- Chinese characters are laser cut acrylic
- Earrings are silver
- Necklace cord is plastic
The chinese characters are the words "ting" for "listen" and "shuo" for "speak"
Includes free download of FM3 - Ting Shuo album
The Buddha Machine was never hermetically sealed. You could break into it, and with a smattering of audio and electrical knowledge work out how the thing worked.
What you could not do however was replicate the process that led to its manufacture and therein lay the secret beyond the sounds. Now despite being virtually omnipresent over the last decade via their world-ruling Buddha Machine it must come as a surprise that FM3, Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian, have released no original music together on CD format for almost ten years.
"Ting Shuo" comes with a title of typical Chinese wordplay, literally translated it could mean "listening speaking" but the actual colloquial Mandarin understanding would be "heard of" or maybe "known about"; in other words many Chinese have heard about FM3 through their global reputation but few have heard their music. FM3’s plan of hiding sonically and physically in plain sight is finally put to rest by this new set of audio pieces which, although fully conceived and worked as a conventional album, are easily related back to the loops that inhabit all the many versions of the Buddha Machine.
The duo will soon be on tour in the East and maybe next year in the West to bring this new set of quiet music to audiences who will need to listen hard.
Steve Barker, BBC radio host and columnist for Wire magazine
Track List:
1. San Lang
2. Ting Shuo
3. Dui Xiang
4. Hei Guan
5. Fo Wu
6. Yi Gui