"A psychedelic cowboy cat" + a “crazy” Kanye call-out
+ a fantastic new metal record
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In this issue: bizzaro dread-laden fairytale tunes (yep), more Chinese psychedelia, a lovable ode to Lanzhou, some interesting bits of non-mainstream Chinese music history, and the mysterious metal musician behind one of the albums of the year rides again.
Metal dreams: black metal act Vitriolic Sage’s impressive new album
Any metal release that isn’t tackling Chinese social issues in Greek is going to have its work cut out dislodging Ὁπλίτης (Hoplites) from my albums of the year list. But I’m still going to listen to whatever new releases I come across — that’s why we’re here after all. So when Pest Productions — one of China’s most authoritative metal labels — recently added a flurry of new records to their Bandcamp page, I went to take a look.
While the intense new three track EP from Shandong atmospheric metal outfit Dark Fount is very much worth a listen, I was particularly excited by the new record from Vitriolic Sage. Vitriolic Sage are a black metal act out of Zhejiang with a penchant for lyrics in lesser-spoken languages (old Tibetan and Gyalrongic among them) and largely centred around a single musician. Sound familiar at all?
The one-man-band is billed as “one of the most promising acts among the new generation of Chinese Black Metal” by Pest Productions. There can be little arguing with that on the basis of the pulsating five-track 夢路.
Vitriolic Sage’s work is more melodic and provides the listener with more relief, more space to breath than Ὁπλίτης, relatively at least. And while the act has incorporated the aforementioned minority languages into their work before, 夢路 largely uses Mandarin to explore its themes of “dreams and loss”, resulting in a more direct feel to the lyrics.
As with the two Ὁπλίτης records, there’s a high level of musicianship and quality on display here — plus plenty of what the Pest Productions blurb accurately identifies as “ferocious riffs”. 夢路 is another impressive epic.
夢路 is out now.
Eddie Beatz goes Crazy over Kanye and more on new album
When J-Fever, also known as 小老虎 (‘Little Tiger’), Zhou Shijue (周士爵) and Eddie Beatz (也是福) released Go Love, Go Cry, Go Doubt in November, I was quick to label it a clear contender for China’s hip hop album of the year. The album’s appeal was down to a blend of the rappers’ idiosyncratic lyrical interplay, a quality cast of guests, and Eddie Beatz’s soulful rhythms.
疯了 (Crazy), released as a solo record by Beatz at the start of June, hints at repeating some of that formula, but ends up going off in very much its own direction. Some familiar guests appear on the tracklist — Zhou Shijue and J-Fever tantalisingly line up on ‘Brothers and Sisters’ alongside other long-time collaborators including Yehaiyahan, Dizkar and Voision Xi, but they’re simply used to chant the same few lines over and over on what is ultimately a fairly low-key track.
Instead, most of the rapping on the record is delivered by Beatz himself. Lines are dropped over beats that sometimes feel like incomplete sketches, like they’re missing another element somehow. The lyrics are repetitive and don’t always land as they could — ‘TO KANYE’ opens with a Graduation-esque soul sample setting up what could be a rumination on Ye’s disturbing descent from hitmaker to Hitler admirer, only for West to be merely called “crazy”, a “craziness” quickly likened to that of Beatz’s city.
It’s a slightly underwhelming and fleeting glimpse of what Eddie Beatz can do, especially on the heels of last year’s jazzy, experimental, and star-studded Also Blue. Crazy is worth a listen if you’re familiar with his work, but for a starting point you’re better off turning to his more fully-fledged collaborations with his supremely talented friends.
Crazy is out now.
For ever and ever: Aming drops a double dose of Chinese psychedelia
Waaaay back in the third ever issue of Concrete Avalanche, I wrote a bit about a compilation of Chinese psychedelia entitled Purple Haze From East:
A few months later, we got a follow up:
On both records, one of the key figures was Aming Liang, who appeared on the compilations as part of Blur Jesus and as an individual artist. And if you liked what he was doing there, you’re in luck: he’s just released a new solo record as well as a new Blur Jesus album.
