10 albums from the godfather of Chinese post-punk + Qingdao indie
+ Wang Wen team up with Mono + SVBKVLT's journey from Shanghai to world domination
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In this issue: 10 records to get to know the godfather of Chinese post-punk, retro fun from Run Run Run, Wang Wen and Chinese Football international tour news, and more.
Be water: 10 records to get to know the godfather of Chinese post-punk as he releases a Taoist-inspired LP
Yang Haisong is a recurring character in the Concrete Avalanche newsletters. And for good reason.
Together with his band PK14, he helped pioneer the introduction of post-punk to the country, forging a sound that would influence generations of Chinese bands — many of whom he then went on to produce through his work with key labels such as Maybe Mars and Modern Sky. While his music has almost always involved some noisy guitar at some point, he’s not entirely stayed in his lane, exploring increasingly experimental territory in recent years. (He also popped up in our guide to Chinese shoegaze.)
PK14 recently got back together, but Yang is still pursuing other creative endeavours on the side, with static-wrapped guitar sounds still in tow. One of his latest projects has seen him team up with multi-instrumentalist and Dou Wei collaborator Wang Xiaofeng for an absorbing new LP.
The pair’s album is entitled The Intangible Tao of Water and is out now on Badhead Records, sort of.
Unfortunately, the title doubles as an apt description of trying to get ahold of the record internationally. It’s on Apple Music, but only four of the tracks are available. You can see it in the iTunes Store, but it’s region restricted. Is it on YouTube? Nope, there’s just a couple of live videos of the pair (one of which is embedded above). I even looked on Spotify (shudder) — no dice.
So instead, here’s a run-down of nine album highlights from Yang’s career to date. It should give you plenty to listen to while we wait for Badhead to get their act together. And if you want, there’s an entire Yang Haisong playlist here in one place.
Whoever & Whoever (2004) + White Paper (2005)
PK14’s 2001 debut Up the Stairs, Turn Right is a good album, but it was Yang and co’s next two LPs that really established them as one of the most influential Chinese bands. Whoever & Whoever and White Paper showed they were a real force to be reckoned with and feature a string of punchy, powerful post-punk tracks.
Carsick Cars (2007)
Not content with creating music that would go on to influence a whole generation of Chinese bands, Yang also took up production duties on the debut album for another act that would have a similarly seismic impact on the Chinese indie scene: Carsick Cars.
As production debuts go, overseeing a record that brings a band to the attention of Sonic Youth and establishes them as one of the most exciting acts in the country feels like pretty good going.
No Need for Another History (2015)
With the Carsick Cars record under his belt, Yang set about producing albums for a plethora of young Chinese artists. In this article by Josh Feola (more on him below, incidentally), Yang estimates that he’s produced 60-70 LPs — and that was when the piece was published seven years ago. (Toward the end of that piece by the way, there’s a bit about the time Yang crossed paths with the late, great Steve Albini.)
One of the acts he helped unearth were Chengdu post-punks Hiperson, for whom he produced No Need for Another History, their Maybe Mars-backed debut album:
The Words That Were Burnt (2010)
Alright, let’s dig into Yang’s other music projects. First up, Dear Eloise, which Yang formed with his wife Sun Xia around the mid-’00s. They released their first LP in 2010 and have followed it up with a string of releases sporadically since.
White Shirt (2015)
An experimental release with Wang Wen frontman Xie Yugang, White Shirt is inspired by Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. The album was written and performed in the space of just five days in early 2015. The duo followed it up with another quickly-produced record in 2017 and Yang has continued to release a series of such experimental collaborations since, largely through the Sto Records label (see below).
Fictional Film Music (2019)
Released on renowned Beijing cassette imprint Zoomin’ Nights, this collection of two pieces of 34 minutes and two seconds each finds Yang deploying his distinctive voice for a spoken word depiction of a movie that doesn’t exist.
South / North EP (2012)
Formed together with Psychic Kong Beijing engineer Liu Yike and poet Xu Tong, Yang’s Sto Records label has become a home for some of his more experimental collaborations in recent years. It also pulls together a number of records from his back catalogue, such as those of his solo project Blonde Eskimos. While it hints at the more noisey experimental work to come, the South / North EP marries the wailing guitars with more accessible, carefully picked out melodies.
Lygort Trio (2023)
Yang’s experiments with more abstract sounds haven’t seen him completely abandon his post-punk roots either. PK14 have continued to release albums here and there, and reunited for a tour late last year, while he’s also had post-punky side projects such as After Argument.
In 2021, Maybe Mars released a single from a mysterious act entitled The Vladimirs. That project gradually morphed into Lygort Trio, who put out a very PK14-sounding album last year, replete with Yang’s unique vocals. You can read more on the record and the musicians behind it here.
Once Upon a Time in Shanghai (2023)
Rounding off with another Sto Records-released experimental collaboration, this time between Yang and avant-garde saxophonist Li Zenghui, whose credits over the years include the likes of Omnipotent Youth Society and performances with everyone from A Wordless Orange to Black Midi. Put out last year, it’s a live recording of the pair playing Shanghai’s Yuyintang Park venue and features duelling brass and crashing guitar and theremin sounds.
Love this: more retro fun from Run Run Run
Space Fruity-signed psych-rockers Run Run Run put out a great new album a couple of months back, but they also have an interesting sideline in ultra retro flexi disc-inspired 7” singles.
Their latest in that vein came on May 20th, a date that’s increasingly pushed as a new Love Day in China because 520 (wu er ling) sounds a bit like I love you (wo ai ni) in Mandarin.
Appropriately, the Run Run Run release is a pair of love songs:
Here comes a new challenger: Chinese Football to tour Southeast Asia
Wonderful Wuhan band Chinese Football, who barely seem to stop touring, are headed to Southeast Asia for a series of shows, including with Deafheaven in Bangkok.
The tour follows their gigs across Europe and Japan last year. And if you’re thinking “so when does North America get a Chinese Football tour?”, well, watch this space for news on that soon…
Triple trouble: Asia’s biggest post-rock bands join forces
Turns out this is part of a joint tour Wang Wen and Jambinai are doing around Asia. Mono are joining for the two Japan dates, but there are also shows in Taipei, Taizhong, and Kaohsiung in Taiwan and then in Bangkok.
Watch: post-rock from the Tibetan Plateau comes to Belgium
Wang Wen’s recent globetrotting included an appearance at Belgium’s Dunk!Festival earlier this month, where they were joined on the bill by Qinghai art rock outfit Tation. Hopefully there’ll be a fuller video of their set to follow, but for now you can get a little taste from this clip:
Read: Josh Feola charts Shanghai-born label SVBKVLT’s global expansion
It’s still a little unclear whether the reports of Bandcamp’s death have been exaggerated, but if they’re still publishing pieces from writers of the calibre of Josh Feola, it’s a good indication that their vital signs are doing ok.
Last week, they put out a piece by Josh on how Gaz Williams has grown SVBKVLT from a “hyperlocal event in Shanghai” — and an incubator for Shanghai-based electronic music artists such as 33EMYBW and Gooooose — to “a global entity with a roster of contributors from virtually every continent.” Read the article here.
Exit music
Almost to the day this time last year, I wrote about Qingdao band The Bootlegs making a play for your summer playlist. Welp, they’re at it again with this sunshine-filled slice of seaside indie rock about… err… dirty T-shirts:
I was very happily surprised to recognize those two Run Run Run tracks. They played them at their gig at DDC (Beijing) in April.