Artist: Hz
Song: Dead Man Walking
From album: Mr. Stiff
[Buy CD][Website]

Hz, or Hu Zhi which stands for tiger in Chinese, is an electronic musician signed to China’s BadHead Records. - A subsidiary to underground powerhouse label Modern Sky.

His debut album Mr. Stiff (2002) is a fascinating mixture of minimal techno beats, noise, industrial samples and hypnotic guitar riffs. Some of his tracks carry an aesthetic highly reminiscent of Byetone’s fuzzy noise sound. The track I chose to showcase is not one of them, but it’s a great track nonetheless.

Dead Man Walking is a more varied display of Hz’s talents. The song starts off with some eerie sounding arpeggio chords played over a restrained techno beat (oxymoron?) and then develops, rather suddenly, into a trance rhythm. The hypnotic baseline then carries the song through some odd, but very cool sounding, warped vocal samples before it reaches its abrupt end. I love the off-kilter blues solo that finishes the song; it fits in perfectly with the track’s overall quirkiness.

Hz’s music is terribly difficult to find stateside, but fortunately for us, the Modern Sky website will take international orders through mail order. It’s easy and very cheap (CDs cost six dollars)! Follow this link for instructions on how to order.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 3:11 pm and is filed under Chinese Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.