Fleeting Glimpse came a few days late for the summer solstice, but feels like it would make an appropriate soundtrack for dancing around Stonehenge with the druids. It finds Aming, who was also a key figure in Shanghai psych-rock act Mirrors, delving more into electronic textures, but with a strong psychedelic current running through it all.
Echo of Siren Bay, which sees “psychedelic cowboy cat” Liang team up with “a coil sprite” Midorii as part of their “psychedelic, fusion world music band” is a relatively more meditative affair, full of tripped out, meandering jams. It’s probably my favourite of the two, but both are rewarding listens in their own ways, and work well in tandem.
Fleeting Glimpse and Echo of Siren Bay are out now.
Execution ballads: Yikii produces darkwave fairytales on Blackhole Ringdown
Yikii describes her musical style as “a mix of avant-garde pop, microtonal music, post-club, neoclassical darkwave, ambient, contemporary compositions and nursery rhymes, as she has been consistently meddling with somber piano music, ethereal vocal dirges, cutting-edge sound design, distorted hardcore kick drums, and much more.”
Incredibly, that doesn’t really cover it — the “much more” isn’t just a lazy bio line, it’s genuinely difficult to comprehensively capture the kaleidoscope of different sounds that feed into what Yikii creates.
At times her music is as elusive to grasp as her bewildering multi-lingual blog, but at its best it becomes what Joshua Minsoo Kim described on Pitchfork as “an enthralling blend of dread and beauty that feels quintessentially her own”.
It’s a sensation that’s evident again on her latest work, Blackhole Ringdown (Yikii’s notes on the album begin with the line “I often dream of being executed”).
The record feels like the soundtrack to a haunted house video game, where the opening of every door brings a different volley of sounds. This is very much an album that you need to really listen to — background music it ain’t — and it won’t be for everyone, but it’s a fascinating experiment to explore for those who are curious.
Blackhole Ringdown is out now and available as a pay-what-you-want download on Bandcamp.
The magic number: three releases from Beijing label Psychic to check out
Beijing-based label Psychic recently updated their Bandcamp with a clutch of releases. Who are Psychic? Well: “Founded in 2019, PSYCHIC is devoted to unearthing, organizing, and publishing out-of-print and unissued musical works connected to the early 21st century Chinese avant-garde, including experimental and non-mainstream music.”
Among their ‘new’ releases is a 2004 recording of experimentalist Yan Jun performing in Nanjing as part of a tour organised by Chengdu’s famed Little Bar. Joining him for the show were Two Other Comrades, otherwise known as folk musicians Huan Qing and Chen Zhipeng (a member of Chinese folk grandees Wild Children). It’s a beautiful set of recordings and among some of Yan’s most accessible work:
Going back even further is a live album from folk singer-songwriter Zhang Qianqian, which was recorded in 1997 at Beijing bar Keep In Touch. The bar was run by guzheng player Wang Yong and was a key hang out for the capital’s nascent alternative music scene in the late ’90s:
Also worth a listen is this more recent record from rock act Pipedream Princess. The band formed in Qingdao in 1997, but this album came out last year and deals in interesting, angular noise-rock.
You can peruse the rest of Psychic’s Bandcamp discography here, though unfortunately the page for Awakening Battersea — recordings of a project organised by renowned artist Ou Ning at London’s Battersea Power Station (pre-revamp) and featuring everyone from Yan Jun and Torturing Nurse to Shao Yanpeng (Dead J) and Li Jianhong — is just a placeholder with no audio files (there was a fancy CD and vinyl release in China earlier this year that you can probably find on Taobao though).
Exit music
Some super summery vibes to see us out here, with lovable Gansu folk-rockers Low Wormwood playing an extended version of their iconic hit ‘Lanzhou, Lanzhou’. Naturally, the CCTV documentary they’re appearing on — the neutrally named China Is So Beautiful — decided to record this Lanzhou band singing a song all about Lanzhou in… err, a field in Yunnan. Anyway, someone’s ripped it to YouTube meaning you can enjoy the song and the scenery without giving any money to CCTV. Beautiful!