Laughing Ears + a Buenos Aires-Beijing compilation
Laughing Ears + a Buenos Aires-Beijing compilation
+ "playing at the X district Freedom Conference"
Hello and welcome to Concrete Avalanche, a Substack about music from China. Thanks very much for reading.
If you’d like to listen to lots of great music from China for free, all in one place, check out the Concrete Avalanche playlists here. I put together a special one for this Substack’s first anniversary last week — well over two hours of music I think.
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As ever, if you like any of the music featured here, please consider buying it and supporting the artists if you can. It’s Bandcamp Friday on October 6th, when the platform waives its share of income so that more of your money reaches the labels and artists. It’s always a good time to buy some music and cherish it.
In this issue: A Latin America x China electronic music compilation, a look at the state of play for alternative Beijing venues, a fishy tale, silly badgers and loads more.
Plus, I know there’s sometimes a lot to get through in these newsletters and we’re all very busy etc, but I promise it’s worth making it to the bottom of this issue. There, lying in wait, is a bold new video from Tibetan post-rock act Tation.
This compilation uniting artists from Beijing to Buenos Aires will make you feel better about the world
Kicking off with a couple of great electronic releases.
First up, brilliant Beijing label bié Records have joined forces with Latin America-based collective Shika Shika for a vibrant, highly listenable compilation record that really deserves a lot more attention than it’s gotten so far.
The two imprints are “separated by very contrasting cultures and thousands of kilometers but united by shared values and a shared musical vision,” the official introduction to the record states, and the album finds them pairing up artists from their respective stables for a series of glittering remixes.
“Driven by values of creativity, borderless music and fairness for artists, both labels showcase artists that unite electronica with ambient and folk music, purposefully existing outside of the globalized, copy-paste of the mainstream music industry.”
Sun Dawei, Rainsoft, DaYe, Lim Giong, and Hualun are the artists participating from bié’s side; Chilean producer DJ Raff, Argentinian project Terror Cactus, Mexican singer-songwriter Pahua, British-born artist El Búho, Brazilian composer Numa Gama, and Buenos Aires-born Shika Shika co-founder Barrio Lindo join them.
It’s not only a great listen, but also, as the intro rightly points out, “a testament to music’s power to transcend language and cultural background as artists from hugely different contexts unite to explore and build on each other’s creative visions.”
bié records meets Shika Shika is out now on both labels’ Bandcamp pages, with a red vinyl version available from the Latin American imprint.
Enchanted forest: new off-kilter electronic sounds from Laughing Ears
The Forest That Hears is a low-key, self-released, but very welcome return for Shanghai-based producer Laughing Ears. Her back catalogue includes records on Infinite Machine and Hemlock, but she’s decided to go it alone for this, her first new music in over two years.
Laughing Ears has been playing around with broken beats, quirky sound effects and imaginative storylines ever since her debut Illusory Time in 2017. Her off-kilter electronic sound has sometimes taken darker turns, such as on the Norse mythology-inspired Blood, but the results of her explorations are unfailingly intriguing.
That’s the case on this new EP, with three tracks that capture an evolution of Laughing Ears’ ‘hybrid club’ sound without dispensing with the playful touches and driving rhythms that have underpinned her work to date. It’s hopefully also a sign of more to come from her soon.
The Forest That Hears is out now and is pay what you want.
All my little words: A Fishy Tale have something to say on new psych-tinged EP
Shen Zhi, who I’ve previously described as “a multi-talented musician with an extensive list of credits”, continues to burnish his CV of interesting Chinese rock releases. The latest addition is the debut EP from Guangzhou act A Fishy Tale, which was recorded in Shen’s The Room studio in a village in Zhejiang province and upon which he plays synths, bass and drums alongside the band’s quintet of musicians. (He also lent a hand on the composition and arrangement across the course of the EP’s five songs.)
We last met Shen in this newsletter thanks to his work with Berlin Psycho Nurses, an act currently finding new audiences via their appearances on The Big Band TV show (and teaming up with Lexie Liu on the latest episode). Here’s a reminder of that “extensive list of credits” for Shen:
He plays in art-rock act Railway Suicide Train, “jangle pop” band Gatsby in a Daze, experimental outfit Dolphy Kick Bebop, and Yepeng, whose psychedelic 太陽寨巷戰 album hasn’t gotten much attention but is one of my favourite records of the year. His production slate includes Xiao Wang (who I wrote about last time out) and Oh! Dirty Fingers’ most recent album, on which the notorious punks added Latin-inspired rhythms and Balkan-style percussion to their sound.
