BeijingDazeTales of Live Music From Beijing's Mostly Underground Rock Scene..

Apr
18thMezmerizing sounds from the southern Swamp: Guangzhou’s Zhaoze captivate at Mao

On Friday night BD and I were enjoying WuFei’s performance at the Ephemerals show when he made the comment that he’s still getting his head around the guqin, still learning how it sounds and understanding to expect from it. I had to agree with him. I’ve seen WuFei perform 3 times now, by herself, with Abigail Washburn and with Hanggai, each time I find myself amazed by the sounds and tones that she brings out of this instrument. A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to catch Buyi at JiangJinJiu on ones of the rare occasions that Zhang Wei had his Guqin on stage. None of these shows could prepare me for what I experienced at Mao last night – it completely blew away anything I thought I knew about how this instrument could sound. Zhaoze (沼泽, The Swamp) are a 4 piece from Guangzhou, who have been performing together since 1993. I thought they said during the show it was only their second visit to Beijing – but I’ve since been corrected (yes, my Chinese is not great!) that they have ventured up to the Capital a few times for shows and also festivals including last year’s Midi and also Modern Sky where my buddy Froog happened to catch them and was very impressed. Rock in China Wiki describes their sound as ‘electronic and psychedelic, combined with progressive rock, post rock, and avant-garde electronic music to produce detail, touching, passionate, and boundless tension in the everlasting sadness.” But [...]