Zither-led silk punk + Chinese dungeon synth
+ Yu Su to tour the US and appear on bills with Bonobo, Floating Points, KMRU and more
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In this issue: Chinese dungeon synth (don’t be scared, it’s pretty ambient), a US tour for Yu Su (including festival slots alongside Bonobo, Laurel Halo, Floating Points, and more), a reel-to-reel tape release, a fascinating folk LP, erhu-infused ‘cybermetal’, and more.
Down from the mountain: experimentalist Liang Yiyuan makes an album of accessible folk
Wuhan-born artist Liang Yiyuan is adept at springing surprises. Ever since he decided to swap painting for music-making, Liang’s sounds have ranged from dark ambient to abstract electronics and experiments with traditional Chinese instruments, often taking unexpected twists and turns.
Yet his new direction is perhaps Liang’s most surprising to date: White Blotted Mountain is a relatively conventional folk album.
Perhaps ‘relatively’ is doing some heavy lifting there, given Liang’s avant-garde back catalogue. There are still plenty of experimental flourishes and unconventional sounds, but more in the mode of Glamorous Pharmacy. Overall, White Blotted Mountain is a highly accessible work from a musician for whom ‘accessible’ hasn’t exactly been a watchword in his career to date.
This is no bad thing — the Yunnan-based artist’s discography is well worth accessing.
When Chicago-based cataloguers of experimental music Unexplained Sounds Group released a retrospective of Liang’s two decade-long music career back in 2022, the record was billed as “Among the most fascinating and aesthetically complete expressions of the contemporary ‘new music’, not only from China, but worldwide.”
This new LP finds Liang heading off to new sonic territory, but without jettisoning the traits that have made him such a fascinating artist. His penchant for playing around with an array of instruments is on show here — in this case, everything from the hulusi (or ‘gourd flute’) to the Indian gopichand (a kind of drum-cum-zither), as well as making extensive use of his own voice.
And while the song structures and hooks make this record more palatable for those not attuned to Liang’s more experimental output, the dark undercurrents that have long been present in his work remain. The instrumentation is at times haunting, while his lyrics retain an even darker edge. Take the closing refrain of track two, for example: “With a heart of hatred, I love the world”.
White Blotted Mountain is out now.
Triple trouble: three new electronic releases to check out
Laughing Ears sets her stall out early on new record 4.44.444. The angular, industrial sounds of the album’s eponymous opener set the tone for what’s to come. This is not an AM444 tribute record — it’s the Shanghai-based producer showcasing the more jagged side of her ‘hybrid club’ tendencies. It’s Laughing Ears pushing on deeper into the darkness at the heart of The Forest That Hears. It’s an intriguing listen.
Kaifeng-born producer Yu Su has returned to Music From Memory, the label behind her lovely Yellow River Blue LP, for a new track entitled ‘Avanvera’. Meaning “without any effort to achieve certain outcome”, the song was “born from a desire to make a site specific piece for recital halls in Melbourne and Sydney during a recent tour of Australia”. It comes as the artist — who recently swapped British Columbia for Britain — prepares to embark upon a live ambient tour of the US in September, including a date with Bonobo and at the Making Time festival with Floating Points, Laurel Halo, and KMRU among many more.
Back in April, Beijing-based producer Howie Lee dropped an intriguing new LP, “Recorded over two weeks at Drolma Wesel-Ling Monastery in the mountains of north-eastern Tibet” which combined “Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist singing with mutating bass/footwork science, glitched-out hyper-rhythms and sampled Chinese-Tibetan instrumentation”. Now, hot on the heels of releasing an album of AI songs, Shanghai-based producer SIIIG has come out with two tracks that also combine Buddhism and electronic music, seemingly sampling lama Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche along the way.
Dungeons and dragons: dark ambient from “Chinese dungeon synth” act Brocade
Originally, I had the two records below included in the last edition’s metal round-up. That’s because they were given a (re-)release by one of China’s premier metal labels, Pest Productions, and because they were billed as “Chinese dungeon synth”. But the truth is, they’re not really metal at all.
Brocade himself adds “New Age/ NeoFolk/ Ambient music” to the “dungeon synth” tag and that gives you a much better idea of what to expect, though the occasional black metal-adjacent moment is probably how these records wound up on Pest.
Weaving together extensive use of traditional Chinese instrument sounds and more ambient elements than metal ones, large swathes of Brocade’s material could happily soundtrack a tai-chi session or a traditional Chinese art-focused documentary.
Whatever you make of the “dungeon synth” genre tag, the buzz around the records appears to be growing, and just in the last few days another Chinese metal label — ColdWoods — has put out limited edition cassettes of Brocade’s work.
Pest Productions’ re-releases of Cold Mountain and Fighting Crickets are out now, as are cassette versions of those records and more from Brocade on ColdWoods.
Desert island discs: experimentalist Mamer releases album of guitar solos on reel-to-reel tape
No doubt many of you rushed out and bought a reel-to-reel tape player after I wrote about a release on the format from free jazz maestro Lao Dan last September. Well, you’re in luck, because now you can double your collection of experimental Chinese music reel-to-reel tapes with this new release from Mamer.
The Kazakh artist is, as loyal Concrete Avalanche readers may recall, “one of the most fascinating figures on the Chinese music scene, or anywhere really.” Accomplished on a dizzying array of instruments, this record sees Mamer wielding an electric guitar for a series of 15 tracks. As the Bandcamp blurb states,
“Mamer transforms every instrument in his hands, no matter classical or folk, into sound machines from a different planet, sending out outlandish harmonies made up of myriad sound particles. With a remarkably unwavering approach to composition and almost stifling calmness and self-restraint, Mamer has built up a sonic kingdom of his own: of darkness, profundity, and boundless mysteries.”
You can read more about Mamer here:
Desert is out now, including as a boring digital download if you don’t want to drop $300 on the reel-to-reel tape.
Exit music
And I leave you with this recent episode of Homegrown, featuring P.H.0, a Brooklyn band putting a new spin on the erhu (a traditional two-stringed zither-like instrument) and who describe themselves as “cybermetal / silk punk”.
Good to have Laughing Ears back on my Spotify
Really appreciate the recommendation on Brocade. Pretty wide range of sounds between albums.