Shen’s fingerprints are all over this new record — from the rattling percussion and shuffling rhythms of ‘Vanished Instant’ to the languid brass of EP closer ‘Shell’ — but A Fishy Tale have plenty of agency here too. The tracks are built around band leader Laoyu’s part-spoken vocal delivery, which switches between softly sung and near-spat out lines about guillotines and entrails, ghosts and angels, and poetic depictions of lingering cigarettes.
It’s a little rough around the edges in places (it’s a debut EP after all), but this collection of five songs doesn’t just demonstrate Shen’s skill, it also shows that A Fishy Tale have promise and purpose.
As the Words Drop is out now.
On The Wire
UPDATE: There’s now a brilliant playlist to go with this piece.
Trigger warning
The fussy (to put it mildly) bureaucratic requirements for gigs these days that Josh outlines in the piece mentioned above certainly make the launch of a new noise-focused venue in Shanghai an interesting move.
According to Junky (aka Torturing Nurse), the aim is for the venue to host shows on weekend afternoons and to be a space for “non-traditional performances”. If you’re in Shanghai, go support it.
Infinite sadness: Glass Bystander explores ambient emo textures on A Screenshot of Melancholy
You probably have to be in the right mood for Glass Bystander’s A Screenshot of Melancholy. But you can’t accuse the Shanghai-based producer of being misleading about what lies ahead when you hit play. In addition to the album’s title, track names such as ‘Bloodstains’, ‘Ruins’ and ‘Dancing with Corpses’ signpost the record’s prevailing mood before you’ve heard a beat.
Just in case you’re in any doubt, the release — dropped on Glass Bystander’s own zaaang label as a sort of birthday present to themself — comes with an introduction in which the artist says that, “Depression, sadness, excitement, anger and other messy emotions [were] circling in my mind every day” during the creation of these eight tracks.
Yet it’s not quite as dark and downbeat as that may make it sound. Ok, it’s not the sort of thing you’re going to stick on at a party (unless you’re trying to get everyone to leave), but Glass Bystander’s anguish here manifests in thoughtful, atmospheric and largely ambient works, rather than anything overly abrasive. It’s well worth a listen.
A Screenshot of Melancholy is out now.
Exit music
Last week, Concrete Avalanche turned one. A couple of days later, one of the first acts I featured on this Substack teased a new record. Coincidence…? Well yes, actually. I had nothing to do with it. Obviously. Still, there’s a nice symmetry there of sorts.
The band in question is Tation, a post- / art-rock act from the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. Their new record was due to be released over the weekend, but it’s so far yet to materialise on Bandcamp, a site that is unfortunately blocked in China.
UPDATE: shortly after I posted this, I got a message from the band to say the new record will be out on September 29th, exclusively on Tencent Music. That usually means they get it for a month before it’s allowed on other platforms, so likely explains the Bandcamp delay, but we’ll have to see.
While we wait, there is an incredible video for first track ‘The Waking of Insects’.
Tation have form when it comes to interesting conceptual visuals, but this one comes with some remarkable statements surrounding it:
“In the 51st year of COVID-19(reign title), The Undead People’s Utopian Kingdom(UPUK) was depressed because of the epidemic. A band playing at the X district Freedom Conference alarmed the sleeping people, They are wearing Undead masks with anti-virus effects and heading for the imaginary future or past...
“Slavoj Žižek said in his book "The Plague of Fantasies" that for a group, telling the same lies can more effectively connect the members of the group than realizing the truth together.”
The name of the new EP? Illusions of the New Era. Some of the phrasing around this video — and that EP title — is admittedly slightly different in Chinese, but there’s still plenty to be read from the imagery used.
The video didn’t last long on WeChat (it was seemingly reported), though at time of writing it’s still available on Weibo. Regardless, it’s certainly on YouTube and hopefully the record itself will follow shortly…
Really digging A Fishy Tale.
The Tation video and track is better than a thousand episodes of The Big Band!