Riding the wave that began with 2006’s critically acclaimed eponymous EP, Beijing quartet Lonely China Day go straight for the jugular on their full-length debut Sorrow. Where the EP rested like a leaf in a millpond the album rages like the Black Sea in a hurricane. Songwriter/vocalist Deng Pei fully utilizes his band to construct mechanical bouts of beauty and fury with subject matters ranging from emotional despair to criticism of Chinese political oppression all packaged and beamed to Earth from atop a mountain on the moon. Each track bursts with surreal minimalist lap tops speaking alien languages inside an indie-rock cocoon with Deng Pei cooing then roaring Mandarin poetry until the whole thing blossoms into a single rose upon a snowy dessert landscape.
Sorrow is the result of a band pushing their sound further into the abyss of an abstract ocean. Lonely China Day are out to prove there is legitimate musical art coming out of China with a debut that lulls and dances like a giant robot in a vast poppy field shouting sparks into a bullhorn.
Engaging and challenging, Sorrow is the sound of an ancient society just waking up to the modern world with eyes and ears wide open. Strap on your headphones and prepare for a life changing conversion!
"Lonely China Day have their own unique sound, a priceless asset in an over-crowded industry…Deng Pei’s compositions resonate with ethereal (minimalist) constructionist beauty"
- (Time Out Beijing)
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