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May
15thMamer & Song Yuzhe: opposites attract at Jianghu
Let me set the scene. In one corner you have a guy sitting on a stool, wearing a black t-shirt and jeans, shoulder wavy length hair sticking out of a black cap pulled down to hide his eyes, emotionless face looking down at the black bass sitting on his lap. In the other, another guy, sitting cross-legged on the floor, in comfy baggy pants, white shirt, long hair pulled up in high ninja bun, large toothy smile and glistening eyes, surrounded by a plethora of traditional instruments. Walking into Jianghu on Monday night, this is the scene that confronted me. For anyone who doesn’t know the two guys I’ve just described, this vision would have been enough to make you walk straight back out the door again, but I knew what I was getting myself into and was excited to hear what was going to come out of this strange but beautiful combination. The ‘rock’ guy, was Mamer, known for his unusual combinations of experimental bass, industrial music and traditional Kazakh songs with his band IZ. But he also does solo work, last year he put out 5, yes 5, solo records, each completely different, self-recorded experimental compositions and traditional Kazakh songs using various instruments. I found a copy of Elim, with features dombra, guitar and violin, in C Rock last year, but hadn’t managed to track down any of the others around town. The ‘folk” guy, was Song Yuzhe, veteran of many experimental folk projects, including most recently Dawanggang, [...]
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Sep
7thLucky 8 questions with IndieChina’s Road: 8 year anniversary shows, melancholy post rock & china music industry insightHere at Beijingdaze we try to do what we can to promote local Beijing, and Chinese music to an English speaking audience, and there’s also some great sites out there doing the same in Chinese. One of the earliest formed ones, IndieChina, is turning 8 this year and having a two night anniversary show at Mako tonight and tomorrow to celebrate, bring in some great indie bands such as Low Wormwood, Onmipotent Youth Society and Glow Curve. Indie China’s owner Road, took some time out of his busy week to answer a few questions about their site and his views on the local music industry. 1- Who is Road and what are you up to? This is your chance to plug your stuff. Road is NiuLei (牛磊)’s online name, his nickname is DaRou (大肉) or DaRouRen (大肉人) because he’s tall and used to like to eating meat, but he’s been vegetarian for 2 years already. A Beijinger, 35 years old, male, likes rock music and football. Recently I’m focused on preparing IndieChina’s 8th year anniversary show. 2- Your website IndieChina http://www.indiechina.com/ has it’s 8th anniversary celebration this weekend, congratulations! I think some of our English readers maybe aren’t familiar with the website, can you tell us about IndieChina what can we find there? IndieChina website started in September 2004. I started to post information about rock music (news, interviews, comments, reviews, as well as authorized downloads.) also organized shows (locally in Beijing and nationwide tours) and we also offered services [...]
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Jul
22ndOne Lick Less returns with more French ‘mutant blues’While most of the city’s music fans were dancing along to Hanggai’s drinking song at the drive-in, I was one of a few people at probably the weekend’s most underrated show – One Lick Less at XP. I saw One Lick Less’s Julien Bancilhon 2 years ago in Shanghai, and enjoyed it so much I made the trek out to D22 by myself to see him again a week later (for someone who averaged 3 D22 nights a year, that’s a big thing!) This year he’s back for his 3rd China tour and I actually didn’t know about it until I saw Pangbianr’s great interview with him earlier in the week. The show also evaded everyone else’s attention only being mentioned in passing in one of the city’s numerous ‘weekend roundups’. I got to XP around 10ish to find the opening band The Last Three Minutes just finishing their sound-check and a dismal crowd of maybe 20 people, most of whom seemed to be friends of the bands. The Last Three Minutes are a new/old band, having been around in various forms for around 10 years, but this was I believe their second show back after a 2 year hiatus. They only played a few songs, but I really liked what I heard. Funky bass lines played by Li Yong, who was previously with The Power Powder, that Stones-eque band that everyone, including BD, seems to be in love with right now (personally I don’t get them, if I wanna [...]
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Jul
16thRock Naadam Launch Party: Mohanik, Banana Monkey & Scary MagicSix months ago on a cold Friday 13th D22 held it’s last show ever, but it wasn’t one of the Maybe Mars team of bands that played the last song in this Beijing rock institution, it was a post punk band all the way from UB, Mongolia – Mohanik. Those of us that were there (and there were many) can confirm it was an epic night in true D22 fashion! That show was part of a project called run by former Trash-A-Gogo promoter Brian Offenther, aka. DJ BO, who sent a couple of great Shanghai bands, Boys Climbing Ropes and Moon Tyrant, back to Mongolia with Mohanik. He’s done it all again this year for Rock Naadam, bringing Mohanik back for shows in Shanghai and Beijing, and sending two more Shanghai bands, Scary Magic and Banana Monkey, back with them for Mongolian shows. The Beijing launch party was at Temple last weekend, the night before the group flew out to UB. First up was Scary Magic a recently formed 6 piece party rock’ band, complete with two lead singers and a djembe player. I have to admit I’m not a huge fan of this style of music, but in the right venue, with the right crowd I’m sure it would be a fun show. You can check out video’s of the band in action in Shanghai. I first heard about the second band, Banana Monkey, a month or so ago from my buddy Eric of Musicdish China, who happened to [...]
