Quickslants: Gangzi, Proximity Butterfly, Metal Mania and more
Well folks, last weekend was fun but this week ain’t looking too shabby if you ask me! Quite a decent variety of pretty darn good music will be available all around town for your listening pleasure from punk to bluegrass, going through psychedelic rock…. it’s all there! so let’s get started with it!
Thursday June 30th:
Gangzi @jiangjinjiu:
Well, Jiangjinjiu somehow survived that chai-ing announcement and it pretty rocking. Gangzi, the inner-mongolian wonder kid, is on the hook thursday night for a jolly folky grassland themed night. I dig Dongzi’s shows even though he hasn’t done anything different over the past 3 or 4 months playing the same set over and over. A good option if you’re in the area!
Zhou YunPeng @ Jianghu:
Lao Zhou is one of the nicer, more talented folksters around Beijing. akin to the Chinese Stevie Wonder if he were Chinese and played guitar. The guy is a true legend around Beijing and has been playing the capital with a lesser frequency over the past year. His shows are actually quite remarkable and deserve more recognition.
Friday July 1st:
Wu & Side Effects + Steely Heart @ 2Kolegas:
Fresh from their amazing performance at ‘dazeFEAST, Wu comes back to the drive in with a vengeance. My favorite bored rockers, Steely Heart, are there to lend a hand. Kick Ass, who haven’t been around since 2010, are back in Beijing as well that night. I’m curious as to how the band will present itself after a few months hiatus.
Saturday July 2nd:
Proximity Butterfly @ Yugong Yishan:
Chengdu’s terrible Rock n Roll prodigies make it up to Beijing for a long overdue trip to celebrate their new album. These cats are goooooood folks and should NOT be missed. Psychedelic rock at its best with tons of hooks and weird ethnic melodies all in one! I’m really looking forward to this one guys. Rustic and Bedstars, exciting young bands we love over here, will be in charge of them opening duties. Look for a review of the PB album here soon.
Nanwu @ Jiangjinjiu:
This one is gonna be packed to the brim but i gotta mention in! Nanwu has reached that status where they can draw a crowd of hundreds wherever they play so better get there early if you wanna be able to get in. These kids have such a bright future ahead of them as the new flag bearers for Zhongguo Yaogun, I hope they can make it.
Metal @ Mao:
Mao live is putting on the mother of all Metal shows with tons of pretty fucking amazing bands! We’re talking Brain Failure, The Falling, A.J.K (Army of Jade Kirin), Raving Radio, Twisted Machine, Unregenerate Blood & Four Five!!! how is that for a lineup? 4 of those bands are some of the brightest new stars in the field and Brain Failure is always Brain Failure. If you’re a headbanger, this is extremely hard to pass on!
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Just a heads-up that the Zhou Yunpeng gig tonight apparently is sold out – they are discouraging people that haven’t bought a ticket yet from going there on Douban.
Zhou YP show indeed packed, and awesome. Besides his own material, highlight covers for me were Cui Jian’s Huafang guniang with Tianxiao on sax and Xu Xiaofeng’s Nanpi Wanzhong. People were standing outside trying to listen and Jianghu guys were totally cool about it, even letting in some extra people toward the end.
He played a similar show (100 years of Chinese music) in Nanjing recently – he performs down there more ever since he moved to Shaoxing, but Beijing totally misses him. His voice makes everything sound good.
Oh yeah, anybody who sees this in the next couple of hours – Nanwu is actually playing tonight at Mako starting 830 with 何力 and 我的九月
Thanks for the updates guys!
I expected Lao Zhou’s show to be sold out… the guy is genuinely nice though! Was sitting right next to him on a bench at west lake festival in hangzhou, both of us soaking in the music and the rain.
cool tip on the nanwu gig, might actually check it out since i’m in the area.
Proximity Butterfly just wrapped up in Shanghai.
They fuuuuuuckin’ kiiiiiled it. Be on the lookout Beijing. Sick, sick shit from those Chengdu folks.
Seriously: sweet, sweet sounds . . .
hmmmm…. I wanna see some metal but Proximity Butterfly is really tempting as well… Love this city sometimes
My review of last night’s metal…. the same song over and over,and the song should have been called “little fairies do cookie monster”… didn’t matter which band… all homogenized, no power K-Rap… Really boring and a total turnoff…I hate this city sometimes… LOL
Proximity Butterfly?– well they had the psychedelic thing going that, in my little humble opinion, should have gone into stoner rock territory (Sabbathy) for the heavy parts…. not sure what effect they were after but after waiting though the echo-y stuff then hearing pretty non interesting loud bits, turned me off some more…this could be a good band but not impressed yet… bad night….
On a good note, I was just talking to Gouzi last night and they are going to totally upgrading the FOH sound control at Yugong to a high standard…Finally!… very cool! Makes we wanna do more sound now….