Howie Lee soundtracks a hit TV show + ‘Midnight Pingpong Club’
+ a Chengdu dance record inspired by Marcel Duchamp
Hello and welcome to Concrete Avalanche, a newsletter about music from China. Thanks very much for reading.
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In this issue: a quirky dark folk record from Chengdu featuring a Lambchop and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy collaborator, an ambient record that aims for “spiritual liberation”, a double dose of psych-rock, a treasure trove of alternative Chinese releases that has belatedly made it to Bandcamp, and the soundtrack to one of the biggest Chinese TV shows of the year.
Moon safari: Chengdu dark folk act The Swan and Blossoms bewitch on new LP
It only takes a couple of songs for the musical styles to really start flying on The Swan and Blossoms’ new album, their first long player in five years. After the gentle baroque-tinged shuffle of ‘Dusk and Night’ has built to a string-laden, laughing crescendo, it’s followed by a whirlwind of flute, teasing guitar parts, and Chinese opera vocals on ‘Ballad of Mere Nothing’, one of the record’s outstanding tracks. Somehow it all works. And World Below the Moon gets no less ambitious from there.
Mixed by Mark Nevers, who has worked with the likes of Lambchop, Andrew Bird, and Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, and produced by Chinese indie musician Uncle Hu, the record employs an array of instrumentation as the band weaves a darkly magical tale (with plenty of real life resonance) across the course of the album’s 12 tracks. Together with a broad cast, singer Yuan Tian (who also returned with folk-metal act Bloody Woods earlier this year after an eight year hiatus), violinist Jia Zi, and the band’s main musical force Zhou Jian clearly have some big ideas.
Sustaining the quirkiness that courses through the first few tracks proves to be something of a challenge as the album continues. Sentiment in Rain, The Swan and Blossoms’ 2019 debut, is tighter in terms of run-time, albeit not as grand musically. Yet World Below the Moon is nevertheless an impressive offering, in part because it feels utterly different from what most Chinese bands are doing right now.
Founded in 2012, the Chengdu band haven’t been the most prolific of acts in terms of releases, but this latest effort contains more than enough to make me hope for more from them soon.
World Below the Moon is out now.
Caught by the Guzz: Xiamen producer aims for “spiritual liberation” on Botanical Garden of the Soul
Having made his name as part of the traditional Chinese music-meets-club beats crew Do Hits, Hainan-born producer Guzz has more recently been roaming around ambient territory. His explorations in this regard perhaps peaked with last year’s 风中的幻想曲, which felt far removed from the dancefloor.
One year on, and he’s clearly not completely done with the more percussion-heavy side of production, with his new album Botanical Garden of the Soul bringing back the beats. Not that his new material is club-ready either; as the LP title suggests, his latest productions are still largely in the downtempo realm — the album is billed as “a sanctuary that offers 42 minutes of spiritual liberation”. Interestingly, it also appears to see him experimenting in the area of AI.
I say ‘appears’ — there’s very little information to go on about how Guzz has put these tracks together. Perhaps the idea is to really just focus on the music, and lose yourself in songs such as ‘Midnight Pingpong Club’ with its gradually building tak-tak-tak of ping pong ball on table.
Such immersion isn’t quite as easy as on previous Guzz efforts such as the beautiful Walking in a Boundless Dream, but it’s still an interesting 42 minutes from an artist who is always worth paying attention to.
Botanical Garden of the Soul is out now.
Good music from Badhead: Modern Sky label brings a wealth of alternative releases to Bandcamp
In the last issue I tacked on a quick note about Wutiaoren albums making it to Bandcamp. Turns out this was just the opening salvo from Badhead, an indie-leaning label from the Chinese music behemoth Modern Sky. They’ve since added a host of records from their back catalogue, featuring notable artists such as Li Jianhong, Wang Fan, and Mekrop.
Here are three albums that are especially worth checking out:
Red Scarf — Red Scarf
Formed in 2013, Red Scarf were an experimental jazz-rock trio comprised of Lao Dan (renowned free jazz flautist who has made a few appearances in this newsletter before and who just put out an album of music made with homemade flutes and a contrabass curved flute), Deng Boyu (a highly respected percussionist whose varied projects include work with Mamer), and Li Xing (a guitarist who would go on to record with King Crimson-influenced Mongolian musician Hai Qing). This is their free jazz and prog-rock influenced debut studio release from 2016.
