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The P.K. 14City Weather Sailing Maybe Mars/ Tenzenmen Two things become overwhelmingly clear reading the press release for 'City Weather Sailing' - the record company want you to know that The P.K. 14 are THE NEXT BIG BAND OUT OF CHINA and that they should be seen as a contemporary Asian version of NY art-punkers Television. Add to that a list of influences which essentially includes all American music from 1950 onwards and an album cover that looks like a Mars Volta cast-off, and you could understand why I was somewhat dubious. Oh, how I love to be wrong. Pop in the disc and you'll be greeted by I Wait For You In Nanjing's Streets, and it couldn't sound less like Television if it tried. A funereal, dirge-like piano wraps its way around a mournful vocal, whilst ominous synths sputter and whir in the background, peppered with spikes of guitar feedback. It's urban, contemporary, disquieting and utterly brilliant. After the slow burn start, the album builds tension with the epic Wade The River, with it's existential lyric of "what is gonna happen/ his body turned around to ask another body /whatever happens is merely your illusion/ is the man's reply." Light as a feather drums quickly give way to bursts of noise, while inventive bass playing holds the bottom end down as an Eastern-tinged string section adds an additional layer of intrigue. And that's just the start - amazingly, 'City Weather Sailing' manages a consistent pacing throughout. Despite the presence of improvised musical 'interludes' (usually code for 'wank' or 'filler') which, against all odds, actually help hold the album together with a wonderful sense of cohesiveness. The band demonstrate a wonderfully polymathic sensibility too - hopping from sound to sound (check out the pop hooks of Some Surprises Come Too Soon or the acoustic and synth driven How Majestic Is The Night) whilst managing to remain defiantly themselves throughout. This is far more than punk/ post-punk influenced music. Instead, it borrows from some of the greatest music of the 20th century and recontextualises it, placing it in an irritable, urban, scratchy, paranoid and above all contemporary environment. In doing so, it no only manages to capture the zeitgeist, and forge strong bonds between eastern and western musical sensibilities in the 21st century, but it makes one bloody good record. Miss it at your peril. |