Made In China is a wonderful cross section of strange sounds, noises, dubs, instruments, vocals, drum machines, and record scratches that somehow or other adds up to being music. I'm not a big fan of anything "dubbed" usually. With a few exceptions all I've ever heard in the past has been a lot of bass and not much else. But on this disc what Martin Atkins has done is really quite amazing. He found pop musicians who are working with more traditional instruments to go along with some of those that were on Look Directly Into The Sun and the mixture works out beautifully.

In some sort of strange way it gives you a real feel for the dichotomy of what life must be like in a country where the old and the new exist in such close proximity. At the same time it brings to light some of the harsher realities of what it's like to record music where the possibility of repercussions far exceed a parental advisory sticker if it doesn't meet with the approval of the authorities.

Track three is called "Tibetans Vs. The Dirty Girl" and it features a traditional Tibetan group overdubbed with a Chinese girl rapping out something or other that Martin found out latter was incredibly lewd (hence Dirty Girl - they had to guarantee the young woman complete anonymity before she agreed to be recorded). On paper it sounds like it shouldn't work, but somehow or other the mixture of scratches and beats under the sound of traditional instruments isn't as incongruous or discordant as you'd think. The contrast between the haunting sound of their melodies and the rough urbanity of Dirty Girl ends up sounding allegorical to the situation of the modern industrial state of China stomping down on the traditional people of Tibet.

You might think I'm reading a little too much into it, but on the day Martin recorded this track he mentions in his liner notes that China shut down CNN's broadcast into the country because of an incident happening at the Tibetan/Chinese border. It's things like that, and Dirty Girl not wanting Martin to even know her name let alone use it in the credits, that remind you about the crucial differences in reality for the bands on Look Directly Into The Sun and Made In China and young bands in the West.