White is the first name to emerge more broadly out of the "No Beijing" scene. The duo, Shou Weng (guitars, electronics, organs) and Shenngy (vocals, electronics, percussion) formed in Beijing and got picked up and by Einsturzende Neubauten's (one of the pioneers of industrial and experimental rock) Blixa Bargeld who produced the record in Berlin. White has plenty of kinship with Neubauten's sound; dirty electronics and metals, materiality mixed with a kind of spaced out minimalistic drive. White has gotten compared as well to many classical minimal composers, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, Glenn Branca, and Alvin Curran, although I'm not so sure that the comparison should be made based on sonics as much as philosophies. White oscillates between a few different postures. There's a more industrial noise based vibe (see "Space Decay"), a minimal, synth driven tribalism that aligns them towards a more Japanese style of experimental rock like the more recent Boredoms, and OOIOO, or even more zen leaning experimenters Asa-Chang and Junray (check out the hypnotic post-dance album closer "Bai" and "47 Rockets (for Wan Hu)"), agitated drone pieces (is that an Erhu on "Spring House"?), and pieces that blend these ideas (the superbly badass "Conch Crunch"). Always with White there's a softer melodic underbelly to any of the more extreme gestures. There's a yearning, almost folk sentimentality that creeps in amidst this sort of hostile industrial sound world. It makes for an odd dynamic, something clearly distanced and analytic, the way Neubauten, or basically anything legitimately post-rock (rather than bands just tagging off its tropes) came off like a statement on culture rather than participating in a construction of it, mixed with something confidently placed in the shifting center of a burgeoning countercultural music movement in China, where seemingly the future of everything is being assembled. Check it out, or miss out on some truly new sounds.

White - Conch Crunch







White - Bai







White - 47 Rockets (For Wan Hu)







White - Spring House








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