Recently in Chinese Music Category

Check out this photo of Kang Mao in Shanghai. It was taken by someone using the handle Malfunction on Douban and you can check out the whole set here. For those of you who know/care about photography, it was taken on a Nikon F3 with a micro-nikkor 105 F2.8 and shot onto Kodak Tri-x 400. No Photoshopping was involved apparently. Whatever, I like the scratchy feel of these.

This was the kind of gig where I ought to open the post by saying something like 'I'm still recovering', but fuck it, I'm no way near recovering from this. Maybe I never will. This gig was immense. Here's a bit of disclosure: I was mildly involved in this event. Not really enough to skew any judgment, but I'll tell you the story regardless. I'd been on at Kang Mao for a while about Subs' new album and about coming back to Shanghai because they hadn't played here in ages. About a month or so ago she called me to say they'd booked a date in Shanghai, she said they didn't have any support bands yet, but they had a slot at 021 bar and what did I think. What did I think? 021? For Subs? Fuck that.

So yeah, they ended up at MAO Livehouse instead and then we got Boys Climbing Ropes and Pinkberry in to support. It was a line up I was excited about, but events still conspired against me and I managed to miss Pinkberry's set, which was a shame.

Still, I was there in time to watch Boys Climbing Ropes give a towering performance. Anyone sick of me banging on about how good this band are needs to skip the next paragraph. Seriously, they were so, so good. I love it when they play a venue like YYT and you're really up close and everything, but they're basically one of, if not the only, Shanghai band who can really own the stage at MAO and when they do it's incredible. They played a fairly short set (Subs wanted on fairly early, it was a school night for a lot of people remember), but they don't need long to get things going. They have the stage presence and they have the music to just really kick things off. They were brilliant.

Then Subs came on. They played a lot of new material - fair enough, this was a release party for their new album after all. That meant that things didn't kick off in the audience as much as they could have done, but things still got pretty lively down there. Oh yeah, there's no shit photos of the bands from my point and shoot for this post by the way, Subs gigs aren't for taking photos, they're for throwing yourself around like a loon. Anyway, Kang Mao was amazing, she really is the queen of fucking everything. Wu Hao is one of the best guitarists you'll ever see and as for the head gear, Luwan Rock has pointed out the likely influence. That's also where I stole this photo from.

Anyway Subs were immense. They are the best, there's no two ways about it. I got a nice lump on my forehead after someone brained me in the middle of one song, but it was completely worth it. For me, the highlights were like this: Postlude from the new album, Kang Mao nonchalantly expressing a wish to crowd surf by flicking a finger out to the audience with a 'should I?' expression on her face that sent people into a frenzy and them closing the night out with What More. Shut up, shut up, what more you wanna say?

Hat tip to my Mum and my brother on this one, they heard this on Radio 4 the other day and dropped me links. Radio 4 isn't to be confused with the American band who came to China recently by the way, it's a BBC radio station back in the UK. It's not the most cutting edge of stations to be honest and you get that in the tone of this report, which is all about the music scene in Beijing.

It's mostly about how or whether Western bands can be successful in China and as a result they speak to Nathaniel Davis from Splitworks amongst others. They talk about the problems of getting foreign bands to play here and take in mentions of Bjork, last year's Modern Sky Festival and Oasis. It's a bit cliched, as these things tend to be (it starts with park music in Beijing) and clearly isn't as insightful as say, a Kungfuology podcast, but bear in mind this is for an audience back in the UK who quite possibly know nothing about music here at all.

Anyway, it's up on the BBC iPlayer and should be for a few days yet so if you've ever wanted to hear a bloke with a plummy English accent interviewing kids in Yugong Yishan about who they listen to, now you can. You'll find it here.

In my write-up of Strawberry Festival, I said something about there not really being any surprises. Not entirely true. One surprise was this. Gia, former frontwoman for Hang on the Box, played the old HotB song 'Shanghai'. It was a slightly odd version, melding the original with her new, bossanova-influenced style, but I enjoyed seeing the song performed live. And Gia played a good set in general - if people had been in the mood for dancing a bit more it could have been a perfect early afternoon festival set played under the sun. Alas, the nearby metal stage drowned out most of her songs and no one seemed to moved by it. After a few songs from her debut solo album and a brave cover of 'D.A.N.C.E.', she announced she was going to play an old HotB song before launching into 'Shanghai'. Check out the video here and for more on Hang on the Box, click here.

