Results tagged “Muscle Snog” from Jake Newby

For a while now, I've noticed someone called Tenzenmen popping up on Douban leaving comments on the artist pages for a lot of people I like and asking about how to get a hold of the music. Turns out, it was Shaun from the Sydney-based Tenzenmen label and he was putting together a mixtape of all those artists.

With only a few hours of 2009 left, here's another "best of" list for you. It comes courtesy of Chengdu's CGrooves magazine and is a run down of the five best underground albums released in China in the past twelve months. You might recognise the author.

A bunch of tracks have gone up recently from people on the Shanghai music scene who are striking out with their own projects. Here's a round-up:

Blog favourite the Curry Soap has a new demo up. It's called You Keep Everything But His Heart (Flesh Version) and is pretty brief, but it's another winner. Check it out here.

Speaking of former Muscle Snog members and their solo projects, Mai Mai has a new experimental recording on his Douban artist page. From the sounds of it, it's him playing the guitar with his teeth as he tends to do. You can give it a listen by going thissaway.

Hama, the talented young lady behind all-girl rock group Second, also does her own stuff and has a new song up on her Douban. It's a pleasant, bop-along acoustic track and you can listen to it here.

A couple of drummers doing their own thing are Lezi (from Sonnet) and A Luan (formerly Pinkberry, now with PZ64). All the kids seem to be downloading Garage Band these days and going all electronic/IDM. That's the route Lezi's solo stuff seems to be taking and you can hear the results here.

A Luan's previous solo stuff has been, unsurprisingly, in the pop punk vein, but the track he's just put up on his Douban page is something of a departure and could almost be from DJ Wordy. That one can be heard here.

Not really a solo project, but there's a video up on Tudou of Li Pang from Crystal Butterfly performing a cover of U2's With or Without You together with Super VC. I'm not going to embed it on this blog (I can't even bring myself to hit play yet), I just wanted you to know it's out there.

And finally, New Vector have a new track up here. Again, not a solo project at all, but I like them and this seems as good a place as any to post a link to their new song. Go check it out.

For real this time.

Back in late September, I said that the new Muscle Snog album - their first and possibly last studio long player - was due out on October 1st. It was, I wasn't lying. Trouble is, there were some problems with the ability to print the artwork and the CDs got held up at the factory. Same thing happened with 8 Eye Spy's record. It was frustrating.

But the latest word from Maybe Mars (both records were produced via the Maybe Noise label - a collaboration between the Beijing lot and Miniless) is that Mind Shop is being shipped to distribution points right about now and that 8 Eye Spy's album will be out this week too. That means you can soon get your grubby little hands on them right here in Shanghai. Brilliant. You'll find them at the usual places: Shanghai Tattoo down at the Cool Docks and 2049 (300, Guoding Lu, near Wujiaochang). Given that neither of these places are the easiest to get to (unless you're a student at Fudan or work at Kebabs on the Grill), you might want to call ahead to check they have them before you set out.

And these are a couple of records you are definitely going to want to buy. Don't believe me? Check out the new recording of Happy Dreamer on a Sad Bed that Muscle Snog just put up on their Douban artist page. Try the other tracks on for size too. You'll like them. For a taste of what 8 Eye Spy have to offer, hit up their MySpace. 

"It's a bit of a freak," says Boojii's SanSan of their forthcoming album Reserved. "It's extremely sweet and extremely cold and bitter at the same time." Maybe so, but together with Muscle Snog's release of Mind Shop, the record is another important milestone for Shanghai's experimental indie scene.

Boojii have been around for a number of years, gigging sporadically, but with more consistency in the last 12 months. The band's name, says SanSan, doesn't really have any meaning. "There's no link to the band or the music or sexy films stars or anything like that - I just like it because it sounds cute. If I could choose another name it'd be 少女呕吐物 [Girl Vomit]." 

SanSan was formerly in 33Island and Boojii's other members - Sun Ye, Damen and Jiang Zhendong (also formerly of 33Island) - have all been, or are currently, involved in other prominent bands in Shanghai. SanSan is currently also part of Muscle Snog and Duck Fight Goose (together with Damen) two of the city's other leading experimental indie bands. So how does Boojii compare? "The main difference is that in Boojii, everyone has to listen to me!" she jokes.

Yet given the array of talent involved in the band, there is naturally plenty of collaboration. "I usually write the songs at first," says SanSan, "and then we'll play around with them when we practice and the others will all add their new ideas and thoughts. Once Sun Ye adds his guitar parts, there's more finesse to the songs. The process of putting together Boojii songs has always been very inspirational."

