Beijing psych quartet Chui Wan are back with their signature lackidaze on The Landscape the Tropics Never Had, their third studio album and grainiest collection of confected synapse waxers to date. All bright beige and dazzling downer chords, the title track shows the path that Chui Wan’s been treading from the release of their self-titled sophomore album to now, out from the snow but further into the cold, collected and dispersed like light through crystal.
The video for “The Landscape the Tropics Never Had” is a parallax gaze at Beijing’s creative underground circa now; rather, just then, as the city’s one enduring rule is flux and some of the small haunts pictured in the video have already succumbed to the march of municipal progress. Like Chui Wan’s music itself, this video is one long drag of nostalgia chased with a shot of sudden now, cutting clips from the band’s early stomping ground D-22 (RIP) with images from today: older, wiser, wearier, dreamier. The bulk of the contemporary shots in the video — produced by Geek Shoot Jack, obsessive Chui Wan documentarians since day one — are set in SOS, the only bar in Beijing where humble noisers can still pound a beer or ten and talk shit til the wee hours, skeletons of youth shoved into a side-alley closet, circling quietly around the past.
And there sits Chui Wan, suspended in the swirling dust that can’t but be breathed in by any resident of China’s capital, famous for razing its history and painting heavenly promises with the ashes.
The Landscape the Tropics Never Had is out on September 1 from Maybe Mars, and will be released internationally via a short US/EU tour:
09.05.17 – Brooklyn, NY - Brooklyn Steel
09.08.17 – Cambridge, MA - The Lilypad
09.10.17 – Brooklyn, NY - Baby’s All Right
09.21.17 – Angers, FR - Campus Day
09.22.17 – Paris, FR - Supersonic
09.23.17 – Caen, FR - La Demeurée
09.26.17 – Berlin, DE - Maze
09.27.17 – Hamburg, DE - Gängeviertel
09.30.17 – Rome, IT - Fanfulla
10.01.17 – Florence, IT - NoF Club
10.02.17 – Milan, IT - TBA