Frances Chang
Frances Chang is a Brooklyn-based musician, composer, visual artist and performer. Largely self-taught as a musician, Chang’s output has long been marked by a sense of curiosity and experimentation across her own music, releases alongside collaborators and contributions to film scores. been thinking bout confession, Chang’s third album finds the singer’s diaphanous vocals guiding idiosyncratic instrumentation that vacillates between the digital and the analog.
Born to immigrant parents in Chicago, Chang’s musical practice grew largely autonomously through bedroom recordings. Her formative live experiences were shaped by her early exposure to DIY punk, emo and post-hardcore scenes. Performing for several years as a member of the band giant peach, Chang began honing her interest in production and recording on the band’s final album.
In 2022 Chang self-released support your local nihilist, her first album under her name, marking a return to a dreamier, more intimate sound. During the production of 2024’s Psychedelic Anxiety Chang’s solo follow-up to support your local nihilist, she began collaborating with Andréa Schiavelli (Eyes of Love), an old acquaintance, who would subsequently co-produce been thinking bout confession. Alongside Schiavelli, Chang formed a live trio with Liza Winter (birthing hips) for the album’s tour.
Chang also works as a film composer, and has contributed scores to the films Sunset Seduction (dir. Charles de Agustin, 2024) and Where Can We Be Found? (dir. EcoRove, 2023.) The eclecticism evident in Chang’s music, alongside her enduring interest in the relationship between the realms of the digital and the real, have found parallel expression via interdisciplinary new media projects like her found poetry project ORACLE, based on the I Ching, as well as her work in 3D illustration.
been thinking bout confession, the artist’s third solo album and first released under RVNG, is a synth-tinged pop excavation of the self and the vast unknown depths it contains. Written largely on a 100-year-old baby grand piano, the album features additional bass, piano, drums and vocals by Schiavelli, as well as drums by Winter and William Alexander. Carolyn Hietter and Jake Tobin contributed saxophone. been thinking bout confession is decorated by a string quartet conducted by Sammy Weissberg, who also played upright bass on the album. The voice-acted dialogue on “Marry” features Chang alongside Sylvia Gorelick. Additional piano was recorded by Andrès Abernante at Jay Bird Studios.
