Asian Dope Boys + Chinese indie rock smells
+ pagan black metal from Dongbei
Hello and welcome to the latest issue of Concrete Avalanche, a Substack about music from China. Thank you for reading.
In this issue: Chinese indie rock aromas, a retro Hedgehog video that you really have to watch, pagan folk metal from China’s northeast, a second slice of Sichuanese sci-fi-tronica, and an examination of “the altered states of living and dying”.
If you want to help feed my Bandcamp addiction you can do so here. You can also support me without spending a penny by hitting that share button above.
And don’t forget that you can listen to lots of great music for free right here with Concrete Avalanche’s playlists — I’ve updated the March one and there’s also some of my favourite Hedgehog tracks in one handy place.
Ghost of a trance: Tianzhuo Chen’s “incendiary” take over of a Hamburg theatre
Tianzhuo Chen is one of the most celebrated contemporary artists in China. After graduating from Central Saint Martins and then Chelsea College of Art and Design in London, he’s pursued an attention-grabbing form of art without much regard for media boundaries, blending photography, paintings, installation and performance.
In addition to presenting ever more ambitious experiences in some of the country’s most prominent modern art galleries, he’s also brought his vision into the club space in recent years. Under his Asian Dope Boys party brand, he’s held regular nights at Shanghai’s ALL and likeminded venues around the country, events that have become known for their spectacle as much as their music.
Entrancing, a new 16-track release on ALL founder Gaz Williams’ excellent SVBKVLT label, has its roots in one of Chen’s immersive experiments. In 2019, his solo exhibition at Beijing’s M WOODS gallery included a 12-hour performance which “examined the altered states of living and dying and pondered the sounds, sensations, bodies and spaces that notion might suggest.” That was a test-run for TRANCE, a show that would eventually premiere in Hamburg three years later and took the form of “a surreal three-day ceremony”.
The SVBKVLT introduction explains that,
“This time around the Trance Band was made up of Berlin-based noisemaker and vocalist Dis Fig, Indonesia’s Gabber Modus Operandi, musician and MC KIM KHAN, guitarist and engineer Felix-Florian Tödtloff, and Vancouver-based percussionist and producer CITY. Chen directed the show, channeling each artist’s unique energy into an alliance that highlighted their independent skills while pushing towards ideas that simply couldn’t have been realized discretely.”
Entrancing is an audio recording of all that.
Much like Chen’s art, which pulls from myriad influences and cultural reference points, Entrancing is a sonically eclectic release. After the record opens with string-driven spiritual entrancements, ‘Soft and Black’ sees it switch lanes to harsher, industrial rhythms; ‘Shaolin Affliction’ and ‘A Seagull’s Hymn’ fork over grungey rock riffs; and Gabber Modus Operandi — recruited by Björk for her latest album — bring their mix of off-kilter sounds and intense beats in one of the record’s closing tracks.
The whole thing is described as “incendiary” in the official introduction, though perhaps inevitably, the album doesn’t excite quite as much as the full audio-visual show may have done. It’s hard to escape the feeling that Chen’s latest work is better experienced than merely listened to. Still, Chen, his art and his collaborators are worth exploring, and Entrancing isn’t a bad jumping off point for that, especially given some of the names attached to the project.
Entrancing is out now on SVBKVLT.
Dark entries: Nanjing “ritual ambient” group Yingshui Dijiang deliver two new spiritual pieces
I promise there’s a bunch of easily digestible indie-rock immediately below this section, but just while we’re on the subject of eclectic experimentalism, have a listen to two new compositions from 英水帝江 Yingshui Dijiang (a name translated to ‘Heroic Water, Imperial River’ when they had a beer made in their honour by leading Chinese craft brewery Master Gao; rendered slightly less interestingly as ‘Dijiang by the Ying River’ by the band themselves).
This pair of remarkable 20-minute-long dark ambient and “ritual instrumental music” compositions was released last week on Dying Art Productions, a label who have been delivering “the extreme sound from China’s underground” for more than 20 years. But these tracks are not as ferocious as that may make them out to be.
Yingshui Dijiang are a slightly hard-to-pin-down collective based out of Nanjing who experiment with “world music” forms and visual art. The group’s sound incorporates traditional Chinese instruments such as the pipa, guqin and guzheng alongside those from other cultures (including the didgeridoo), plus synths, sampling, drone and industrial electronics. Their aim is “to express the artistic conception of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism with an international musical language [and to] use pioneering musical techniques to record the perception of spiritual practice”.
Here’s how that plays out live:
Yingshui Dijiang’s two new tracks are available here. If you like what you hear, there’s lots more material from them on Dying Art Productions’ Bandcamp and on their own Bandcamp. They’re pretty prolific — even as I wrote this they dropped a new release, a soundtrack for documentary Rembrandt van Rijn as Entrepreneur.
Make it make scents: indie rock label Shengjian Records launches fragrance collab
To misquote Frank Zappa, Chinese indie rock isn’t dead, it just smells funny. Literally, in the case of a new line from Shengjian Records, who have collaborated with Xiamen-based fragrance studio Factory to come up with a range of scents based on some of their most popular releases.
Despite the label being named after a type of dumpling, none of the records come with the aroma of pan-fried snacks (your move, Eating Music). Nor do they smell like teen spirit.