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May
30thOne Love: LongShenDao bring da riddim to da hutongsLongshendao had a pretty good year in 2011, releasing their album TaiChi reggae, taking home two Midi Awards (best rock band & best album), appearing on BD’s top 5 albums of the year and releasing a great video for their song ‘Heart Guide the Way’ They’ve kept the momentum going with a tour of my homeland New Zealand in February, which saw them playing several shows for the Chinese Institute’s Dragon festival and getting a chance to meet & play with some of mine & their own favourite Kiwi bands, Katchafire, Fat Freddy’s Drop and Tiki from Salmonella Dub. I hadn’t managed to catch them since they’ve been back, so when I heard they’d be doing an acoustic set at Temple last Saturday I made plans to be there before heading over to the 2Kolegas birthday. According to Weibo only 200 tickets were being sold for this show, I believe the band’s first at their guitarist GaoXu’s bar. I’m not good at guessing numbers but by halfway through the set the place was absolutely packed with happy dancing fans. While Temple’s sound system sometimes gets criticised (or should I say the roof, not the sound system) it was sounding pretty damn good for this one! Unfortunately Zhang Wei wasn’t able to join them on guzheng due to Whai playing over at 2Kolegas, but the stage was still full and the music still as good as ever. The smiles on their faces tell you more than I can, reflecting the smiles [...]
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Mar
7thSally Can’t Dance: experimental noise makers gather in their new hutong homeD22’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 decided to swing past the venue and see what was on offer, after all the as yet ‘un-named venue’ of the former D22 team is literally across the road from my house, it would be rude not to have dropped in! To find out more about the history of this festival and those organising it this year head over to Pangbianr’s post here. My fellow hutong dwellers probably don’t yet realise who’s moved into our hood judging by the strange looks as they passed the mix of laowai and locals loitering around the venue’s doorway. As the venue itself isn’t due to open officially until May, the festival preparations in the new space were minimal and didn’t include a bar as yet, so it was a BYO affair, the local 7-11’s fridge looking very bare by the end of the weekend. Saturday afternoon saw the small dimly lit downstairs performance space filled with eager listeners come to here the best experimental musicians in the country had to offer. I made it just as Zhang Shouwang and Yan Yulong were setting up their electric guitar and violin on a table in the centre of the room [...]
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Feb
14thBeauty & Brutality: Opeth bring both the progressive and the extreme to delight fansThere’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 then a friend told me I’d probably like their new album, so I started listening to Heritage on xiami.com and quickly agreed. This album sounds more like the music I grew up listening to: Jethro Tull, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and is nothing like what I’d expected when I heard the death metal tag. The more I listened to Opeth’s back catalogue, the more interested I was to see these guys live, even the heavier earlier albums didn’t scare me off! So Saturday afternoon I headed over to Tango with probably their biggest China fan, Kaiser Kuo, to meet the band and find out why their new album has taken a more Prog Rock direction. As a newbie to their music, I didn’t feel I’d do them justice writing this review, so here’s Kaiser’s take on the show, the band and the new album: Kaiser on Opeth: Let’s make this clear at the outset: I love Opeth. Don’t read what I have to say and expect me to be remotely dispassionate. The Stockholm-based ensemble has reigned as my favorite band now for three years now, and the albums Blackwater Park, Damnation, Deliverance, Watershed and Ghost [...]
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Aug
13thMao echoes with the sounds of the grasslandsSunday 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 Fish and LiDong. Last Sunday Mao played host to Mongolian folksters Ajinai, with support from the Beijing Alchemists. Having survived the sweaty sauna of a SUBS mosh pit the night before at the Punk festival, it felt strange walking into that same room to see just a handful of devoted fans milling round the cool dark cavern of Mao. Beijing Alchemists opened the show with their mellow mix of English and Mongolian folk tunes. When I first saw these guys play around a year ago they trio was made up of an Englishman, an American and a Mongolian (Hugjiltu from Ajinai). In the past year the line-up has seen a few changes, Xinjiang rocker Jurat is now a regular member of the line-up, although he’s currently back in Xinjiang, so on Sunday Englishman Matt was joined by two Mongolian musicians. Their music is an eclectic mix of English, Chinese and Mongolian influenced folk, with each member taking turned to sing and lead the group. Unfortunately the space of Mao didn’t provide much on an atmosphere for this style of music, I’d recommend catching them in a smaller venue such as Jianghu or JiangJinJiu. Ajinai may [...]
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Aug
3rdFestival’d out? No way! Long Live Rock in the Grasslands!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 shows outside the city is a great way to see a little more of this country. BD went to the West Lake Festival to see his beloved Concrete Blonde last month and last weekend’s In Music festival in Zhangbei was my perfect excuse to escape the oppressive heat in Beijing and chill out under the blue skies in Hebei. My at first eager friends were all put off by reports of last year’s mud fest, trash & transport problems and bailed on a three day camping trip, but I managed to find one metal-head buddy willing to go for one day, so we planned to make our way out on the direct bus put on by the festival on Sunday morning. We arrived at the long distance bus station 5 mins too late and watched the first bus pull out as we walked in, meaning we had to wait for enough people to arrive to fill the next bus. By the 2 hour mark there was a group of angry festival goers arguing loudly with the organizers to let us on the bus, finally they caved in and the bus took off at 12noon. We [...]
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Jul
13thJurat: Echoes of classic rock melded with the sounds of North-West ChinaIn 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 recently, but whose music I knew nothing about – Jurat, according to their douban a Uighur psychedelic rock band. Imagine my surprise when I walked into VA Bar to find I knew both the drummer and the bass player! I’m a big fan of psychedelic rock, so I was interested to hear it with a Xinjiang spin. One look at band’s leader and namesake, Jurat wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt and I knew I was in the right place. Jurat has been in Beijing playing different genres of music for around 10 years, (including playing with Kazakh musician Mamer who is due to release his new album tomorrow) and his current band shows that, bringing together a fusion of rock, blues, and folk. All the songs were sung in Uighur except for the last one in English and all were Jurat’s own compositions except for one traditional Uighur song which gets the rock treatment. For two of the songs he played a different guitar, which was tuned to sound like a traditional Uigher instrument, giving them a really original feel. Unfortunately due to the transient nature of Beijing, it’s hard to keep a band together, [...]
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