Nan Miao is an artist and educator from China’s Heilongjiang province, while Zhu was born in Australia but currently lives in Hong Kong. Both are members of the pre-internet underground in their respective countries, but the results of their experiments with creating music using only off-the-shelf equipment are truly remarkable.

On their debut album they make use of a whole range of techniques, from the simple to the complex, the analogue to the digital, the spectral to the digital. The depth of field affects the way sounds are processed and the sounds become aurally reproduced. These are all topics that I’m not sure Nan and Zhu really explore, but it’s the way they take control of the process that excites me.

The first three pieces are essentially sound sculptures, each with their own distinctive characteristics. The first piece uses a simple analogue oscillator and analogue sequencer, while the second uses a digital sequencer, digital oscillator and analogue sequencer. The fourth piece is a high-speed analogue to analogue conversion, using a drum machine and a computer to produce a huge amount of analogue conversions.

The big turns here are the digital to analogue conversions. The first piece in particular is long and requires many turns in the sequencer to complete. But the rest of the pieces are short and you can hear everything from the start. This is the kind of music that is meant to be played on repeat, but I find it much more pleasing when it is continued over and over.