D22’s zooming nights may have been put on hiatus with the venue’s closure earlier this year, but the city’s experimental musicians came out of hibernation last weekend, joined by fellow noise makers from around China for the 4th (semi-) annual Sally Can’t Dance festival. Though not a huge fan of this style of music, I [...]
Tags: D22, di'anmen space, experimental, jazz, li daiguo, sally can't dance, Torturing Nurse, xiao he, yan yulong, zhang shouwang
There’s metal, and then there’s the metal I like … which tends to be the original 70′s bands I grew up listening to or more melodic styles, definitely not death or black metal. So when I heard Swedish death metal band Opeth were coming to Beijing, initially I didn’t pay much attention to it. But [...]
Tags: Kaiser Kuo, Metal, Opeth, sweden, tango
Sunday has become the new Friday for me this summer with the festivals and battle of the bands competitions taking up both weekend days. But I’ve also managed to pop into Mao on the occasional Sunday this year and stumbled across some low-key shows by great bands including Zhaoze, So Long & Thanks for the [...]
Tags: ajinai, beijing alchemists, folk, Mao Livehouse
There’s been a lot of talk about the over abundance of festivals in China this year. Jon Campbell and China Daily, both have interesting posts on this. I agree 4 festivals competing in one weekend in Beijing is just stupid, but this my year of seeing more of China, and taking advantage of festivals and [...]
Tags: cuijian, live music, music festival, Nanwu, Steely Heart, tricky, XTX
In a city of over 22 million people, I’m constantly surprised how small this city is. Or maybe that’s just the expat community, or maybe it’s even just the circles I move in? Anyway, I thought I’d head out and see something different on Sunday, a band whose name I’d heard a couple of times [...]
Tags: jurat, live music, Mamer, va bar
There was a great post on City Weekend last week about the underrated Old What Bar and how it’s so much friendlier than other music venues in this city. I agree with Liz that Mao, Yugong and others are not the best places to go just to hang out and make friends with other music [...]
Tags: 2 kolegas, Lidong, zhao yiran
I love that we have such a strong music scene here in Beijing, but when you have so many livehouses with shows on and then throw in an Aircraft carrier rave and Moon Beach party just outside the city, what you end up with is a dilution of fans; and bands who deserve to be [...]
Tags: bedstars, maybe mars, Proximity Butterfly, rustic, yugong yishan
What once started as my personal ramblings has morphed into the number one collective resource about underground live music in Beijing and China. All bands, all music, all Rock n Roll, all the time with a little side of eclectic topics.. best of all, it's still as BIASED as ever
