Chinese artist Ai Weiwei to release heavy metal album

The songs were "mainly about my life and my experience over thelast two years,” Ai told dpa by telephone.
    “I wrote all the lyrics and I sing them,” Ai said.
    “Friends wrote the melodies,” he said, adding that his friend Zuoxiao Zuzhou, a musician and artist, supervised the music.
    “It will be finished in a month,” Ai said of the album. “But it won’t come out until April or May because we still have to make a music video.”   “I have my voice,” Ai said when asked why he decided to explore heavy metal. “Why don’t I use it?”
Two songs on the heavy metal album refer to blind rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who fled house arrest in his village in eastern Chian's Shandong province, Ai said.
    Chen took refuge in a US consular building in Beijing and was allowed to leave China in May for exile in the United States, where he is now a regular speaker against the Chinese government's human rights abuses.
    The heavy metal album was Ai's second musical collaboration with Zuoxiao in recent months.
    Ai posted his version of the online sensation Gangnam Style by South Korean rapper Psy in October, calling it “Fuck-your-mother Style” after a popular pun expressing opposition to China's ruling Communist Party.
    In the video, Ai and friends danced to Gangnam Style while he and Zuoxiao were handcuffed together, partly because Zuoxiao’s family home had been demolished recently, the artist said at the time.
    He said the handcuffs alluded to an expression “dancing in shackles,” meaning lack of freedom, that was used by Communist Party members who were persecuted by Nationalists before the party took power in 1949.
    Ai’s international popularity has mushroomed since his detention in early 2011 as he was about to take a flight to Hong Kong from Beijing’s main airport.
    The 55-year-old artist, was released on bail pending tax charges in June 2011, 81 days after police arrested him.
    His one-year bail restrictions expired in June last year, but he still lives under constant police surveillance and restrictions of movement.
    Authorities warned him that he was not allowed to leave China and would be investigated for pornography, bigamy and illicit currency exchange.
    International rights groups, Western politicians, artists and activists had called for Ai's release and continue to urge China to lift all restrictions on him.
    In November, British singer Elton John dedicated a concert in Beijing to Ai, but he made no further comment about the artist.