Last year I already reviewed a compilationtape by Chinawhite. Now here’s the band’s debut (mini-)cd, which I received during the last weeks of last year. Due to busy activities on the FUS-book the review had to wait untill now – sincere apologies to the band! All songs on the CD were already on the tape, but have been remixed. Soundquality is excellent, the artwork is nice and the instrumental work and vocals are far above average. One can hear that Chinawhite is a band with quite some experience and their debut on CD is long overdue. In my last review I compared Chinawhite a lot to British neoproggers Grey Lady Down – which is actually the first thing that still comes to mind when you hear the first seconds of opener ‘rock and water’. What I somehow didn’t notice really was the influence of Saga on Chinawhite’s music. Just check the final track ‘the lurker’ with some very typical quirky guitarriffs. Still: don’t take this wrong…there is no copying! Well, I’ll keep this short. ‘A dragon’s birth’ is a very good debut, which makes appetite for more… (carsten busch)