Instead we have indie-rock act Default’s Can You Hear the Whistle Blow accompanied by notes of lavender, rose, and… Moutai?! Huh. Really hope the baijiu brand’s Twitter person gets wind of this.
It’s not the only one to come with aromatic connotations of being in a bar: shoegazey dream pop outfit Pocari Sweet (a band named after cult Japanese sports drink Pocari Sweat) get a fragrance with hints of whisky, as well as pepper and vanilla, to go with their Gentle Moon EP.
Perhaps for the best, the scent made for Kirin Trio, a band named after a Japanese beer, doesn’t come with sticky lager notes or wafts of hungover regret, but instead features jasmine, green tea, pineapple and rose. Lovely.
There are more, but you probably get the idea. You can peruse the whole collection (only available in China I think) right here.
And if you think this is just some quirky Chinese thing, here’s a whole article from Joshua Minsoo Kim for the Chicago Reader on his favourite scent and album combinations of 2022.
She (no longer) bangs the drums: adored Hedgehog drummer Atom calls it quits
“Hallo, hallo, hallo. We’re Hedgehog!” This call from behind the drum kit has marked the beginning of many a set from beloved Beijing indie-rock act Hedgehog, but perhaps no longer. Atom, the voice of that call-out, has officially left the band she co-founded with guitarist Zhao “ZO” Zijian and bassist Bo “Box” Xuan in 2005.
The whole thing has a distinct end of era feeling, albeit one that’s been coming for a while. The various parties are set to continue in their own ways: Atom released a series of solo tracks late last year and Hedgehog have said they’ll carry on regardless, already unveiling a new drummer and new keyboardist while promising a nationwide tour later this year. But as a highly-upvoted comment on Weibo asked in the wake of the news, “is it still Hedgehog if there’s no Atom?”
I first saw Hedgehog live during the brief spell that the ‘lighthouse’ (technically an old signalling tower) on The Bund in Shanghai operated as a gig venue, around 2006 or 2007 I think. Like most, I was quickly enamoured after watching them perform.
I must’ve seen them dozens of times since and though I lost some of the excitement around a new Hedgehog album in recent years, I still liked the idea that they existed. There was a sort of comfort in knowing that they were still out there, making audiences bounce around like crazy to ‘Toy&61Festival’ or ‘Blue Daydreaming’. Whatever my reservations about The Big Band, the Chinese TV contest that propelled a bunch of indie acts into the mainstream, I was pleased to see them do so well on it and it seemed like they had perhaps been given a new lease of life. But rumours of their imminent demise persisted.
This isn’t Hedgehog’s first line-up change — Box left in late 2009 — and ZO remains a smart songwriter, so maybe this… ‘refreshed’ lineup is the new lease of life Hedgehog really needed. Maybe. As the Weibo comment above suggests, there’ll be some fans who will feel it just isn’t the same without Atom on the sticks.
Anyway, good luck to them all and all that. Here are some of Atom-era Hedgehog’s best tracks and below is a classic old song featuring footage of Beijing from 2006:
Reasons to be cheerful
Some quick updates on things mentioned in previous editions of Concrete Avalanche:
Pt 1: Chinese Football are off to Europe. Back of the net!
Pt 2: Chinese psychedelia compilation Purple Haze From the East Vol 2 is now up on Bandcamp, courtesy of WV Sorcerer. The same label is also releasing Changchun psych act Rough Image’s eponymous LP.
Pt 3: Shandong post-punk band Lonely Leary have released a music video for the track ‘Waltz’, from their recent album of ‘unplugged’ material:
Star turn: Sichuanese sci-fi-tronica producer vii M drops new live video and EP
Speaking of updates… Late last year, Chengdu-born Shanghai-based producer vii M released Sublunary, an intriguing, enjoyable mix of sci-fi inspired trip hop and electronica. The other week, she released a video of her performing four tracks from the album live and this week released the recordings as an EP on Bandcamp.
The live set-up puts a jazzier spin on the recorded material, perhaps due in part to her band featuring guitarist Jun Xiao, who last year became the first Chinese solo artist to release an album on legendary jazz label Blue Note.
Worth a watch:
vii M’s Sublunary is available here. The four live recordings have been released as The Other Side of Sublunary.
Exit music
Signing off with a bit of pagan folk metal from Dongbei (the northeast).
Frozen Moon lace their symphonic black metal sound with traditional Chinese instrumentation, some wild vocals, and blistering percussion — a blend they’ve been perfecting for over two decades now. You can get a taste via the newly-released Legend of East Dan on Pest Productions, which brings together two of band’s previous EPs in one intense album.
"I first saw Hedgehog live during the brief spell that the ‘lighthouse’ (technically an old signalling tower) on The Bund in Shanghai operated as a gig venue, around 2006 or 2007 I think. Like most, I was quickly enamoured after watching them perform.
I must’ve seen them dozens of times since and though I lost some of the excitement around a new Hedgehog album in recent years, I still liked the idea that they existed. There was a sort of comfort in knowing that they were still out there, making audiences bounce around like crazy [...]"
Very similar to my connection with Carsick Cars. The first time I saw them play was at the defunct D22.