October 2010 Archives

Alright, so you should be keeping an eye on Top Floor Circus at the moment. As we all gear up to say goodbye to Haibao, Ding Ma are releasing a fair bit of new material - hopefully with a view to a gig in Shanghai after far too long without one. The latest track to go up is 'A White Collar Song'. It's the top one on their Douban and is available for download for free.

Remember a while back I wrote about Open Goat, a noise experiment that Ho-Tom the Conqueror was helping to organise? I went and it was great fun. For those of you who didn't go, and even for those who did, if you're wondering what a bunch of people turning up and making random noise sounds like, you can check it out on Soundcloud by clicking right here. I think the bad Chinese recorder-like thing playing, the shaking of keys and the dropping of coins (if you can pick all that out) is mine. The bits that sound good are other peoples. Anyway, check it out, parts of it are surprisingly melodious - reminds me a bit of that Beta Band track 'Monolith', but maybe that's just me.

This picture is stolen from Shanghai Monthly incidentally.

Ding Ma have made the 'second bomb from the new album', a track called '快递员' (Kuaidi Yuan) available for free download on the Douban. Get on it. If you want to sing along, here's the lyrics. Also available is the 'first bomb', '上海童年' (Shanghai Tong Nian). That track actually went up earlier in the week, but for has now been replaced by an even longer, slightly rejigged version.

Andy wrote a while back about the excellent pangbianr site up in Beijing and hopefully you've been keeping an eye on what they're doing over there. Not only have they put out a record (Hot & Cold's new one) and organised a load of events, but now they've got a project on Kickstarter. It sounds really interesting, but you're better off reading it straight from the source than reading me trying to summarise it, so go here and support it. 

No promotional problems here. Despite going up against a whole bunch of other high profile events such as the JZ Festival in Century Park and the opening night of Shanghai Pride, the Shapiro publicity machine did its job and pulled in a big crowd for four of the city's best bands last night.

Rainbow Danger Club kicked things off with a great set. Jesse from the band was kind enough to send me a couple of mp3s the other day of demos from the CD they're currently working on and I've had them on repeat ever since. They're a quality band with a great sound and I can't wait to hear the CD when it comes out.

The Instigation were on next and caused the biggest ruckus of the night with their shouty punk. Singer Simon sang from in front of the speakers rather than on stage, marching up and down at the front of the crowd and occasionally getting drawn into the group of people throwing themselves around like crazy. It was a good show.

The Fever Machine took to the stage after them and produced the solid rawk display that you'd expect. Again it was a performance from a band of quality musicians on a night full of them. The band had a couple of new tracks added in to their repertoire and they're another act who are hopefully thinking of laying down a CD soon. In the meantime, you can listen to, and download, some of their tracks here.

Duck Fight Goose were last on and, despite it being 1am by the time they took to the stage, a big crowd stuck around to watch them. They weren't disappointed. The band have received a lot of hype in the local media in recent months and with good reason: they are fucking brilliant. The only worry is that they're going to run out of room on the YYT stage to put all their pedals and effects gadgets - every time they've added something new (last night it was this white, iPad-like box with a glowing red screen, not sure what that was). Their CD should be out next month and to say that I'm excited about it doesn't even come close.

All in all, a great night with four top notch bands.

You've probably not noticed, but this week has seen a bunch of NOTCH events going on in Shanghai. NOTCH is the Nordic + China festival or art, music and other creative stuff that's been happening in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou since 2006. They were the ones who did those gigs in the greenhouse with Neocha a few years back. Generally what happens is, they bring in some acts from the Nordic countries and pair them with local bands for some pretty decent gigs. As I say, this year was their fifth time doing this, so it's not just another Expo bit on the side event.

Hey guy, you are big time alright. That's the name of Little Punk's debut solo album in case you were wondering. It's produced by the fine folks at Qu Records and you can read more about the whole process right here. Open that link in one window and then click on this link so you can listen to and download (for free!) the album at the same time. Go on, do it.

I wrote a while back about Friend or Foe, a new band in Shanghai that I like. At the time they didn't have a Douban so I couldn't link to it, but they do now so I can. Here. No tracks yet, but give them time. They do have some pictures and a video, embedded here, of one of their songs, 'Double Down'. Give it a click.

Live Bar, formerly housed in an old chemical factory up in Yangpu district, closed back in May due to the continuing gentrification of Kunming Lu and its surrounding areas. I first wrote about the closure here and then wrote up the last gig here. For a while, Live Bar 696 (itself closed and then reopened in the north of the city) took on the mantle of breeding ground for Shanghai's student bands and more experimental shows, but now the original Live Bar is back.

Despite still being unable to play in Shanghai, Top Floor Circus played at the Snow Mountain Festival near Lijiang in Yunnan province over the holiday period. Here's how the first part of their set went down, looks a bit wet.

Last night the Zhijiang Dream Factory hosted a show by Brett Anderson (him out of Suede) who, despite disappearing off most people's music radars years ago, is rather big in China. So big that presale tickets sold out within about a week of going on sale. It goes back to Suede being one of the first indie rock bands to play here many moons ago at the Modern Sky Festival. 

If you follow the various blogs that keep track of the Beijing scene (this one, this one, this one and this one for starters), you'll probably know all this already, but here's a few things that are going on up north that might interest you if you're a southern fairy: