Mei Zhiyong & Dave Phillips – Mei Zhiyong & Dave Phillips

mei-zhiyong-dave-phillips-mei-zhiyong-dave-phillips

CD – Denovali

Mei Zhiyong & Dave Philips first met in Pechino in July 2014. The first couldn’t speak a word in English and the other couldn’t say a word in Chinese. The chance was a first tour together in 18 oriental cities which was then exchanged by David Philips with a planned tour in 20 European cities. During these live concerts a lot of sounds were recorded as the main work by Mei Zhiyong. These sequences were then used by Philips as a source work and the best ones were chosen, distilled and manipulated to create a mix of two uncommon and different styles for both the artists. The so called audio abuse by Mei Zhiyong and her sound ecstasies met – with no room given for confusion – the most structured techniques by Dave Phillips, who is a musician accustomed to immersive and cathartic settings and considers sound as a primary and direct type of communication. The result is that of a decisively amazing album, irritating but finally led back to sound variations that include pauses and restarts, full moments and silences, distortions and accidental recordings, packed noises and finally volume adjustments. The main feeling is that the fluxes are more persistent and blurred in others without forced marked discontinuities, in the name of industrial and boring plots. This last approach is immediately recognizable to the non-specialists of such complex experimentations. According to Urbsounds Collective, an experimental crew that since 2016 has become a distributive platform which published this project “Music is an intrinsic political force of change, expressed in a vinyl LP and digital issues”. As never before this project, the result is cohesive and tangible, with no frills, and raw, but in some ways “intelligent” and extremely radical and difficult, forged to vibrate and strike a chord.

 

Mei Zhiyong & Dave Phillips – Mei Zhiyong & Dave Phillips