New band, new songs.The video on the right here, kind of like Subterranean Homesick Blues on speed, is from Pairs, a Shanghai-based err pair. They've got a couple of songs up on their Douban already (right here) and a couple of videos, this obviously being one of them. The other one is here.
The recording quality isn't great, but it sounds like they rock and you can download the tracks from Douban too. As if that wasn't enough for you, they even say you can get their CD for free:
'If you want a copy of our CD, get in touch with us and we'll organise some sort of personal drop off. No stress about cash, it's all free but we are down with bartering too.'
Does writing about them on a blog count as bartering? I'm nothing if not for sale.
Anyway, seems like the thing to do would be to check them out live and you can do that at the next Good Jive event on April 10th. Y'know Good Jive, the Han Han organised thing (more here). Anyway, they'll be there with Duck Fight Goose, Rainbow Danger Club, The Beat Bandits and The Fever Machine all at YYT.
I will comfortably sleep tonight safe in the knowledge that some bands out there are breaking new frontiers in the art of audio visual induced epilepsy and that somebody cares enough to write about them. But personally I'm more of a traditionalist, I prefer the age old remedy of drinking 10 bottles of coke back to back and sitting with my forehead against the TV screen whilst playing Sonic 2 on my Sega Mega Drive.
Cheers 大巴士 for the words.
If you email your postal address I will make sure a CD finds its way to you.
I shouldn't have been flippant, I do however think the video with the words is cool and could be GREAT with some decent production, and the other video with the guy on riding the subway was an interesting idea that you could expand on, if that guys light was flashing to the beat and you change location throughout the song? As for the music I really couldn't hear it if I'm honest, so i can't really give you my opinion. It mentions that there is only two of you? What do you play? What are you using to record? Maybe I can help out with the production if you are interested?
We are just using my shitty, beat up old camera at the moment for everything; recording, videos, photos.
I know the sound quality is pretty bad, but I really like lo-fi, DIY recordings.
I play drums, but I write all of the songs and then F adds her ideas.
Thanks for the ace offer re: production help. I think we are going to keep doing it by ourselves, even with the shitty sounding recordings.
Lo-fi is cool.You can pick up some really cheap copies of Shure SM58 mics here on taobao,or out and about for about 200. If you place them really close to a sound source they break-up nice. I've even used a pair of mini walkman headphones plugged into the mic input before.
To get a good dollop of Lo-Fi this is what i have done in the past. Did a clean recording with a single(cheap) room mic then played it back LOUD through a speaker, placed the mic in front of the speaker almost touching then moved it backwards at varying distances to find the sweet spot of break-up and then re-recorded.Then mixed together the original clean source and the new 'dirty' track so it was still totally lo-fi but with enough definition on the notes to let the song shine through.
Don't know if you are interested in a side project but Im in a band with 3 Chinese guys and we are looking for a drummer because our old one has left Shanghai? Or if you don't fancy playing with the band we have a track coming out next week and we would like to put together a video ourselves, do you have any experience in this area? I'm not expecting you to become involved for free of course.
Regardless, looking forward to listening/watching your stuff. Will keep my eye on Douban!
Send an email through to wearepairs@hotmail.com and we can rub words in private.
Thanks for contributing so much with this fantastic content.
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