Many of the artists whose playing and singing are included in this album's tracks were featured under their own names and with their bands on the Invisible Records compilation Look Directly into the Sun: China Pop 2007, which was put together by
PiL,
Ministry, and
Pigface alumnus Martin Atkins. On this album he takes a different approach: having brought these and other musicians (including a number of Chinese folksingers and traditional instrumentalists) into several recording studios to record individual vocal and instrumental tracks, he took the tapes back to his Chicago studio and cut and pasted them together with his own aggro-dub percussion and production effects, creating a kaleidoscope of funky experimentation that doesn't so much fuse Western and Eastern elements as force them together, secure them with a nail gun, and set the howling, bleeding result running around the dancefloor in ecstatic fury. "Mostly Hulusi" puts a quartet of traditional Chinese instruments through a gauntlet of layered drums and "resonated pulses"; "Tibetans vs. Dirty Girl" alternates between Asian folk song, Chinese rap, funk metal, and hip-hop turntablism; "Beijing Taxi" is a dubwise exploration of the sound of the gu zheng (which sounds somewhat like a Japanese koto; "DJ Wordy vs. Martin Atkins" is exactly what it sounds like: a studio battle between an Olympic-level turntablist and one of post-punk's most celebrated drummers. This is a thrilling, exhilarating, exhausting album that should be blaring out the windows of every car in America. ~ Rick Anderson