Bio
Now residing in New York City, Lee – vocalist/composer/songwriter/ music producer, was born and raised by an engineer couple in Yinchuan, a historical city in Northwest China. Long story short, under the condition of having been battling with depression since he was in high school in China, after overcoming a tremendous amount of obstacles; in 2018, Lee finished his master of music degree at New York University (NYU), which is also his second master degree, with an outstanding master thesis designing an advanced voice transformation algorithm. During the time in NYU, Lee formed his fourth rock band, under the project name "Up Facility", recording their first album in the famous Clive Davis studio in New York City and constantly performing in Manhattan venues Such as American Beauty, Desmond's Tavern, Leftfiled on Ludlow St, the Delancy, and etc., for over a year. Besides the band, Lee also started two other projects including an indie electro group and a classical styled instrumental album called "Storm". The latter one was composed by Lee under the harsh and devastating circumstance of knowing his father had a craniotomy in China caused by a hemorrhagic stroke with almost 200cc blood leakage right after work. "Storm", dedicated to his father, was Lee’s immediate reflection to this incidence. He created this album as a charity project to encourage every single person who’s experiencing any scales of difficulties to go through the “storm”.
Music and Depression
About depression, Lee knows it will follow him his entire life, the more he feels depressed, the more passion he would show through his music. It is a very painful process, however. Since his major in undergraduate study was social work, Lee had a systematic understanding of depression. Unlike many cases of patients with depression, who have difficult childhood experiences, Lee was grown up in a warm, healthy and caring family with a wonderful childhood. He was taught to be reasonable, selfless, hardworking, positive, and etc. It is in such an environment, coped with his sensitive and passionate characters, made Lee the person he is today. He believes the world is a beautiful and balanced place, all the ugly and injustice are fueled with the weakness of the human heart – selfish, lazy, unreasonable, negative ... Lee has never been a hater, of any kind; he’s just tired and sad about this situation. However, the more negative energy he feels, the more he wants to care, through music, because that’s where his power at.
In fact, Lee knows that the situation he is in right now is not an uncommon case. He believes that in every corner of the world, there are people like him, suffering the similar causes, yet having the similar passions. Only in different scales, from those fallen artists and musicians who generated so much power and faith to the broken and the beaten, but couldn’t bear the pain anymore and then chose to end their lives to those anonymous volunteers who are still trying, in every area in need. Or even every single person who wants to be responsible for anything.
Again, Lee believes this world is a beautiful and balanced place; everyone wants to be positive and strong, some of them have the power, some don’t. Lee will try his best to bring as much energy as he can through music to this world.
Side Story:
In 2010, Li and Yu met each other in Boston, MA; at that time, they were both pursuing other careers (the former was a graduate student majoring in leadership in financial institution, and the latter was a freshman in accounting). They became couple in the following year. The ultimate passion for music and art, however, led the two to take a leap of faith. As a result, Yu went to NYU to study Studio Art first, and ended up as a jewelry designer. In 2014, one year before Yu graduated, Li attended NYU's Music Technology graduate program. Since then, Li started to teach Yu to play drum, their music journey, thus, began.