Yin (音, “music”) is a weekly RADII feature that looks at Chinese songs spanning hip hop to folk to modern experimental, and everything in between. Drop us a line if you have a suggestion.
Abandon hope all ye who click in here: just in time for the longest night of the year I’m peppering your eardrums with this thoroughly bleak collaboration between Lyon-based death-droner ruò tán and Beijing dancefloor doom merchant Zaliva-D.
This track comes from a remix album ruò tán released last month, for which he tapped the talents of seven “electronic / post-industrial / dark ambient musicians from all over the world, from minimal tribal to apocalyptic soundscape.” Elsewhere on the remix album one can find a few other RADII favorites, including Taipei artist lujiachi and Hangzhou producer GUAN, reworking original tracks from ruò tán’s November 2017 album Stone. On “Mist” above, Zaliva-D takes ruò tán’s ritualistic folk-metal-drone vibe and adds his own trademark glossolalic overtones and a pervasive undercurrent of existential dread.
Find the full STONE RIVVER remix album here, and if this kind of thing is up your alley I can also highly recommend Zaliva-D’s 2018 SVBKVLT album Sky Singing:
And, for that matter, the entire catalog of ruò tán’s WV Sorcerer label is a solid source of aural murk lurking in the cracks between black metal, industrial drone, and good old-fashioned bastard noise.
—
Cover photo: ruò tán at Le Terminus, Rennes, France (photo by aLMa)
You might also like:
