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MP3 Monday: Proximity Butterfly

The sun, the moon, and the five wandering stars... - By Morgan, Aug 25, 08

MP3 Monday is a new weekly SmartShanghai column, serving up mp3s from bands living and making music in China. All mp3s are obtained with the permission of the musicians. Right click on the links and choose "Save As..." to download them.

This week's MP3 downloads speed their way to your hard drives care of Chengdu's most philosophically charged sons and daughters, Proximity Butterfly. Below are three panoptic and diabolic tracks off their latest album on Modern Sky, The Antikythera Mechanism (2008).

Living and making music in Chengdu since 2003, Proximity Butterfly is probably one of the hardest bands in China to describe. As a starting point into their music, one could throw around the genres of prog/jam metal, krautrock, psychedelia, and math rock. Cinematically moody and epically unstable, they're kind of like a thinking (wo)man's Jane's Addiction.

And then you get to the third track and they throw in some hip hop. So... it's coming from all directions all organic like.

"The Antikythera Mechanism," according to the always efficient and never-wrong wikipedia.org, is an ancient mechanical calculator (150 to 100 BC) constructed to calculate astronomical positions, although its exact purpose remains unknown.

Here's Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University from the wiki entry, who led the study of the mechanism: "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully."

That's a pretty good way to describe this music too.

Proximity Butterfly – Halo

Proximity Butterfly – St. Davide

Proximity Butterfly – Stallions of Stop

Proximity Butterfly are in Canada this month playing a show on September 6 for MuchMusic's "Live in Action" concerts, and then onwards to the Midi festival in Beijing at the end of September. It's been a while since they've played in Shanghai, and one would think they'd be heading back down here soon to tour this new album.

To order: Head on over to the Modern Sky online shop here.

Here are their links for more info:
www.proximitybutterfly.com
www.mypsace.com/pbutterfly
www.myspace/cn/pbutterfly (chinese)
www.youtube.com/julioslove

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