FLYING OVER THE CITY

COLD FAIRYLAND or 冷酷仙境 in its native Chinese language is a band from Shanghai that has received attention for combining Eastern, particularly Chinese ethnic melodies with Western symphonic prog and classical music with influences from many disparate bands ranging from Portishead to Genesis, Jethro Tull and even Radiohead however this band which was officially formed in 2001 started simply as a collaborative effort of two members: Lin Di (vocals, keyboards, pipa, ruan) and Su Yong (bass, vocals).

This debut album FLYING OVER THE CITY is somewhat of an anomaly in the band's discography because this isn't really a band at all but just these two founders recording the music they wrote together before starting the band however the start of this dark and dreamy music of the Shanghai underground has taken flight and allows the project to unfold into a more dynamic mix of influences. For this one they released an album of seven tracks that just misses the 28 minute mark so in effect this is more like an EP than a full-length album but do these things mean anything these days?

The title COLD FAIRYLAND comes from a Chinese translation of one of Haruki Murakami's books called 'Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World' and supposedly reflects the tones of the music. Many of the songs on FLYING OVER THE CITY date back to Lin Di's childhood who is the primary composer of this band's compositions over the years. The native instruments played are the pipa which is a four-stringed instrument similar to a European lute and the ruan which is a traditional Chinese plucked string instrument with a fretted neck, circular body and four strings.

At this point there is really nothing prog except some of the tracks have a post-rock sort of feel to them but the Portishead influences are much more prevalent as this is very much in the vein of dream pop oriented downtempo chill music with catchy pop melodies only in the Chinese ethnic variety. This is actually a nice pleasant mix of electronica, Chinese pop, post-rock, dream pop and a bit of crossover prog albeit on the light side of the equation. This isn't an amazing album by any means but it's not that bad either. It hosts a nice series of pleasant ethnic infused pop melodies with exotic instruments and electronica. The vocals are pretty good as well. Not representative of the band's work after this debut but a decent collection of tracks that had been in the works for years.