Pangbianr | BeijingDaze

May
31stLive Music Quickslants: Ciao bella, Happy Birthday, Farewell and Don’t grow up!

With Daze Feast preparations well underway, and BD’s new baby, Cuju, due to open next week, things are little busy here at Daze HQ, but you can be sure that’s not going to stop us catching some tunes! Here’s a few of the shows that have caught our attention this weekend: Friday June 1 HitWeek China 2012 @ Tango 3rd Floor Italian acts La Fame di Camillia and Negrita are joined by local friends Shanren for night two of cross-cultural fun at Tango. The party kicks off Thursday night with Subsonica, La Fame di Camillia along with Zhou Yunshan & Ruins. Goodbye Sister Qin! @ Old What For anyone who’s ever set foot in Old What you’ll know the lovely boss lady Sister Qin is the one who keeps this little gem running,. Well she’s decided it’s time to say goodbye (temporarily we hope!), so all the regular bands are getting together in what promises to be one epic night to bid her farewell! The Age of Innocence @ Yugong Yishan Happy Children’s Day! For those of us eternal children, DUDE, DH & Hellcats, Residence A & Candy Monster will be rocking the house at Yugong tonight. DUDE are currently finishing up their latest album, and about to head out on a massive China tour, so I for one am looking forward to hearing lot’s of new songs from them! Saturday June 2 Book Swap & Board Games 4th Year Anniversary Our baby is all grown up folks.. 4 years [...]
Mar
1stLive Music Quickslants: Torturing Nurse, AIS Returns, 2 Kolegas Reopens & more

This week has really flown by folks. It’s already Thursday and I’m bracing myself for a busy fun few days ahead! If you haven’t done so yet, go ahead at read jtdj’s review of the Pains show last Saturday. It has sparked a lovely discussion with over 20 comments and still going.. Great exchange on there! So, what’s happening this week? Thursday March 1 Bye Bye for South By @ Yugong I’m not sure yet whether I’m going to this one or not but I feel obligated! I might not care about most of the bands on here but they are getting ready to head to Austin where they will be the flag-bearers for China. I’m pretty sure Nova Heart is gonna bring the heat but all the others have not played in quite sometime and I’m not sure how/where they stand. I actually haven’t seen carsick cars play in over two years so if i want to retain my right to criticize them, I gotta at least make an effort. I’m also curious about Rustic‘s new lineup. I’m guessing it’s gonna be packed! Steerage @ Modernista A new Irish music outfit in Beijing by the sound of things… The way they advertise themselves is intriguing enough and they mention the word “ukulele” which is as far away from my idea of Irish music as can be. Could be interesting. Friday March 2 Ningxia Night @ 2Kolegas At last, those lazy bastard have decided to come out of the spring [...]
May
18thD-22 Celebrates 5 years and Pangbianr documents it

I don’t spend much time off in wudaokou and i spend even less time at D-22 even though i was there twice in the last 30 days. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a good place or I don’t appreciate their work. Au Contraire! I believe the place does a great job fostering and incubating musical talent, just maybe not to my taste. Anyways, I got to chat to most of the people in charge there recently and they’re good fellas, including Michael Pettis who has one hell of a good guanxi with the local musicians from what I’ve seen. The good guys at PangBianr did a 20mn documentary celebrating 5 years of D-22 that I just came across recently: http://pangbianr.com/wu-nian/ You can also find the video on Youku: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMjY2MDE4NTEy.html Good stuff from Josh and his gang.
Mar
30thJue Thoughts: Beijing gets Artistic Awakening with Poetry Slams, Abaji and more

From Jue’s Website: What is JUE? 觉 / JUE (pronounced joo-eh) –verb: to sense; to awaken As far as I am know, Split Works was one of the first parties to organize such a festival over a period of time ( 2 or 3 weeks) bucking the trend of stuffing tons of shows in 2 or 3 days. I like that kind of spread because I can actually appreciate the event without feeling rushed through god knows how many options. And the lads did a great job so far this year. The Shows: I managed to make it to the Poetry Slam at 2 Kolegas, a collaboration between Jue and the Bookworm’s literary festival, that had over 200 persons crammed inside the drive in. I can’t really comment much about the content: I’m a rap ignoramus…. the poetry side was pretty cool! What did strike me was the variety of of people this event attracted to 2 Kolegas: locals, expats, backpackers, teachers, bankers, authors, rappers etc… All of them pretty much stayed in and enjoyed most of the night’s festivities. To me, that is what Artistic Awakening is all about: using arts to bridge the gap between various echelons of society, using art to bring these otherwise-overly-different crews together! In that regard, this event succeeded! This past sunday was my second Jue event and the one i was looking most forward to: Abaji’s concert at Jianghu Jiu Ba. It did not disappoint!!! I remember gloating about Abaji in my quickslants, [...]