When now-famous Han Han, of Duck Fight Goose, first came to Shanghai he brought his Miniless collective. This was a loose group of mainly out of town bands who all played experimental and post-punk music. Han Han organised recordings, promoted shows and made art and merch.
So, before I go on, here's the band Self Party's page to use as your reference.
As good as all the acts were - and all of them produced great albums during that time - the surprise breakout act was Self Party.
Self Party were originally called Monkey Power and their two albums are under that name. They are a duo who use a mixture of electronic and live instruments. They mixed post-punk ideas with heavy noise and feedback, capped with electronic drums and samples. All the local fans who came to Miniless shows seemed to go crazy for them at the time. Looking back, they first cropped up on this blog in early-mid-2008, but the famous shows (flyer pictured) are all from summer 2009 - after which they abruptly stopped.
Lately though, they have been re-tooling their Douban site and uploading demos and videos. It's a good time to revisit, there's a lot of material there and lets hope they come back to Shanghai soon.
I want to throw this in here too, while we're in that area: I think that San San, who most people know as the bassist / co-writer of Duck Fight Goose, may be the most accomplished musician on the Shanghai scene. She has driven three bands in the past ten years here - 33 Island, Boojii and Duck Fight Goose. Every one of them has been excellent and ended up being signed and putting out a great album.
33 Island Looking For The King (Modern Sky) here
Boojii Reserved (Modern Sky) here
Duck Fight Goose Sports (Maybe Mars) here
