A cyber goth Stooges cover + bedroom rock
+ neo-psych outfit Railway Suicide Train + a nostalgia-mining Carsick Cars video
Hello and welcome to Concrete Avalanche, a newsletter about music from China. Thanks very much for reading.
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In this issue: Cyber goth covers of ‘Summertime’ and ‘I Wanna be Your Dog’, live recordings of a band who use “pioneering musical techniques to record the perception of spiritual practice”, fun indie-rock from Small Animals Records, a nostalgia-milking Carsick Cars video, Lao Dan at Copenhagen Jazz Festival, and more.
Rabbit in your headlights: Yunnan duo Run! Rabbit Run! show promise on LP of electro-punk covers
Cyber goth covers of the Stooges, George Gershwin, and The Ink Spots anyone? That’s what riot grrrl electro-punk duo Run! Rabbit Run! are serving up on their newly-released Hare Talk album.
Hailing from Yunnan, Run! Rabbit Run! are part of the southern Chinese province’s Silver Cloud collective. This is a group of DJs, VJs, and electronic-focused artists founded in 2022 and headed up by the city of Kunming’s leading musical lights South Acid Mimi.
There are echoes of Mimism in the sound of Run! Rabbit Run! too — that kind of lo-fi electropop swagger that pervades much of the more established group’s music. Hare Talk, the group’s second album after last year’s Aquarius, is all covers, but the pair very much bring their own sound to versions of classics such as ‘Summertime’ and ‘I Wanna be Your Dog’. They also add a bit of local flavour by putting a sultry spin on a track by Yunnanese rapper Zeming Xu.
Run! Rabbit Run! describe themselves as “Tender and harsh at the same time” as they also “declare war on this world”. The pair take their name from a painting by Yoichi Nishino, where
“Under a crescent moon is a turbulent river, and a white rabbit is jumping over a group of crocodiles with their mouths open. Taking inspiration from this rabbit, we explore and experiment.”
Here’s how that sounds when they’re doing their own material:
Musically, there are probably stronger releases to have come out of China in the last couple of weeks, but I love this new wave of young, female-led groups giving zero fucks and bringing heaps of attitude. One to file alongside fake0rgasm as a promising act, clearly learning lessons from South Acid Mimi Dance Team.
Hare Talk is out now.
Ride on: “ritual ambient” group Yingshui Dijiang continue despite death of core member
One year on from the sad news that key member Mr Malegebide had passed away, Nanjing “ritual ambient” group Yingshui Dijiang have released Riding on the Wind via WV Sorcerer Records. Comprising 15 tracks, the album captures two “live performances in July and September 2023, at the Crescendo Music Festival in Shanghai and the Hetu Music Festival in Nanjing, respectively.” Mr Malegebide died just weeks after the Shanghai show.
As I’ve written before about the group, “Yingshui Dijiang are a slightly hard-to-pin-down collective based out of Nanjing. 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’.”
This album is a great example of what that sounds like in practice.
Riding on the Wind is out now.
Rat pack: 鼠鼠鼠 continue Small Animals Records’ likeable indie-rock streak
After a string of records from some interestingly- but not animally-named bands (The Hangzhou Wooshoo Boys, Tossing Seed, Pepper Heart), Shenzhen DIY label Small Animals Records have finally corrected that oversight with a new release from 鼠鼠鼠. (That’s the Chinese character for mouse, repeated three times.)
A band whose live shows can get pretty wild, 鼠鼠鼠 rein it in a bit for this collection of pleasing indie-rock tunes. There are still moments where their penchant for chaos bubbles up past the catchy hooks and sweet vocals however.
‘Loser Club’ (track 2) is a stand out example. It begins by sounding a bit like Yo La Tengo’s ‘Sugarcube’ before descending into a wild mix of guitar and percussion without ever losing its chugging rhythm. It sounds a lot like a live track. The final songs on the record double down on this feeling with versions recorded inside a bedroom.
It’s a slightly rough-around-the-edges release, but a fun one all the same.
the three mice is out now.
More Mamer: outstanding Xinjiang artist releases two wildly different cassettes
Ok, I went too early on the Mamer segment last time around. But honestly, the guy releases so much interesting, quality music it’s hard to keep up. In recent years, his long-term allies at Old Heaven Books have taken to recording his live shows and putting them out as albums. That’s not flippancy or laziness — it’s a recognition of how good his gigs are and how each one is so different from the next. Each is worth capturing.
Take the pair of Mamer tapes (cassette this time, not reel-to-reel) put out by Old Heaven since the last edition of this newsletter.
On Imitate Sky we get reverb-soaked soundscapes and atmospheric folk songs, some of them reinterpreted traditional Kazakh and Tatar tunes, before noisier yet still contemplative elements are introduced:
On Underground Factory, we get off the wall experimental pieces that veer between noise and high tempo electronic music and are layered with sometimes asynchronous vocal parts:
Both records are fascinating, though their enjoyment may depend upon what you’re in the mood for.
For those familiar with his back catalogue, Imitate Sky contains moments (especially early on) that bring to mind Mamer’s classic album Eagle, released by Peter Gabriel’s Real World record label back in 2009; Underground Factory meanwhile, is reminiscent of IZ’s noisier material.
For those unfamiliar with the artist, here’s a bit of introduction:
Underground Factory and Imitate Sky are both out now.
Watch it: art-rock in Shanghai, free jazz in Copenhagen, post-rock in Guangdong
The highly talented collection of musicians that is art-rock / neo-psych outfit Railway Suicide Train played a special show in Shanghai’s Young Theatre earlier this year and a couple of videos from the gig have now made their way onto YouTube for your enjoyment.
Chinese experimentalist Lao Dan was in Denmark recently for the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. Here he is doing extraordinary things with a dizi (a bamboo flute) and various accessories (including a wind chime) in the former Blågårds Church in Nørrebro:
Resurrected post-rockers Zhaoze have released a ‘documentary’ based around their most recent album, No Answer Blowin’ in the Wind. It’s basically a visual live recording of the LP and is well worth your time.
Notably, it’s filmed in Enspace, “a livehouse located in a traditional arcade-style building by the Liwan Lake in Guangzhou, [which] has been hosting a variety of performances and music-themed sharing sessions since October 2019, becoming a source of anticipation and emotion for its audience.” Alas, much like Yuyintang in Shanghai, and “like the once popular small venues around us; Enspace has also vanished.”
Exit music
Carsick Cars’ ‘Farewell’ — the lead single from the original line-up’s first album in over 15 years — was already pretty heavy on the nostalgia, with its lyrics about reflecting on times gone by. Now, there’s a new music video to go with it, featuring footage of the band throughout their career, from scenes at Beijing’s Old What? Bar to touring the US and playing Primavera. Imnotcryingyourecrying etc.
Damn that Carsick Cars video gets me right in the feels. I loved everything they put out back in the day.
i went to see Suicide Train last Saturday in Beijing and liked it!