Chinabot is redefining the Pan-Asian experience through the sounds made by the people living it in Mental Maps compilation

, 23 March 2018
sound

The Mental Maps compilation is out via London’s Chinabot on March 25, with an exclusive stream of the album premiering on AQNB today. The relatively new label, founded by Cambodian-born producer Saphy Vong (aka Lafidki), has already released another compilation, a split cassette and another solo album by Japanese sound artist Dagshenma, in an effort to “create another narrative in contemporary music from Asia and its diaspora.”

Mental Maps takes the broad and not easily defined idea of ‘Asian music’ away from what writer Brent Lin defines as the West’s Techno-Orientalist imagination of the Other and into its complex and borderless reality. That’s where the crashing, arrhythmic chimes of Tapeape’s “Selfish Siddhārtha” from Korea meets the melodious Filipino vaporwave of Smalltown press’s “Derelict Shoreline,” all on the same track listing as the brilliantly chopped, screwed and reversed noise of Japanese-American project Namatamago’s “have0tome-v2 wav” and much more.**

The Mental Maps compilation album is out via London’s Chinabot on March 25, with a release party at The Glove That Fits on April 15, 2018.