Here are three new homegrown albums from musicians around China on our radar this month.
1. Into Sparks by Dream Can
One of Shanghai’s most original bands and a leading light of female-led acts in China, Dream Can have finally dropped their debut album on Maybe Mars, a finely composed eight-song journey drenched in psychedelia. The band reveal right away that they are not messing around with the massive eight-minute opening track, ‘Cheap Cheap Time I Live, Money Money Saves Me,’ showing practiced restraint with its spare opening that builds until it soars. The band cites Acid Mothers Temple as an influence, and their repeated veering between spare and poignant twangs and frenzied guitar rock recalls the Japanese psych rock giants as well as older bands like Big Brother and the Holding Company circa 1968. The decidedly trippy song ‘Time is Fractured’ creeps toward paranoia with a maze of twists and turns in sound that feel both manic and tightly composed. Their slower songs are lovely as well, especially the sad spaceship cruise that is ‘I am a Lonely Girl,’ which showcases A Re’s otherworldly vocals. Into Sparks sounds like music from another era, but it’s still brimming with innovation and, well, sparks.
2. Monster KaR Vol. 3 by Monster KaR
‘Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome Aboard Monster KaR Airlines’ are the opening lines of Monster KaR Vol. 3, which give a good indication of the serene weirdness of the trip ahead from this Guangzhou-based band. They’ve labeled themselves on Xiami as ‘hallucinogenic pop,’ and they do manage to convey a psychedelic and lightheaded feeling without relying on the more in-your-face noise guitar of psych rock. This is most successful on the dizzying track ‘Fight Club,’ largely thanks to the vocals, which are light, breathy and eerie. Monster KaR explore other genres on the album as well, like a sweetly retro 90s R&B on the melancholy ‘In Brown’ and ‘Don’t Leave Me When I’m Alone,’ which sports a soulful beat and some boy-girl spoken word interludes that feel especially 90s. This is music for the most gentle and peaceful of mind-altering substances, making it a less ubiquitous take on psychedelic music that feels crisp and refreshing.
Listen on Xiami here.
3. Migration by Diva Li
The latest release from Beijing label Ran Music is a vibrant club-centric EP by producer Diva Li. An ear for the dance floor is apparent right away, and Li displays a funk and disco sensibility woven into all the tracks, though her main focus is minimal techno and dub that’s been washed clean of the bro-y overtones that can plague the genre. Her punchy vocals push the energy level of each track skyward, making the EP fly by and an itch to hit the dance floor grow as you listen. The tracks get heavier and darker as the EP goes on, hitting their deepest in the throbbing bass of ‘Awakening’ and then rising in tempo again for the frenzied, dubby finale ‘Travel By Myself.’ Li was preoccupied with the migration of fish across the ocean when she created this album, hence its name. She “imagined herself as one among the hordes” swimming along in an Atlantic fish migration, and the thematic connection between feeling at one with your school of fish in the sea and with your fellow dancers at the club should not be overlooked.
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