Album Notes

“Yuan’s melancholy pop makes rainy days, messy breakups, and shitty jobs beautiful.”
- GIANT ROBOT

“With un-rushed , atmospheric, and sweltering songs,‘We Saw Everything’ is but a taste of Yuan's talent.”
- LUCID FORGE

“an elegance reminiscent of Boards Of Canada”
- INDIE FOR BUNNIES

Jienan Yuan releases his debut EP, ‘We Saw Everything’ through “Actually, Records.” on June 30th, 2009. ‘We Saw Everything’ is written and produced by Jienan Yuan and was recorded in various locations throughout Chicago between 2000 and 2008.

‘We Saw Everything’ prefaces Yuan’s forthcoming full-length album, ‘Afterglow’, with a concise introduction of his unique musical vision. Reflective and bittersweet, his music glimmers with the fragments of unrequited love and faded memories; an electro-acoustic current of sound over which Yuan’s delicate melodies float and tremble. From the graceful ‘Because SK’, the plaintive ‘No Land’s Man’, to the atmospheric and melancholic ‘Magdalena Avenue’, Yuan’s music inhabits the emotionally fragile and ephemeral space between lifelong regret and uncertain acceptance – a searching affection that resonates throughout the quietly devastating songs on ‘We Saw Everything’.

‘We Saw Everything’ also features two special collaborative works – ‘Glint’, a reworking of a Hope in Ghosts song, with new lyrics and melodies co-written with Jarrod Whittington of The Red Wheelbarrow, and ‘Walking Between the Lines’, which originally appeared in the titular Apple Inc/Cherry Sky Films short, directed by Vincent Tsu (‘Sons of Anarchy’).

Guest appearances on We Saw Everything include contributions from Ted Flynn (Hope in Ghosts), Jarrod Whittington (The Red Wheelbarrow, Captain Exploder), Carly Oishi (Oishi), and Jon Monteverde (XYZR_KX)