Brooklyn-based electronic duo, Shanghai Restoration Project (SRP), have released their latest album, ‘R.U.R.’ today. It’s out on Undercover Culture Music.
SRP was originally the solo project of Dave Liang, who was inspired by 1930s Shanghai jazz bands, and combined Chinese instrumentation with hip hop. This changed in 2011 when he met Sun Yunfan, a Chinese born multi-disciplinary artist. The pair initially worked together on album covers and music videos, before moving onto songwriting and production.
SRP have had over 20 million streams to date, and have also been featured on the BBC, NPR, The New York Times, and Last Call with Carson Daly. The duo have also performed all over the world, including New York City, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Moscow, and on the Great Wall Of China. They plan to announce live shows later this year, to coincide with the album’s release.
Their new 13 track album, ‘R.U.R.’ was recorded and self-produced in New York over the past year. A response to the state of the world at the moment, ‘R.U.R.’ imagines a time where robots have replaced humans. In turn, the robots attempt to understand the reasons for humanity’s demise. Finding a time capsule, they discover art, agriculture, and science, while at the same time less favourable qualities – such as narcissism, materialism, and the destruction of the environment. ‘R.U.R.’ takes its name from the 1920s Czech play, ‘Rossum’s Universal Robots’, which is the original source of the word, ‘Robot’.
The album makes use of electronic and natural sounds, notably the rooster crow on second track, ‘Tropical Spice Garden’, as well as human voices. Bells, percussive beats, and syncopated rhythms work together to make the album an aural delight.
Find SRP online on Facebook, SoundCloud, Spotify, and their official website.
