Hearing Tian Qiyi for the first time, in session on 6Music’s Riley and Coe show in 2023, was one of those dumbfounding moments. Here was something outside of the realm of my common experience. While there is a saying about music being a universal language that may really be more a celebration of cultural homogeneity and Anglo-American dominance of pop culture. In the case of Tian Qiyi, even though the lyrics are sung in English, the sound is delightfully unfamiliar to these ears as it borrows from traditional Chinese and Mongolian music. However, as China is one of the two most populous countries in the world with a population of nearly 1.5 billion so it should not be considered a minority sound. What the group offer is an almighty fusion. They consist of John Tian Qi Wardle and Charlie Tian Yi Wardle (who bring the Chinese cultural influences of their mother, orchestra founder Zilan Liao) together with their father, the legendary bassist Jah Wobble (John Wardle) and describe themselves as psychedelic, jazz, world music.
Wobble initially found fame as part of Public Image Ltd, John Lydon’s post-Sex Pistols band. In hindsight, it is easy to see that early Public Image were musically far more revolutionary than the Pistols who really were just abrasive garage rock with a successful rabble-rousing marketing campaign. In contrast, aided by Keith Levene’s wildly inventive guitar playing and Wobble’s unearthly dub bass, they created something richer and unlike anything that had gone before. Wobble’s characteristic playing which appears on six of the ten tracks on ‘Songs For Workers’ adds to the stew, its low-end quality creating a contrast with the more high-pitched Chinese instruments featured: Morin Khuur (Mongolian two stringed violin-like instrument) and Er Hu (Chinese violin/two stringed fiddle).
‘Songs For Workers’ begins with two instrumentals: the brief ‘Ulaanbaatar’ combining a mournful violin quality with percussion that shifts between deliberate and galloping, and ‘At the Beginning’ which casts a beguiling spell overlaid with fluid percussive rhythms and Wobble’s bass before building to a frantic crescendo.
Heralded by percussive crashes, ‘The Route of Desire’ has a psychedelic drone quality while the vocals appear to have been fed through distortion or autotune. It builds to an especially frenetic and spirited conclusion. ‘Mongolian Dub’ has a slower, more menacing tone even though the lyrics take a Buddhism inspired take on flux, turbulence, impermanence, endings and beginnings. Similar themes emerge on ‘Watch the Sunrise’ which has the record’s most attractive melody, its instruction being to “leave your self behind / with your ego and your pride…/ transcend rationality / take a leap of faith or else / you will perish and cease.”
‘Dharma’ is much more ominous, a deep rumble over which instruments that sound like variants on strings and flutes weave a majestic tapestry. In the spirit of reggae 12” singles or dance tracks, later the album has an ambient version of the track, an extended take which uses the extra space to heighten the mystery and make it even more unsettling.
Another instrumental pairing consists of ‘Luoyang’ which is a spirited dervish of a workout whilst the scrapes of ‘Siege’ bear some resemblances to the dub dabbling of The Raincoats and The Slits. The album ends in proper Communist Party style with the title track, buried deep in bass and rumbling dub echo but with increasingly boisterous melody lines running over it, making for a particularly thrilling conclusion, musically much more exciting than a chorus of ‘The Red Flag’.
While it does not benefit from the shock of the new of their first radio session, ‘Songs For Workers’ is a manifesto for the musically open minded, sounds from around the world coming together into an inventive and immersive whole.
Tian Qiyi: Songs For Workers – Out 27 June 2025 (Pagoda Records)
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
