How Dou Wei brought the sound of Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins, and Bark Psychosis to Chinese rock.

In the late-80s, a decade after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese rock music began to spread from Beijing into the mainstream through the university protest movements surrounding the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. The “Father of Chinese Rock” Cui Jian’s “一无所有 (Nothing to My Name),” a coded political love song, would become the unofficial anthem for Chinese youth and activists, with most students across China knowing the refrain. This movement would open the door for an emerging sound that blended traditional Chinese styles with Western rock elements. Early bands included 呼吸 (Breathing), 眼镜蛇 (Cobra), 不倒翁 (Infallible), and 黑豹 (Black Panther), which was fronted by Dou Wei (窦唯), a multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter who would later marry and work closely with Cantopop diva Faye Wong.

While not well known outside of China, Dou Wei is considered one of the most important figures in Chinese rock and was pivotal to pushing the country’s nascent rock scene into more experimental territories. Born in 1969, Dou Wei grew up in a large compound in Beijing with his mother, a factory worker, and his father, a folk musician who taught Dou Wei how to play traditional flute at a young age. As a teenager, he taught himself how to play guitar and became interested in Western music, but unlike his peers, Dou Wei’s musical influences would go far beyond just The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, and into bands like Bauhaus, The Cure, Cocteau Twins, and later Bark Psychosis…

In 1994, after leaving Black Panther to start a solo career, Dou Wei was chosen as the opening act for Radiohead’s only tour stop in Hong Kong at the legendary Ko Shan Theater. The media in Hong Kong gave high marks to Dou Wei’s performance, which included mostly songs from his solo debut 黑梦 (Black Dream), a dark and moody post-punk style album heavily influenced by English gothic rock pioneers Bauhaus. One newspaper wrote: “After watching this avant-garde and spectacular performance, do you still feel that mainland people are unsophisticated?” Listen to lead single “高級動物 (The Higher Being)” which calls out the “contradiction, hypocrisy, greed, deception” in the world through a spoken-style vocal delivery.

A few years later, Dou Wei co-produced his then-wife Faye Wong’s 浮躁 (Fuzao), an innovative pop album that would become a classic of “Beijing-style Western music” fusing his 艷陽天 (Sunny Days) ambient alternative rock period with the Cocteau Twins’ dream pop sound. A1 “無常 (Impermanence)” sets a beautifully ethereal mood opening with just Wong’s voice alongside acoustic guitar before dropping into reverb-heavy electric guitar, programmed electronic drums, and digital synthesizers. “分裂 (Divide)” features the Cocteau Twins themselves on production with a hypnotic drum machine groove and Wong matching Elizabeth Frasier’s impressionistic vocal style. The album remains an anomaly in mainstream Chinese music and sonically miles ahead of other pop music released during this time.

Dou Wei would continue expanding on this ambient electronic rock sound with his third solo album 山河水 (Mountain River), which uniquely incorporated downtempo drum loops alongside classical Chinese melodies, heavy-use of MIDI, and extended ambient sections. Check the opening title track which almost sounds like an obscure UK trip-hop instrumental infused with a picturesque Chinese mountain atmosphere created using electronic flutes and psychedelic guitars.

“To me, there’s a bit of an Eastern sound in Bark Psychosis. Listen to this scale cycle. It’s like Chinese music in the 60’s and 70’s. There’s something in Bark Psychosis’ music that we hear and relate to.”

Dou Wei

While these late ’90s albums would become monumental works of Chinese rock, Dou Wei himself considered this period to be a “detour” in his musical journey. A watershed moment would occur right before the turn of the millennium (coinciding with his divorce from Faye Wong) when he would encounter the music of English post-rock pioneers Bark Psychosis. Dou Wei’s next three albums would be heavily influenced by Bark Psychosis’ minimalistic, moody, atmospheric post-rock where “space and silence are the most important tools” in the music. In a rare interview with Dou Wei on his Vinyl Talk program, DJ Zhang Youdai remembers Dou Wei and his band Yi in 1999 performing Bark Psychosis covers the entire first half of a show. Youdai says, “I was shocked because I don’t see a lot of Chinese bands so boldly covering Western artists.”

In that same interview, Dou Wei reflects on why Bark Psychosis resonated so heavily: “To me, there’s a bit of an Eastern sound in Bark Psychosis. Listen to this scale cycle. It’s like Chinese music in the 60’s and 70’s. There’s something in Bark Psychosis’ music that we hear and relate to. It’s very musical, strong, and aesthetically pleasing. That’s why we wanted to cover it as a band. It’s like recreating a painting.”

He later speaks on the overall cultural exchange between the East and West saying, “Who is copying who is always uncertain. For example, during the days of the Opium Wars, I’m sure that the beauty of the East was something that people said could not be absorbed. But then afterwards, the West absorbed the Eastern aesthetics and blended it with their own, becoming something new. That in turn, came to affect the development of the East. It’s not necessarily plagiarism, but more like borrowing and absorbing… It’s easy to see the attractiveness of Eastern culture to Westerners during that time. Now it’s the other way around.”

Dou Wei’s music would become increasingly ambient and experimental throughout the ’00s, with many songs excluding vocals entirely. “灕江水 (Li River Water)” from his 2001 album 幻听 (Hallucinations) reminds us a bit of the ambient guitar work of Durutti Column, Melody As Truth’s Jonny Nash and Suzanne Kraft, or Kevin McCormick & David Horridge’s Light Patterns. The sparkling layered guitars paint a sonic portrait of the sunlight reflecting on the serene south-flowing water of the Li River, one of the most beautiful natural wonders in China.

Constantly pushing forward, Dou Wei would go through a number of sonic twists and turns over the years moving into his own style of traditional Chinese ambient folk, experimental electronic music, free jazz, spoken word poetry, and more (he continues to release music today), but we’ll have to save that for another time… For now, listen to a playlist featuring more favorites from one of China’s great musical innovators.

Also for further listening, we highly recommend checking out Straighthoney’s “Dou Wei Special” on NTS Radio: https://www.nts.live/shows/straight-honey/episodes/straight-honey-23rd-february-2023

“The sounds here are filled with clear and orderly fragments. The tastes are arranged, timely joys, sad stories, ideals are made, beautiful expectations are played with the nerves of cigarettes. Drink up the water, rearrange the flowers and rain to appear sober and light, and the blessings of the future are the flowers.”

– Rough Translation of Lyrics from 山河水 (Mountain River)