WAR WITH CHINA might be the most “Australian” album of the year. Which is funny given the album’s title track finishes by telling the government to “go f**k yourself” and threatening to join China’s side if a war were to happen.
Behind this declaration are two of Sydney’s finest, rapper BAYANG (tha Bushranger) and producer Nerdie, of 1300, koreancrashout and xiao xiao fame. Across the album’s ten tracks the pair paint their picture of Sydney, far removed from the glossy shots of the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge that make up your standard tourist pitch. Instead, WAR WITH CHINA speaks of muddy sneakers, fast cars, a cost of living crisis and “living quarters [that] smell of burnt plastic”.
The dingy aesthetic is defined right from the album’s beginning. Nerdie starts the opening track ‘3AM’ with a thick, toothy bass synth and a drum groove that feels like marching down a dark backstreet in a half-asleep daze. Underneath the song’s chorus a layer of pure, harsh noise is introduced, adding to the fuzzy, not-quite-a-dream sensation.
Though the sound of WAR WITH CHINA remains rough, heavy and abrasive throughout the rest of the album, it does so in a number of unique ways, each reflecting a different cross section of the city’s underground. The gabber climax on ‘Ridgy’ is fit to be blasted in any abandoned warehouse, with LEDs pulsing in time with the fast-paced kicks, while the messy punk guitars and punchy drums on ‘Afterbirth’ sound like they’ve come straight from a sharehouse garage. Then there’s the Black Flag cover, ‘Nervous Breakdown’, which flips this classic hardcore punk song something akin to a high-speed cop chase on the streets of a futuristic cyberpunk metropolis.
It’s a cross-pollination of references, featured throughout the album’s production and writing alike. BAYANG’s bars touch on everything from local icons and politics to art history and religion. This is an album that, despite its 27 minute runtime, could take upwards of an hour to get through if you’re constantly pausing and rewinding to look up whatever was just mentioned (unless you’re well versed in Buddhism, Dadaism and 2000s Taiwanese cinema, in which case he’s speaking your language).
The writing on WAR WITH CHINA shows an artist who is not only aware of the world around him, but feels a responsibility for his journey through it. On ‘Gucci Gothic’ BAYANG introduces a “big titty” working girl, telling her to “make that shit look like it hurt”. But instead of leading into a path of misogyny and objectification like those bars so easily could, the song celebrates her independence and her resolve, and ends up being an anthem of empowerment for sex workers, reverently describing them as “witches at the gathering” and thanking them “for their service”.
What might be most impressive about BAYANG’s writing, however, is that all of the subjects, from the intellectual and “cultured” to the crass and taboo, are presented on equal footing. The references to Marcus Garvey and Marcel Duchamp aren’t used as a contrast to drug dealers in the Western suburbs of Sydney – they’re on the same level. Each is just as valuable to the culture and the community, and to the conditions that created WAR WITH CHINA. This is perhaps best demonstrated in a set of bars from ‘Ridgy’:
"Parramatta Road we stuck in traffic
SBS Arabic was blastin’
Speaking Aramaic up in Macca’s
Off my head I feel like John The Baptist"
BAYANG and Nerdie don’t shy away from an ‘Australia’ that is too messy or heavy; thus, WAR WITH CHINA becomes much more recognisable of the real people who live here, and their real lives. These aren’t the stories of the concert hall or the lush recording studio; WAR WITH CHINA is the sounds that have seeped through the cracks in the pavement, been washed down the gutters, and burnt into the asphalt.
Words by Jim Kretschmer