IZ — Colorless
I’ve written numerous times about Xinjiang-born Kazakh musician Mamer, a musician whose varied output spans everything from gentle traditional folk songs to noisy experimental improvisations. This 2015 record from one of his many bands, IZ, is toward the more accessible end of the spectrum, with he and percussionist Zhang Dong going for a relatively mellower sound (and even, unusually for Mamer, providing translations of the lyrics) for their Modern Sky debut. If you like what you hear, check out the rest of the Badhead page, which features solo records, collaborations, and other band projects (TAT, Mekrop) from Mamer.
Wang Xiaofang & Yang Haisong — The Intangible Tao of Water
A newer one here: this is the album I wanted to write about a few months ago when I did a run-down of ten records to listen to from Yang Haisong, the godfather of Chinese post-punk. On it, Yang teams up with multi-instrumentalist and Dou Wei collaborator Wang Xiaofeng for an absorbing collection of compositions that’s now finally on Bandcamp.
Check out Badhead’s full Bandcamp page here.
Howie Lee, Yung Fresh Chin and more team up on Escape from the Trilateral Slopes OST
With a Douban score of 7.9, Youku drama 边水往事 (or, more longwindedly in English, Escape from the Trilateral Slopes) has been one of the hit TV shows of 2024 in China. It’s a relatively gritty (by Chinese TV standards) tale of gangs, down-and-outs, and people with dreams of making it big. More importantly, at least as far as this newsletter is concerned, it comes with a well-assembled soundtrack — one that’s just been given a Bandcamp release by Sichuan / Yunnan label Mintone.
Outstanding producer Howie Lee is joined by a “mysterious rapper” and young composer Ren Dingyi, as well as a couple of folk oddities: a Myanmar-ese version of a folk song made famous by Teresa Teng and a piano ballad called ‘Citizens of the World’ that sounds a bit like an attempt to redo ‘Imagine’.
Anyway, that “mysterious rapper”, as mentioned in a previous edition of Concrete Avalanche, is the “Jia Zhangke of rap” Xia Zhiyu, and it’s he who provides the more fully-fledged songs on the record, with ‘Daban’ a particular stand out. Anyone who enjoyed his Young Fresh Chin II LP should like the trio of tracks that he supplies here.
Lee’s contributions are as well-judged and nuanced as ever, though unfortunately they largely consist of fairly short segues. It’s Xia who provides the more fully-fledged songs on the record, though Ren’s compositions are also well put together.
Worth a spin.
Escape from the Trilateral Slopes is out now.
From Chengdu to Duchamp: Sichuanese nightlife pioneer releases debut record
Presumably taking her name from the Bjork track / Dancer in the Dark, Cvalda has been a prominent figure on the Chengdu club scene ever since such a thing could be said to exist. Having been a regular at one of the Sichuanese capital’s first proper clubs in the ’90s, in 2006 Cvalda co-founded Underground, a short-lived but influential Chengdu nightlife venue that hosted the likes of DJ Krush, Jimi Tenor, and Akufen. She started DJing herself in 2010, with her first gig opening for Howie Lee.
By then, she was already experimenting with her own productions, yet it’s taken until now for her to release her debut album, Fountain.
According to the official blurb, “The concept of the album is deeply inspired by Duchamp’s “Fountain,” symbolizing Cvalda’s spirit of breaking norms and unconventional creativity,” and it finds her “delv[ing] into nature, psychology, society, philosophy, and even religion, showcasing her profound thoughts and responses to existence.”
Released on Taiga’s Oriental Order imprint, musically the six track record “inherit[s] the spirit of the '70s Dub and sound system culture and the '90s abstract hip-hop/breakbeat/minimalism,” and is comprised of works that Cvalda mostly put together in 2022.
Cvalda may have spent the best part of thirty years on or around the dancefloor, but her own sound is still relatively fresh. She remains heavily involved in China’s clubbing scene, and as I write this you can find her touring around the country alongside young duo Run! Rabbit Run!.
Fountain is out now.
Exit music
Here’s a couple of live videos from psych-rockers Backspace, recently uploaded by label Maybe Mars to YouTube. The band’s Outside of Change — released back in the spring — is one of my favourite records out of China in 2024. Look out for a run-down of my other highlights from the year next week.