- The doyenne of Shanghai dance music explores prehistoric life and non-linear time with help from Batu and Marina Herlop.
- In early 2004, geologists added a previously unknown chapter to the Earth's history for the first time in more than a century: the Ediacaran period. Despite occurring around 600 million years ago, it's still a recent development for most of us. This era is believed to have produced the first large-scale marine creatures like lichens, worms and cnidarians, multicellular organisms with truly unique anatomy and shapes. These alien-like critters are an apt spirit animal for the innovative Shanghai artist Wu Shanmin, AKA 33EMYBW, whose latest album is inspired by the Ediacaran age.
Ediacaran fauna don't belong to any specific animal group—they're in a cluster of their own, experts say. Shanmin's music, a vibrant collage of samples, rhythms and melodies, occupies a similar space in the electronic music world. Her multi-limbed productions form their own ecosystem, following an entirely separate musical evolutionary cycle that feels unaffected by time or scenes. Like her previous work, Holes of Sinian is an opera of abstract dance music. Lashing synths, rippling drone waves and belligerent drums feed off each other like mutant larvae. It might sound messy on paper, but Shanmin operates like a scientist, breaking down familiar instruments like the flute with molecular precision.
The album's name refers to the porous texture of a rock that might be from that era, acting as a metaphor for the record itself. "The mysteries and contingencies of life are like holes in stone, densely covered in time, leaving fractal paths and jumping clues in the evolution history of the Earth," the liner notes say. Just as holes of this stone hold space for millennia past, Holes of Sinian is a vehicle for Shanmin's own biota to exist and grow outside of linear time.
On "Arrival," chamber music and footwork go head-to-head in an epic classical odyssey that captivates from start to finish. "Predator Chorus," with Batu, embodies the spirit of an amphibian beast–imagine a multi-tentacled, Transformers-esque robot on a mission. This fits the "biological and mechanical aesthetic" Shanmin refers to in this interview with Vogue, describing her love of arthropods.
"Ediacaran Ghost 埃迪卡拉幽灵" is a pop-art lullaby with a dark twist—imagine a sonic portrayal of Japanese artist Yoshitoro Nara's unsettling portraits of children. Nothing says cinematic tension like sombre and sparse strings, swordplay noises and the haunting vocals of Catalan musician Marina Herlop, whose own unconventionally beautiful music and singular style of composition makes her a perfect collaborator for Shanmin.
There's an elegant symmetry to the album's mish-mash of sounds, down largely to Shanmin's keen use of looping and layering, which brings structure to the otherwise avant-garde design. Perhaps Shanmin looked to Ediacaran fauna for inspiration–many of them had bodies of "branched fronds with a strange fractal architecture, in which the frond subunits resembled small versions of the whole frond," according to Science Magazine.
Shanmin's sprawling concept releases have cemented her place in the upper echelons of experimentalists. Her music can sometimes be uncomfortable, even challenging, but because it's so richly immersive, curiosity and awe overshadow any frustration. It's no wonder Aphex Twin is a fan. There's an elusive, spellbinding quality to each note and layer of instrumentation, leaving listeners with a lot of room to construct and get lost in their own nonlinear worlds.
Tracklist01. Fieldia
02. Holes of Time 时间之孔 feat. oxi peng
03. Drifting Nama 漂流纳马
04. Blood Child 血孩子
05. Discrepant Microbial Mats 差异菌毯 feat. Forrest Gander
06. Ediacaran Ghost 埃迪卡拉幽灵 feat. Marina Herlop
07. Fractal1 分形1
08. Inside-out 翻转
09. Fractal2 分形2
10. Conjuring 召唤
11. Predator Chorus 掠食者合唱 feat. Batu
12. Arrival 降临