This first ran at Madeloud (a site that I think may no longer be online.)
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The Anthology of Chinese Experimental Music, 1992-2008. I read that title and I think to myself, “This may be great, it may be awful, but either way it’s going to be some weird-ass shit the likes of which I have never heard before in my life.”
Just goes to show what I know. Maybe it’s because, as the liner notes indicate, China’s indigenous cultural heritage was in many ways severed by the Maoist Cultural Revolution. Or maybe it’s because, just as today country music doesn’t mean rural, and rhythm and blues doesn’t mean the blues, experimental music just isn’t especially experimental. Whatever the reason, though, little on this four CD set qualifies as startling. From the first track (Li Chin Sung’s ambient static-and-cricket-noises on “Somewhere”) to the last (Simon Ho’s echoey, ambient, static-and-plane-taking-off-noises on “5”), we’re solidly within the avant-garde laptop paradigm. Some loud feedback, some snips of sound, a little techno bleepery here, a little static there….check, check, check, and check. I should have known; if you want , you need to head for Bollywood or Japanese pop, or, hell, American pop. Anything calling itself experimental is going to be just a little too pretentious to be truly goofy.
Which isn’t to say this set is bad. Four CDs may be more droning and squeaking than I really need in my life right now, but there are definitely a decent number of worthwhile moments scattered throughout. Torturing Nurse, for example, lets loose with some truly crazed shrieking to open CD 3; the rest of the track is 14 minutes of what appears to be a free-jazz combo caught in industrial machinery. SUN Dawei’s “Crawling State”, from CD 2, combines Baaba Maal-sounding African vocals and rhythms with more jittery computerized beats. The following track, Nara’s “Dream a Little Dream,” is very Aphex Twin; frantic bleeps undergirding a melody that’s all lyrical bliss. Fathmount’s “A Yoke of Oxen,” on the other hand, suggests Sonic Youth if the band were forced to ingest a substantial amount of mellowing weed — the detuned guitars gently weave and ploink without ever getting around to the brutal feedback rock climax. I even enjoyed some of the one-liners; I don’t actually want to sit for 4:47 and listen to a crane operate, but I appreciate that someone (a performer known as Fish, specifically) has given me the opportunity.
And you know what? Listening to Tats Lau’s “Face the Antagonist” again, I realize that it actually does sound like some sort of odd computer-nerd version of Bollywood, complete with earnest, soaring vocals, industrial clanging, and an odd warped mouth-harp-like twanging throughout which may or may not be entirely synthesized. That is pretty weird, after all.
