Hello and welcome to Concrete Avalanche, a newsletter 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. Please support the artists if you can.
I also have tip jar running on Ko-fi, which you can contribute to here if you’d like:
This is probably the last of me bothering your inbox in 2024. Hopefully see you in 2025.
About that * in the title: for one thing, it feels a little silly to call this ‘the best’ — it’s really just a clumsy splicing together of music from China that I’ve enjoyed during 2024, sometimes just because the segues were easy rather than being the ‘best’ tracks from a certain album or artist. For another, I’ve probably forgotten a few significant albums, songs, and / or artists (it’s the end of the year and I’m very tired). And for another, it’s not even the end of the year in China yet anyway.
In June, I compiled some of my favourite music from the first half of 2024. Many of those songs don’t appear here. That mix is still valid, I just tried to avoid repeating the same tracks this time around.
Between these two offerings, I hope you’ll find something you like, and ideally something you like enough to support the artist somehow if you’re able to. And if you fancy, you can share this post and potentially help someone else find something they like too.
The tracklisting:
00:00:00 Howie Lee — ‘Om Mani Padme Hum 六字真言’
00:03:46 mafmadmaf — ‘The Bells of Hoi Tong Monastery 海幢鐘’
00:06:51 ayrtbh — ‘双城’
00:09:54 Cola Ren — ‘Forest Drone’
00:14:34 Wang Xiaofang & Yang Haisong — ‘昨天的夢已經消散’
00:20:36 The Swan & Blossoms — ‘Ballad of Mere Nothing 草芥的歌谣’
00:25:20 Carsick Cars — ‘Farewell’
00:30:01 Backspace — ‘Absurd Film’
00:34:04 Gong Gong Gong and Mong Tong — ‘A Mountain Doesn’t Budge’
00:36:37 Fazi — ‘Horse from the Orient’
00:41:45 Lunacid — ‘Is Your Dream Still Out-Focus’
00:46:24 Deadtrees — ‘NWW’
00:50:41 Mamer — ‘未知的旋律 Unknown Melody - Bêlgisiz aüên’
00:55:20 Liang Yiyuan — ‘Hate the World’
01:01:06 Horse Radio — ‘Neg Odor’
01:06:14 Sleeping Dogs — ‘Dhila’
01:10:56 Hualun — ‘Love’
01:15:30 Mdprl & Git Bu$y Trio — ‘gooodsummer’
01:19:26 新鲜仔 — ‘达班’
01:22:14 西红, CNdY — ‘这是你可以选择的 (feat. PiNkChAiN)’
01:28:26 Li Zenghui — ‘Slack Tide’ (excerpt)
01:32:02 Ghostmass — ‘鬼谷子 Ghostgauze’
What did I miss? What did you like / not like so much this year? Let me know in the comments…
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