Here’s ~5 hours of Chinese ambient music

Chilled out tunes to soothe in tumultuous times

Mar 05, 2025

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In this issue: a special edition with a load of low-key tracks for high-strung times.

If that’s not your thing, there’s a March playlist here with everything from punk to instrumental hip hop instead.

A long-term and much-appreciated supporter of this newsletter suggested ages ago that I do an ambient run-down. I always liked the idea, and have been toying with this playlist for a while now, but since the start of this year I’ve felt especially drawn to this kind of music. Or rather, felt a need for it. Not just Chinese artists of course — Yara Asmar, Fadi Tabbal, and KMRU have been among those on heavy rotation — but there’s definitely been a tendency toward the mellow. Toward music as a balm. Anyway, this playlist feels overdue.

THE PLAYLIST

I’m aware that not all of these tracks fit neatly into the ‘ambient’ bucket (apologies to the genre purists) — it’s more a loose collection of chilled out songs for ignoring the state of the world for a little bit. ‘Ambient’ just made for a more succinct subject line. Some pieces here are even a little noisy and experimental (relatively), but overall I hope you find the playlist soothing yet interesting. And if you come across something you particularly like, please click through to Bandcamp and support the artist(s) with a purchase if you’re able to.

I’m not going to blather on about all of the tracks here — and I may well continue to add to and edit the playlist over time anyway — but below, I’ve picked out a handful to say a few words about. Scroll further down, and you’ll find links to previous Concrete Avalanche editions where I’ve written about some of the others.

I put my playlists together on Buy Music Club because I don’t use Spotify or platforms like that and because they provide links through to Bandcamp where you can support the artists. One downside is that their playlists can’t be embedded here, so instead, here’s a link:

LISTEN HERE

Update: I’ve built the same playlist on Bndcmpr, in case you prefer that.

‘Five Primary Elements’ — Wang Fan

Let’s start here. This hour-plus work — which, as the title suggests, is themed around the five elements of metal, wood, water fire, and earth — was first produced in 2001, when China’s experimental music scene was very much in its infancy. In fact, Wang Fan’s first album two years prior had been rejected for being “too avant garde”. Perhaps a little stung by this rejection, Wang decided to pursue a project with a “more traditional positioning”, turning to the long-held notion of five elements. “I thought, if my mother can understand it, then everyone will definitely be able to accept it,” he says of his choice of theme.

The result is a beautifully mellow piece, one that was remastered and re-released by Modern Sky’s Badhead imprint last year. More than two decades after it was released, the work still sounds contemporary, in the same way that Music for Airports feels timeless. I love SubJam head honcho Yan Jun’s description of it as “so slow, like the never-ending Tai Chi master, who has unknowingly taken people across thousands of mountains in a light boat”. Hopefully Wang’s mum liked it too.

Various tracks from Seippelabel Vol. 11 and Vol. 13

An easy cheat for me when putting together this playlist was to turn to Seippelabel and their excellent ambient compilations. Although I’ve ultimately only used a few tracks from Vol. 11 and Vol. 13 — resisting the temptation to simply ‘add all’ — you should view these as gateway tracks into the full albums. They’re both available on Bandcamp at very reasonable prices, so go buy them if you can.

Buddha Machine remixes — FM3 and friends

Part way through the playlist, you’ll find a little FM3 one-two-three. FM3 are the creators of the Buddha Machine, a small handheld device based on the little portable speakers you sometimes find at Buddhist temples in China and which allow believers to broadcast religious chants wherever they go. In the case of the Buddha Machine, it’s preloaded with electronic music loops, and the device has earned collaborations with and endorsements from Philip Glass, Brian Eno, and David Byrne.

FM3 — Zhang Jian and Christiaan Virant — recently released a vinyl record featuring some of their earlier work, but as it’s yet to make its way to Bandcamp, I’ve included a Buddha Machine track followed by two reinterpretations of their loops from a remix album featuring “an eclectic mix of China's best underground rock, folk, electronic and experimental artists”, which was released in 2011. As with the Seippelabel releases above, I strongly encourage you to check out the whole album.

Hualun + Rubey Hu

As with the Seippelabel compilations, I could have happily added whole Hualun albums to this playlist. I highly recommend you explore their discography, especially their later, more ambient-leaning works (they started off a grunge-ish post-rock band, before transforming their sound several times since).

Their track here is followed by a solo piece from one of the band’s members, Rubey Hu. It seems there was an uptick in ambient music during the pandemic, and China saw a bit of that too — Hu’s work here came out of late night piano sessions that he undertook during this period. Given Hualun were formed in Wuhan, there’s an extra resonance there.

You can read a little more about Hu’s album in this edition of Flow State, a constant source of excellent ambient music.

Dou Wei — ‘Shuangxi’

Bringing the playlist full circle is a long, atmospheric piece that leans on traditional Chinese instrumentation, similar to the opener. The protagonist here is Dou Wei, who depending upon your perspective and interests, you might know Dou Wei as an old-school Beijing hair metal musician, a film soundtrack composer, Faye Wong’s ex-husband, or Leah Dou’s dad.

His latest incarnation is as a more experimental musician, working with a loose cast of artists as part of his Chaojian project to offer up modern reinterpretations of ancient Chinese poetry and texts — though the piece I’ve selected here is instrumental.