review by Aurelio Cianciotta

An Antology Of Chinese Experimental Music
Editor Li Ching Sung and Guy Marc Hinant have come together to produce this anthology of Chinese experimental music, which includes 48 different artists whose works are divided across four engaging CDs. Moving beyond the names that are already internationally known (the same Li Ching-sung - aka Dee Dickinson - or the noise artist Torturing Nurse, or experienced artists Wang Fan and Dajuin Yao), there's an evident desire to emphasise the latest generation, dealing exclusively with the years from 1992 to the present. It has been suggested that the Cultural Revolution, with its anti-intellectual gulags, delayed the emergence of underground arts culture in China by 15 years. The appearance of such a culture is due to more recent developments in digital media (primarily music players and personal computers) in addition to an emerging, previously unheard of youth culture; a phenomenon which, in turn, was aided by a thriving music piracy. It is, then, a pleasure to listen the voice experiments of Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, Li Jianhong's improvisation, Jun Yan's narratives and multimedia inserts. These are all expressions of cutting edge music subgenres that - in various contemporary versions - are now well known and practised in China.
Aurelio Cianciotta
http://www.neural.it/sound/2009/12/an_antology_of_chinese_experimental_music.phtml