Aquarius Records review

As much as we love all the indie rock and noise pop that's been coming out of China, and we do, hell, check elsewhere on this list for a couple new Chinese bands, we tend to become super obsessed with the more out there, experimental groups and records that have also been coming from the same scene. We made the latest record from White+ our Record Of The Week a while back, the sound like Yellow Magic Orchestra crossed with Neu!, or so the label suggested, to our ears it was way more far out and psychedelic. Out latest discovery / obsession comes from this Beijing based experimental four piece called Chui Wan, who according to the label, count Beach Boys, Arthur Russell, Les Rallizes Denudes and the Sun City Girls among their primary influences, but as always, there's no way a band could possibly sound like that, and Chui Wan, to our ears at least don't really sound like what we imagine that band math would produce, but that's not to say we don't dig it, we do, a LOT, in fact this is one of our favorite of all the Chinese records we've gotten in recently, but the sound is a bit harder to pigeonhole, the opener is a sort of loping, instrumental jangle pop jam, all blooping basslines, shimmering guitars, and motorik rhythm, surrounded by burbling cascades of swirling melodies, and chiming spidery guitars, so we were kind of prepared for a whole record of that, but then the second track swoops in, all distorted guitars, and driving drums, not to mention some strange echo drenched vocals, lots of swirling psychedelia, the track veering from spaced out mesmer to heavy, chaotic freakout, with brief bits of mathy angular pop, it's a weird mix, but it somehow works, at times sounding like a warped WTF version of Television, maybe with a little Boredoms mixed in, with plenty of spaced out psych jamming, and hypno-kraut grooves.
And amidst all this krautgroove and psychedelic drift, the band add swoonsome viola melodies, soaring ethereal vocal harmonies, plenty of almost proggy arrangements, subtly deployed samples, Eastern melodies, swirling electronics and FX, with some tracks sounding like psychedelic ragas, others blossoming into horn flecked almost-klezmer, and still others field recording laces tribal dirges. The record finishes with a nearly eleven minute closer, that's like some sort of doom-prog / kraut-folk, epic and majestic, weirdly recorded so the sounds are all blown out and crumbly, the arrangement strange too, in constant flux, the whole final half of the song peeling back all the noisiness, leaving just a gorgeous sprawl of processed horns, pointillist pianos, swirling synths, layered electronics and strange samples, super heady and hypnotic, tripped out and utterly mesmerizing.
WAY recommended, for fans of space rock, psych rock, experimental avant pop, and the weirder side of the new wave of Chinese indie rock...