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Chinese
is an instrumental two piece (guitars and drums only)
out of Seattle. They make this brief fuzzy noisy, almost
rusty songs that seem like cool ideas. Too cool indeed
to be hot. Their debut recording The Conquest of
Tomorrow Today has some sort of futuristic world as a
theme. For instance, the cover artwork shows a man in a
space suit with what looks like an old world-meets-21st
Century vacuum. Either that or this clueless spaceman
is mowing the lawn and hasn’t realized there is no grass
to cut. Also, The Conquest of Tomorrow Today starts off
with a sample or what sounds like a sample that goes,
‘it all started when a time traveling experiment I was
conducting went…a little caca’. Then the rollicking
guitars roll in. Literally.
And is all
rollicking from there. There is certain angularity to most of
these tunes that furthers them from the organic slightly bluesy
rhythm patters and approximates the music of Chinese much more
to the noise rock fields. And that’s ok. Once we get deep into
their music, those are the two fields in which these duo frolic;
a bluesy, quasi rootsy rock and roll camp and a ‘rustier’ more
idiosyncratic noise camp in dire need of some oil.
On
occasions, the music doesn’t seem to gel together though.
Especially the drumming of Mike Strenski seems out of time. Not
sloppy, just not right where it should be. And in odd tunes like
“Guitar Solos Are Counter-Revolutionary” the music of Chinese
does capture the robotic characteristical nature that the whole
album seems to be pointing to.
From a
vantage point The Conquest of Tomorrow Today sounds like quite
the unaccomplished piece of work. Their ideas seem clear, their
quirks are obvious, but come off more like faint sketches.
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