FAZI are a post-punk band based in the ancient Chinese city of Xi’an. However, there is much more to their story than meets the eye… With five immersive full-length records and a brief stint on peak-time commercial TV already establishing the four-piece at the forefront of a truly pionee- ring wave of alternative music in China, the Euro- pean re-release of their latest offering, ‘Folding Story’, represents an incredible new beginning for a band who have already spent years honing their craft – transforming timeless traditions of love, life and death into a perpetual dance of fre- netic, krautrock energy and sprawling, shoegaze panoramas.
Fittingly, ‘Folding Story’ is itself a cyclic experience of rebirth, renewal and a return to origin. Al- bum opener ‘Invisible Water’ is a contemplative start as frontman Peng Liu’s yearning vocals reach out across synthesisers reminiscent of sonar and the hypnotic lapping of water on an un- known shore. Described by Peng as an “artistic conception of amniotic fluid in the mother’s body”, this motif returns at the end of the album’s final track, ‘Way to Atman’, this time as a gentle tide washing away the ash of a spent funeral pyre. Just as the album and its protagonist is born at the beginning and dies at the end, by deliberately opening and closing ‘Folding Story’ with the sounds of water, Fazi invite listeners to flow through the record on a never ending loop, to listen to a story without pause, one that rises from a whisper to a roar only to subside as quickly as it arrived.
When considered reflexively like this, ‘Folding Story’ becomes a living record of the band’s in- credible array of experiences and lessons learned, just as much as it represents a new chapter in their creative lives. Peng, alongside guitarist Cheng Ma, bassist Jiaxuan Li and drummer Boyang Li decamped to the Northeast Chinese port city of Dalian, famous for its breathtaking coastline and delicious seafood, to be close to their watery source of inspiration whilst recor- ding and to reflect on the eventful journey that led them there.