Muscle Snog's first (and possibly last) studio album is set to be released at the beginning of October. I can't wait. For a little bit about Muscle Snog, you can go here for the interview I did with Mai Mai and Vivien a while back. You can see the tracklisting here and hear a couple of the songs here.

This is what Miniless' Han Han has to say about the record:

"There is no doubt that this album is a milestone in rock and roll. Or, that is to say, I think this is the best record by a Chinese band until now.

Time will verify this statement - wait and see."

A couple of years ago Muscle Snog's Meng Noize album, recorded live at 4Live, confirmed them as one of the leading experimental rock groups in Shanghai. The group - comprised of Mai Mai, Vivien Fan, 33, Zhong Ke and Xiong Mao (Panda) - were all excellent musicians in their own right with their own side projects and other bands. This meant that when they were together, Muscle Snog gave fantastic performances, but getting them all on the same stage at the same time was difficult. Nevertheless, this year the band have been recording a full studio album thanks to the Miniless/Maybe Mars collaboration. So, they must be back together and ready to reclaim their mantle as one of Shanghai's most interesting bands right? Err, not quite. Indeed, from what Mai Mai and Vivien say, this record is far from a new beginning and instead may signal the end of Muscle Snog.

>>> You must get asked this all the time, but Muscle Snog - what's that name about?

VF: When we first started, Muscle Snog was just me and Mai Mai. He asked me if I wanted to be in a band and I said I did. He said I could choose the name and I came up with two for him to choose from: Muscle Cat and Crystal Snog. He thought about it, then said let's call ourselves Muscle Snog and I just thought 'genius'!

>>> How did you guys meet?

VF: Back in 2005 when we were both at university, he was in a band called Pillow Walker and he was looking for a keyboard player. At that time we had a mutual friend who told me about this and I decided to try it out. I was also in a band at my university at the time, but it was just a cover band. I spoke to Mai Mai and the other band members online and we got on really well so I went to see one of their rehearsals. After I'd seen them rehearse a few times, they broke up and nothing really happened, but I kept in touch with them online. Then one day in 2006, Mai Mai asked me if I wanted to form a band, like I say, and I told him I did. After a while we found a guitarist, Panda, and then we started practising. We had our first performance on March 9th 2007 at Live Bar.
　　
>>> How do you guys write your songs?

VF: Most of the songs are written by Mai Mai. He'll record something at home first and then send it to us to listen to. Then we'll meet up and practise it and we'll play around with our own parts a bit.

MM: We write songs in lots of different ways really. Some of them take a long time and are really seriously written, some are just pure nonsense, some are just chaos. 

There's a couple of big experimental/noise nights coming up in the next fortnight so below are a few odds and ends that are connected to them in some way or other. Or something like that.

First up, this Sunday is the latest BrainWave Communication night at Yuyintang. The experimental label will be showcasing a whole host of artists including Torturing Nurse, Ben Houge and Zhi Wang (Lu Chen's experimental project). It starts at 9pm, will set you back just 40 kuai and is well worth checking out. 

CityWeekend recently interviewed Junky, one half of Torturing Nurse, and, though I haven't been able to find their article on it yet, Junky posted the full interview up ten minutes after it took place. You can read the whole thing on Douban, but here's just a quick snippet:

I spent Saturday afternoon with Lu Chen and Mei Er of Top Floor Circus. They're filming a music video for the hilarious alternative Expo anthem 上海欢迎你 (Shanghai Welcomes You). It's a play on the Beijing Olympic theme 北京欢迎您 and is full of great lines. You can listen to the song here (it's already had over 10,000 plays) and read the full lyrics (in Chinese) here. Here's a quick translation of a few of lines to give you an idea:

上海欢迎你 欢迎来买东西
Shanghai welcomes you, welcomes you to come buy things
千万不要忘记带上人民币
Don't forget to bring millions of yuan
上海欢迎你 奥运会有什么了不起
Shanghai welcomes you, what was so great about the Olympics?
让我们在世博会相聚
Let Expo bring us together
上海欢迎你 欢迎来买东西
Shanghai welcomes you, welcomes you to come buy things
我们没有文化但是有人民币
We don't have any culture, but we've got Renminbi

Last time I witnessed a music video shoot for a local band, it was Pinkberry making an MV for their Pinkberry Song. There was a director, a crew, fancy lighting and camera set ups and quality sound equipment for playback of the song. Saturday involved Lu Chen, Mei Er and I walking around town meeting various friends of theirs and Mei Er catching their lines on a handheld camcorder. If they needed prompting by hearing the song, Lu Chen found the appropriate bit on Mei Er's iPod. It was great fun.