An Artist Profile of Daiguo Li – Part One
by Kyle McAfee,  High Contrast Review Music Editor

An underwater cave fills with the rhythmic groans of translucent-fleshed men fish. A malfunctioning band of robots pluck strings in and out of syncopation in a smoky Chinese bordello. Numbers, etched on tooth sized stones are arranged in bowls of moss and mud throughout a glowing forest. Just minutes away huge hills of dead mice, broken clocks and multi-colored money are scattered like haystacks across acres of dusty, socked-in farming plain. These are the locations one might stumble upon when listening to the music of Li Daiguo.

The appeal of Li Daiguo’s music comes from the ebb and flow of earthen simplicity and industrial cacophony. This balance is illustrated with a wide variety of instruments in any given composition. Pipas, viola, violin, cello, bawu, clarinet, throatsinging, and beatboxing are just some of the sounds you’ll hear on a track. Songs like “prayer 7 zillion and 9ty two thousand758″ or “6:07″ are a couple that exemplify this huge arsenal of instrumentation.

Throughout the music one can hear cultural influences from everywhere, which may derive from this artist’s status as a global citizen. Daiguo’s myspace bio reads like a cross country flight itenerary; “Born in Oklahoma… violin performance and literature major at San Diego State University… Moved to China in 2004 … performing in a variety of venues and in the streets all over China, often visiting Japan and the U.S….”

Li Daiguo is on tour right now in China, but hopefully will get back to this writer in the near future for a part two on this piece complete with an interview. In the mean time peep his myspace or his website -cheers.