There’s not much to be said about Shanghai ‘alternative’ band Cold Fairyland, that hasn’t been said already. Most every music critic in the country has taken a stab at pigeonholing this band, but the band, and its front woman Lindi, refuse to cooperate. The best we can offer is that Cold Fairyland thinks out of the box. The band – Lindi on keyboard and pipa; Su Yong on bass; Zhou Sheng’an on cello; Li Jia on drums; and Song Jianfeng on guitar – incorporates elements of various music genres (world music, gothic, jazz, funk, dream pop, etc.,) with traditional and contemporary Chinese sounds. And they do it best live, not in the studio. Hence, this live album recorded at ARK in Xintiandi in 2005, is Cold Fairyland at its best, from the surrealistic “The Cat from Paris” to the social commentary of “The Dead Children in the Newspapers”. But whatever the song’s provenance, Lindi’s vocals drive the melody from beginning to end with a meticulous precision. Unfortunately, the live recording sometimes suffers from less accurate reproduction – the price of independence, perhaps.
Cold Fairyland/available at www.miyadudu.com

(c) that's Shanghai Magazine
Chief editor: Steven Crane
June 2006 issue