bands

Rebuilding the Rights of Statues

“We stand on the shoulders of those great bands,” Hua Dong writes. “Maybe we have seen further because of that. Our vision, however, is rootless. The ground that supports our music, so to speak, doesn't belong to our own culture. The ideologies behind their music might be exactly the opposite of ours, and this all too often generates an unavoidable clash.” It is precisely this dynamic tension that drives Rebuilding’s tangible sweat-soaked darkness and blood-pumping atmospherics. Cut Off! Reverberates with Liu Min’s irresistible bass lines and staccato, strangely sensual yelps and still holds the echos of the earthquake that wiped Ma Hui’s birth city off the map in 1976. Hua Dong stands over it all with his shattering vocals and addictive open-fisted guitar, stitching the flesh to the muscle like some demented monkey king. This visceral music, “built from the bones up,” is more Übermensch than Frankenstein’s monster: beautiful, brilliant and brooding. [back]