Lonely China Day
“There was a profound serenity within the music of Lonely China Day, a band that came all the way from Beijing. The lyrics, in Chinese, were ancient poems, and at the core of the songs were mantra-like guitar phrases: three or four notes that often repeated throughout a song, centering it while hinting at a meld of Chinese modes and Western harmonies. The drummer sometimes made his cymbals whoosh and crest like the sound of a Chinese gong. But this wasn't any kind of traditionalist music. It was technologically current, with a laptop adding twitchy techno beats to the live band, and it was rock, as any fan of Sigur Ros would accept it, with ardent, straightforward melodies and inexorable crescendoes. The set rocked harder and moved toward the West as it went along, even unleashing some wah-wah guitar. Yet unlike a lot of international rock that's all to eager to jettison the local in favor of the imported, Lonely China Day stayed grounded in something far older than the electric guitar”.
- Jon Pareles, New York Times
