<p><span><span><em>- Nervous Energy</em> is the latest release by non-profit label <strong>Music In Exile</strong>. A collaboration between accomplished Guzheng performing artist <strong>Mindy Meng Wang</strong>, who’s main interest is to free the Guzheng, revolutionising its use as an ancient twenty-one-string instrument and <strong>Tim Shiel</strong>, the equally accomplished musician and mediator who wants to free the artist from a prosaic industry and monopolised technologies. The duo’s common thread finds great power across this four track EP.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>It’s an EP that is potently evocative, an exciting gateway into both Meng Wang and Shiel’s avant-garde pursuits. The shifts in tempo and rhythm that are intertwined with samples that are both resonant and obfuscated, leading single <em>Sleeping Tiger on the Bund </em><em>蓄势待发</em> a minimal-house treat of woody timbres and hallucinatory affects. Its surrealist nature is a key characteristic of the EP, the drum and bass in <em>Body Of Water (What Is Love) </em><em>一线之间</em> falls away through a humble and bluesy pentatonic exhale on the Guzheng, heavy with suggestion of our collective desire to bend objects and ideas. These soft and quick interchanges of samples and disorienting context are also present in the downbeat break of <em>Hidden Qi </em><em>隐</em><em>.</em><em>气</em> and <em>My Love Is Not What It Was </em><em>嗔念</em> where drones, illusionary vocoders and vocal samples settle you into contemporary streams of sounds without challenge.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>With the familiarity of traditional musics entering mainstream commercial channels or the practice of sampling traditional instruments and the subsequent sub-genres of beat music, the label’s mission of creating space for cultural diversity and aiding the path into a greater share of Australia’s consciousness sees the progressive industry develop practical inroads for collaboration and promotion, of which builds respectfully on the historically problematic catch-all of World Music by bringing the avant-garde tendencies into an eclectic and widely pleasurable body of beat music with an ethical business model to support it.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>Jubilant with symbolism and dense with an array of sounds, <em>Nervous Energy</em> is a highly complementary collaboration. One that highlights the magic and beauty of music at the crossroads of tradition and the avant-garde.</span></span></p>
<p><span><span>- Nicholas J Rodwell.</span></span></p>
<iframe style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 120px;" src="https://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/album=180435161/size=large/bgcol=ff…; seamless><a href="https://mindymengwang.bandcamp.com/album/nervous-energy">Nervous Energy 一 触即发 by Mindy Meng Wang 王萌, Tim Shiel</a></iframe>