- Unclassifiable music from an exciting Beijing act.
- The Beijing act Zaliva-D makes unclassifiable music. Even the list of labels they've released on—a black metal outlet called Pest Productions, Amsterdam's Knekelhuis, Shanghai's SVBKVLT—makes it hard to guess what they might sound like. Li Chao uses percussion, instrumentation and inhuman vocals to create electronic music that feels like a sort of futurism dredged up from an ancient past (Aisin-Gioro Yuanjin, the other member of Zaliva-D, handles the visuals). On Calling, Zaliva-D's latest EP for SVBKVLT, they sound woozy, strange and powerful.
On Calling, Zaliva-D's sound is stripped back and focused. There are hints of a Raime-style lurch on "Calling," but the EP's strange textural choices and leftfield vocals sound like nothing else. Voices are twisted into guttural groans, hums and chants, growing into an alien choir on the EP's freakiest track, the broken techno of "Itself."
Voices are treated brutally on "Flutter," the song that sounds most like Zaliva-D's previous work: slow military marches from another planet. The Berlin artist Dis Fig makes "Flutter" even darker by adding her own screams, while Tayhana adds a percussive flair to "Calling" and Citizen Boy puts a gqom spin on "Groan," straightening the group's odd music into something more familiar. This EP is unnerving, occasionally grotesque and always exhilarating.
Tracklist01. Flutter
02. Calling
03. Groan
04. Itself
05. Flutter (Dis Fig Remix)
06. Groan (Citizen Boy Remix)
07. Calling (Tayhana Remix)