Results tagged “torturing nurse” from Andy Best

Yet perhaps the best proof that the Chinese underground is still keeping it weird is Junkyy's rejection of alt-god Thurston Moore in 2008. Moore's still the go-to man for the "indie rock seal of approval", yet when he sang Torturing Nurse's praises following Sonic Youth's trip to China, this one-man whirlwind wasn't impressed. "I don't like him or his band. They are too rock'n'roll. I don't care if he's a fan. What we do is totally different," Junkky said in an interview with SH Magazine. Which pretty much sums up the project's entire ethos: "We don't care if you like us." Listen at your peril.

"A lot of my friends don't even know where Yuyintang is," says Chiang, "but I practically live there!"

To me, Rock'n'roll means being independent. And being independent means setting one's spirit free.

Update: Jake has interviewed Torturing Nurse's Cao Jianjun here.

So many of my posts start with excuses disclaimers. I'm not going to get in the habit of doing listings and this blog is not about that. However, there's relevance to recent posts in some upcoming events so here goes.

So, in the interview with Lin Lin of Yuyintang, she mentioned two bands. Crazy Mushroom Brigade as a newer band that had 'arrived' and Bang Bang Tang (Lollipop) as the promising new comer. A couple of conversations later I discovered this to be quite divisive, especially the idea of them being 'rock'. Intriguing. Lucky for me - Bang Bang Tang are playing Yuyintang's Rock 0093 Party 6 on Saturday night. So not only will I be able to see what it's all about, I'll be able to video them for the blog.

0093 is a rehearsal studio and the 0093 parties are for new bands who practise there to get a chance to play live and get some experience. This is a very good idea that should be supported, but it obviously makes for mixed shows. Here's the line up, I don't have any links for these at the moment (they're new).

Six Shot, Red Brick, Black Romance, Brunch, Lollipop, 5-pointed Star, Dessert Store.

So, Lollipop are the one's to watch.

I also decided to throw in a post about the noise/experimental scene lately and I then ended up at a post-rock gig not long after that. The noise post even saw blogger Micah Sittig sign up and comment. So, by single response popular demand, here's more on the noise scene. There are in fact two major shows coming up. Over at Live Bar this Saturday is the latest from NOIshanghai. This event is billed as Torturing Nurse vs Vario Air.

Torturing Nurse's page is here.
Vario Air's link is to the Kunt page.
And here is the flyer.

Then, the following week at Yuyintang is the Miniless Records Shanghai Calling show. This is another noise/experimental show. The line up has Muscle Snog, Grace Latecomer, Monkey Power and The Los. So, all those of you who like to go out at night to an exciting venue and do some really deep listening all night - there you go.  

This blog is not exactly an academic exercise or full representation of the scene here in Shanghai. It revolves a little around the fact that I live near certain venues and my own taste. I'm going to try to right that a bit this week. To be fair, when bands are gigging in Shanghai, they usualy play all the venues and I rarely miss out on anyone by sticking with the West Side.

So, first I want to talk about the noise scene. Shanghai has a whole bunch of acts who do experimental and noise music. What's more, they are very good at organising and promoting themselves. You could start on their net trail with the NoiShanghai home page - here. The most famous noise act in Shanghai is Torturing Nurse and you can listen to their stuff at their Myspace page. It's a diverse scene: Nurse describe themselves as Harsh Noise while you also have acts like Xu Cheng (sound art) and also Ben Hogue who moonlights from his job as a sound engineer for Ubisoft.

I'm busy this week with two mid-week shows at Yuyintang. And I just want to say that I'm going purely for my blog. Tuesday is Wang Wen who describe themselves as post-rock. I'm just listening to their page now and it seems they do 7 minute long ambient instrumentals. Also, a surprise gig just popped up in the listings tonight for Wednesday. The night is called Hotter than Teppenyaki and the only info is that it's an impromptu metal night put on by ex-pats. Any band that plays a gig with original material is part of the scene - but I won't write up utter piss takes or cover bands. Also, the first show of the weekend at YYT is called "Watch, Bag, DVD" - a famous joke among ex-pats (it's what you hear when you are foreign looking and enter a market). So I think I'm off to Window's Underground to watch Hard Queen instead.