Music review: Kung-fu dancing: France's Chinese Man live in Manila

This street party is in full force. Laser lights flash navy blue, viridian and a green so lambent it bathes the crowd in sci-fi camo patterns. Three French DJs work their brand of hip-hop, house music and rap with a gleeful fascination for Eastern textures and loops. The French are here and they’ve brought their sonic katanas. Chinese Man is live in Manila.  

 

Chinese Man are a French rap collective that hail from the city of Marseille. With the core group composed of DJs High Ku, Sly, and Zé Mateo, they formed in 2004 and emerged into the Euro dance scene with their own record label plus a series of quick EP releases. Like any collective, they utilize many collaborators on their studio albums and live shows, like Jamaican style rappers Taiwan MC and Cyph4. Producer Leo Le Bug is counted among their regular partners, harking back to their first LPs, “The Groove Sessions Volume 1” (2007) and “Volume 2” (2009). 

 

Their vastly eclectic sound is old school hip-hop DJing with original vocals and rap on top gone the way of French sensibilities. They employ the same methods by way of the cut and paste path blazed by DJ Shadow and his allies. There’s also Unkle in the mix, The Streets, an obsession with the primacy of the ambient from Tricky and the intensity of Big Beat slowed down and given a spiritual balance by Wu-Tang Clan’s psalms. This is hip-hop that’s glad at life. Chinese Man want to fly, and they want you to fly with them without the chemicals or artificial additives.   

They’ve been on an Asian tour, which is why they’re top billed as the main international act on this year’s Fete de la Musique last Saturday, June 23, having just come by way of Jakarta a few nights previous.  

 

The Fete de la Musique is one of the most anticipated local music festivals. Organized by the Alliance Francaise De Manille and a host of co-sponsors, they’ve closed down a fourth of Makati Avenue—a fact that the rest of the business district is still busy trying to digest, all the while traffic police reroute everyone around the barricades and try to sardine cars into a semblance of parking order. 

 

The corner of Makati Avenue and Kalayaan Avenue hosts the Main Stage, visible even from Sen. Gil Puyat Avenue. The usual laconic crowd that loiters around A. Venue and its hotels are nowhere to be found, and even the night’s working girls, since we’re a stone’s throw from Burgos and the red light district, hurry through the festival goers afraid to get busted. 

 

The last time I attended a Fete was in 2008 and it had drawn a large number of young gangs and their non-music fan cohorts who came only to troll, get drunk, holler invectives. Oh, the bouncers were delightedly hauling groups in every 10 minutes that night, but this year the crowd is older, better dressed in bohemian casuals, not at all yearning to be rowdy. 

 

There are more expats so much so that there’s a Caucasian face for every five Pinoys. The CBD and the police on the corners have successfully intimidated the usual festival riffraff clean off. I don’t expect violence with this tipsy, good vibes, get-me-entertained atmosphere. Nobody’s looking for a fight. So, I relax.

 

Chinese Man comes on after sets from Cynthia Alexander (one of her last gigs before she sets off for America) with the drum collective Brigada, The Blues Rats (featuring a newly svelte Cookie Chua as guest vocalist), and Julien Drolon. 

 

At first I am confused since the rude boi skank mixed with fast house tunes seems to smack of too much Euro-dance instigation. We’re not at a club so the hard edges of the techno clashes against the general vibe of Saturday unwinding. After a few songs of this incessant crossing of wires, they start to taper off and read the crowd for what they need. Then it gets interesting, then they get into their ambient material. 

 

There is a message here that is closer to The Crystal Method than the Chemical Brothers, a dance floor Zen that revels in body movement sans the weight of MDMA. The rave, house and all those foam party scenes have been burdened with too much amphetamines and this is Chinese Man’s answer. They do bear a resemblance to fellow French downtempo brothers Sporto Kantes, but only because they’re contemporaries overlapping at grey areas. They may share a playbook, but High Ku, Sly, and Zé Mateo work from the premise of a different sonic and psychic template. 

 

'Racing With The Sun'

 

Examine “Racing With The Sun” (2011), the latest in the pastiche of tunes that is their body of work. There’s no better argument for this kind of la belle dame sans merci goes Far East than “Miss Chang,” with lilting female vocals sung in Mandarin and a muscular beat that fuels the story of an unlikely femme fatale outlaw. Other instant standouts are the meditative “One Past,” the dirty dancehall spiced with slices of Brazilian favela reggaeton of “Ta Bom,” and the title track where a sample of Ella Jenkins transforms into grand statement (“Make your plans today / For the evening’s done / Or you’ll end up / Racing with the sun”), both the polar north of this album’s theme and its assertion of Zen’s “here, now.” 

 

My favorite off this LP is the tongue in cheek, anti-sloth anthem “Get Up” that successfully figures out how to employ the simple nursery rhyme attack and have the listener take it seriously. How? With a vocal octavizer and three MCs in Ex-I, Luch One and Plex Rock working their tongues off. The addictive banjo hook is honky and trashy, meandering through our nerve endings, while remaining still well within the hip-hop fiefdom. Like Moby at the top of his game did with the blues, or like Unkle if he was weaned off his druggie space errands, this song will end up as your LSS of the day. You can even sing the chorus back to your unemployed, couch potato pals a week later.   

 

Chinese Man also makes great use of visuals so check out their music videos, some employing real actors (as in the vid for “Miss Chang” starring French actress Chloé Rejon), but many with a great blend of animation and live action. –KG, GMA News