When AV Okubo were in town the other month, they stuck on the video for 'Break Wave' before they took to the stage. It's one of their best songs and the video is pretty awesome. I think we mentioned it in a podcast at the time. I don't really remember. Anyway, take your mind off all the Expo nonsense happening here for a bit, by watching the video here. It features Liu Bo, one of the photographers for their album artwork who currently has an exhibition on in town or something apparently. Don't watch it for that though, watch it because it's... well, awesome. There's also an interview with the band here and a thing about Maybe Mars' latest tour of the States here, all courtesy of the people at Mogo.

Just a quickie (chortle chortle). 

I'm not sure anyone knows where it will be exactly yet or, given previous years' dramas, whether it'll take place or not, but Midi is inviting bands to sign up for Midi 2010 at the moment. Obviously, they'll pick the big bands themselves, but lesser-known bands (i.e. anyone who is not multi-award-winning Miserable Faith) can sign up now for a chance of playing the festival.

There's even a MySpace minisite where bands can put up a song and have people vote for them. Last time I checked, Shanghai was fairly under-represented, with only Joker and Bremen in there at the minute. I'm not sure how binding the voting system is, but getting exposure at Midi could be a big help to a band, so if you're on MySpace, go login and get voting. The site is here.

A while back, we mentioned the slightly puzzling dearth of music blogs in the capital. Being based in Shanghai, we have to endure constantly being told that the music scene here isn't as good as, or as developed as the Beijing one. Fine, but given the huge amount of international attention the scene up north receives compared to us down here, it's always seemed a bit odd that there was no regular English-language blog covering the scene up there. Incidentally, when I say covering the scene, I mean in a similar way to what we do here - bits and bobs of news, new tracks and gig reviews etc - China Music Radar of course gives Beijing plenty of excellent coverage on their side of things. 

Ok, last Pet Conspiracy post for a while, I promise. But here's a video of them that's spliced together from clips of their live show in Shanghai, a Hallowe'en performance in Beijing and a gig in front of a bunch of people in Hong Kong who are apparently unsure what to do in the event of the lead singer stage diving. Have a look. 

ANOTHER UPDATE: While the debate about gig photographers rages on, Tim Franco has posted some great photos of the bands in the Big Apple. He's even done a write up of it all as well. SmartShanghai has the goodness right here.

UPDATE: Rather than just plucking the comments of some random off of Douban, the Radar has gone and done some research and commissioned a proper review and everything. Check it out here.

If you've been paying attention, you'll know that Maybe Mars are touring some of their bands through the US of A right about now. Here's a bit of background and here's some more details.

Well, it sounds like things are going a bit better than the Modern Sky attempted tour of the same land mass a few months ago. That was where they put Casino Demon and Hedgehog on at a Chinese Cultural Show. You can hear us talk a bit more about it on the podcast here and watch a video of the debacle here.

Word is that the show at The Glasslands, who hosted Xiao He, Carsick Cars and PK14 last Friday (together with These Are Powers), was a sell out with a twenty minute wait to get in. That's a venue of around 300 capacity. According to the same comment on CMR, people threw Zhongnanhais at the show as well.

There's a fairly, umm, interesting write up of one of the New York shows here as well. It's basically a stream of consciousness based on the show and shouting so much to Carsick Cars that his throat hurts, but give it a read. Here's a highlight:

"xiao he was incredible, awesome -- apparently pretty drunk before he even started soundcheck. xiao he lyrics: "YOU WANT CHINESE SONG, I GIVE YOU CHINESE SONG". xiao he lyrics: (chinese national anthem). xiao he lyrics: "i know you, you want to know me -- we are all here together -- FUCK YOU". by the end of the night, xiao he was completely wasted, freaking with random women, attempting to grope two members of these are powers as they were trying to perform on stage, grabbing their stage monitor and flipping it around so that it was emitting sound downward into the stage. he is our new hero."

So what does this tell us? Apart from the fact that Xiao He is an amazing performer (we kind of knew that already), it shows how successful Chinese bands can be touring abroad if they're put on in the right venues. Pet Conspiracy ripped through Europe recently, causing Helen Feng to label it "one of the most successful tours a Chinese band has ever done". By the sounds of things (and yes, I'm basing this on hearsay and a couple of comments - the ayi who owns this site won't spring for flights to the States), the Maybe Mars tour could be set to achieve similar success.

Modern Sky, please take note.