. The way I like to create music really comes from improvising, and, at the time, I was learning to play the harp.
My processes start from intuition, improvisation. Sometimes, I play silent films in the background and start improvising on my harp. It’s really wherever my body is leading me, and my hand is leading me. Then I started to build—laying bricks, building a little palace. For me, the ideas for the work always come later. I don't want to frame or structure it. And then, after the improv, I sit down, and the ideas arrive like fish. They’re like fish that swim to the surface of the ocean. It’s like the subconscious is doing it.
For example, my first single is called “Lethe,” inspired by the Greek mythology of the under-river of Lethe, about forgetfulness. And that’s one of the fish in my ocean, in my head. While I was putting the bricks of my improv, that swam up. That’s kind of how every song came by.
MCDERMID: I find it interesting you put on silent films while you create music. Tell me about this and how visuals influence your creative audible process.
XIAOQIAO: I used to always put on Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon. It was one of my favorite shorts. It transcends me to a space that I forgot about. I'm able to completely forget about time, space, or where I am. It's my core, and I’m able to peel off all the layers, all the conditions out of it. It’s like a meditation for me, this kind of slow cinema. With writing music, you have to expose yourself. You're putting yourself back into the incubation chamber where you come from. These filmmakers have really helped me to connect to that space. It's about letting go, and then it just flows naturally, like the fish.
Photo credit: Erika Kamano
MCDERMID: I like the imagery you mention about fish coming up to the surface; it reminds me of the scenes of you floating in water throughout your music video. As someone interested in both music and film, it must have been a special experience, bringing the two together for your first music video. What was the experience like? How did you know you wanted this song, in particular, to be visually represented?
XIAOQIAO: I don’t really see myself as a musician. It’s really about building a whole world rather than one element, rather than just presenting the music. Visuals are definitely essential to building a world. As for this music video, I’ve always been obsessed with water. It’s a holy presence, but it’s also a very poetic metaphor. It’s where everyone comes from, like the environment of a womb. But then it’s also similar to the inner world, like the undercurrents and the flow.
The song, “Lethe,” is about forgetfulness. It’s about this river that erases your memory. I was working with my friend Erica Kamano, who is an amazing photographer, and we kind of worked it out together.
I wanted to build a paralleled labyrinth of a world made from everything that inspires me. I wanted it to be a space that is beyond time or reality—a space between waking and dreaming. It’s a forest full of mist, which, for me, is like a forest of your memory. It’s like when you sleep in the night, and you revisit that memory, that space in your dream, and then all the memories flow like mist, and you’re trying to see it all.
In the beginning, we wanted to only create an underwater music video. But then, when we were plotting it down, I felt like I actually wanted it to be a parallel universe with myself and my shadow self that kept echoing. I try to create a world where I’m able to meet this shadow self in the deepest dream, and I get to hear all these lost echoes—vulnerable dreams, memories, feelings, and tears. Then, we’re able to meet through this river, and I decide to embrace that shadow and echo rather than eliminate the memory.
MCDERMID: What was it like, filming in the water? Do you like being in water?
XIAOQIAO: I learned how to swim for this music video. I never knew how to swim, and I don't know why, but I wanted to learn how for this video—like shallow diving, not deep diving, and underwater dance. I did it in like two or three weeks.
MCDERMID: Wow. Is the river real or constructed?
XIAOQIAO: It’s actually in a studio. We tried to make it look like a river on the surface.
MCDERMID: That’s amazing. It really does look so real, very earthly.
I see you’ve performed in a variety of spaces—churches, runways, art galleries, etc. How much do these environments influence the music you perform?
XIAOQIAO: It comes back to the idea of building a world. In this world, every element matters. And when I have the access to do everything I want, I like to re-create my dreams. We had this show a few years ago at 180 Strand, and we made a whole moss set in the concrete ground. The environment helps me feel grounded.
At the very beginning, when I was starting to do performances at serious galleries around two years ago, I definitely felt scared. Before I went on stage, I was almost in a panic attack. But the way I calmed myself down was to find a quiet space where I could visualize an environment where I felt safe.
Sometimes, I envision myself in a cave—there’s a waterfall in front of me. And then, I am going to step on that stage. But this is where I am. I’m playing to nature rather than all these big curators and stuff.
Churches are so beautiful because, again, they are one of the things that kind of exist out of time. You can really see the passage of time in them. I am able to have a connection with all the ghosts that have lived there. They’re watching me, and we’re having a conversation. The beautiful, very big sound in the church hall is like they’re echoing with me. So, I feel very lucky to be able to play my music to these ancient ghosts.
MCDERMID: As you exist in both the fashion and live arts scene in London, how do you compare working in both performance spaces, whether it be walking a runway or playing the harp in a gallery?
XIAOQIAO: After I graduated, I got signed to a modeling agency. I was doing shoots and stuff. The power is very instant, and it’s very visual. So you get the adrenaline straight away from your presence; from your skin, what you wear, the fabrics.
I enjoy both. Walking down the runway—to compare with the music—is more like presenting strength. It’s bam-bam, and then the light hits you. You present that sight, and that’s where the power comes from.
But doing the music performances is really not about performing the strength. It’s about the opposite. It’s about being vulnerable. When I perform, I forget what I look like. I forget my skin, I forget my bones, I forget my fabrics. It’s just a fluid spirit in there, and I feel nothing. Everything dissolves around me.
MCDERMID: I've noticed brands like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander Wang have photographed you with your harp. Is this a way for you to merge both fashion and music? How does it feel being photographed with your instrument, which I imagine very much feels like a part of yourself?
XIAOQIAO: Exactly. The shoot happened the first year that I learned harp, and I was not even doing that many performances back then. I feel, firstly, very lucky to be seen as a musician with my weapon, with my baby. That was at the very starting point of my music-making, and I feel that it definitely moved me to embrace myself more in what I want to make.
MCDERMID: Yes, this feels special. I rarely see models being photographed with items important to them.
XIAOQIAO: I feel very lucky because I did several campaigns even after that with ID, also a film with Alexander Wang—they had me try to play rock music on the harp. I feel very grateful to be seen with the instrument; it’s very personal, to be honest.
MCDERMID: I know you draw inspiration from Alice Coltrane, one of few harpists in the history of jazz. Does her existence as a rare artist inspire you? Do you come across harpists often?
XIAOQIAO: There is one harpist who I really love who is also putting all the very celestial effects on her harp; her name is Mary Lattimore. She’s one of the contemporary women artists who I look up to. I take inspiration in a very philosophical way. I kind of take their spirits rather than their fabrics. For example, Alice Coltrane, for me, is to have the idea that you can interpret a traditional historical instrument. You can approach it in a completely fluid, new way. And you can bring the sound of a dream to life. Even if it’s intangible, it can flow on an instrument.
Xiaoqiao’s debut release Weltschmerz EP is out today on Spotify, and her “Lethe” music video is on YouTube.