Driven by drum machines, guitar and FX, Kaishandao (Mandarin for 'machete') is the alias of Chengdu-based producer Kristen Ng. Forged from the isolated, windswept hills of Wellington, Aotearoa, melded by the breakneck BPM of modern China, her production chops together a lost and found heritage into a playful mash-up of delirious dance music. During a period of reflection and uncertainty, the first rough sketches for Homeland emerged from bedroom jam sessions in Kaishandao’s adopted home of Chengdu. With no way in or out of China, she uprooted from a long-term apartment to a small vacant room at Steam Hostel, where she lived out of a suitcase for six months — inviting detuned chords, nomadic drum sequences and foraged vocal samples to occupy her memory banks. In the spring of 2020, when the country’s network of clubs entered into a post-lockdown renaissance, the tracks were refined over weekends of live sets, evolving across dancefloors before falling into place over scattered late nights of tinkering and recording. Fusing elements of lo-fi electronica, minimal, techno, RnB, house and garage, Homeland serves a dislocated narrative of percussive micro-aggressions, distorted audio residue and wistful guitar overdubs, distilled with fragmented memories — high school era chart toppers meet filtered breaks, a Wellington Hospital therapy cassette speaks through a drum machine, overlapping timelines converge around a slow-burning fire.