Carrier pigeon-inspired ambient + Shanghai club crew Genome 6.66mbp in space
+ Omnipotent Youth Society in New York
Hello and welcome to Concrete Avalanche, a Substack about music from China. Thanks very much for reading.
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In this issue, the last in this format for 2023: Three delightful slices of indie-rock from a label named after a dumpling, a playful hip hop record, pigeons, Slavoj Žižek, doom metal, video of Omnipotent Youth Society playing in New York and Hong Kong, music for Yu Hua’s To Live, and club trax on a whale-shaped spaceship.
Wing and a prayer: this homing pigeon-inspired ambient work will carry you through the end of year rush
Here’s a wonderfully atmospheric record to have wash over you as we get to the tail-end of 2023. Described as “an aural keepsake that immerses the listener in unearthed synthesis, tape manipulation and found sounds,” Fixing Messages comes from two producers: Beijing-based thruoutin and Guangzhou-based Yu Hein.
Separated by 2,000km or so, the pair used WeChat to exchange musical ideas, “just like how WWI soldiers relied on carrier pigeons to exchange messages across the battlefield, encapsulating the timeless essence of communication.”
They wound up calling themselves Seon Ga, the Cantonese term for homing pigeons. But these two aren’t winging it. The duo are well established in their own right and their exchange has yielded an intelligently put together series of fascinating, textured ambient works inspired by “figures such as Tim Hecker, William Basinski, Tujiko Noriko, and Celer.”
If you’re finding the end of year period hectic, put this on some good speakers or headphones, close your eyes, and fly away.
Fixing Messages is out now on excellent Guangdong label Jyugam, whose back catalogue is well worth exploring as well.
Indie-rock label Shengjian Records just put a load of their back catalogue on YouTube
Long-term perserverers with this Substack might recall ‘Hokkien leisure music’ making an appearance back in the day (i.e. about a year ago). Or perhaps the Chinese indie-rock label that decided to release a range of scents to pair with some of its records? That was FarFarDisc, who I still prefer to refer to by their original and much, much better name of Shengjian Records (as in the dumpling). Anyway, they’ve recently chucked a bunch of their releases up on YouTube — here are three of the best:
Zoo Gazer — Hiding in Your Room
‘Casual indie’ act Zoo Gazer put out a new album earlier this year, but for me, this 2020 EP is better. Bright and bubbly music mixed with some introspective lyrics, it’s catchy, funky and highly enjoyable.
Default — Can You Hear the Whistle Blow
Pitching their sound as “Shoegaze, Noisy-DreamPop, Neo-Psychedelia”, Default grabbed a deserved amount of attention with this four track release in the summer of 2020. (New material from Default made it into
’s must-read Top 100 Mandopop Singles of 2023 incidentally.)Schoolgirl Byebye — Live in Hong Kong at E-Max
Pretty self-explanatory title this one. This recording came out in August, a couple of months before the indie-poppers’ latest LP One Year Later.
Explore more from Shengjian’s discography (and give them some money if you like the music) on their Bandcamp page.
Genome starship: cutting-edge club crew swap Shanghai for space in new video series
If you missed Chinese avant club crew Genome 6.66mbp in the UK recently, fret not — here’s a three hour takeover they did of Manchester’s NTS studio.
And speaking of the Genome crew, here’s a video of Kilo-Vee performing “in a spaceship” as part of the new Whale Trip concept, “a music video series following the journey of the ‘Whale Ship’ as it is joined by cutting-edge music artists.”
Directed by Wifiovermybody, the series sees
“the artists perform live, set against the backdrop of the interior of a CGI-rendered, whale-shaped spaceship, navigating across various surreal environments, each representing a different stage in a journey of continuous motion and transformation. The series’ central theme is relentless forward movement, a metaphor for progress and the unyielding pursuit of innovation and growth.”
More Chinese artists are set to follow on the voyage in the coming weeks.
Sounds for celebration: an atmospheric window into a family dinner on Lunar New Year’s Eve
Back here on earth, we’re still a way out from the Year of the Dragon (Shakira and Rihanna’s year, FYI), but here’s a lovely Spring Festival-themed work from Jyugam founder mafmadmaf:
It’s presented as a meditation on the character 家, meaning home or family. The lower part of the character is a pig; put a roof over it and you’ve got a home. mafmadmaf’s work is, of course, far more layered than that, with a mix of field recordings and simple, stirring instrumentation.
“This field recording was recorded on the Chinese Lunar New Year's eve dinner of February 2021,” he explains. “The original recording follows the family from preparations in the kitchen, cooking, up until the family gathering on the dinner table. Settings are respectively 'kitchen' and 'dinner table' in chronological order. In the art piece, "Origin of the Character, 家 (Family)", 'kitchen' and 'dinner table' are located each in the left and right sound paths of the stereo. The two sound tracks are played simultaneously, improvised and non-improvised into combined sound.”
For more Spring Festival sounds, if you want to get into the mood early, go here:
The Origin of the Chinese Character '家' is out now.
Renowned sound artist Yan Jun takes on Lu Xun, Žižek, Baudrillard, and Beckett for New York label Reading Group
New releases from “legendary musician and poet” Yan Jun are always worth paying attention to. He’s “a central figure in the (non-)music, noise, sound, and experimental performance scenes both in his native Beijing and in the global subterranean community for decades” and on this occasion has released his first solo vinyl record with New York’s Reading Group label. The collection of tracks finds him drawing inspiration from Lu Xun,
, Jean Baudrillard and Samuel Beckett.“i like it. i hope you will also like it,” writes Yan by way of introduction.
“it's about writers i like. but i choose them for one special reason. its core is my interest on the contradictions in the modernity which is a base of the world we live today. i hope my interpretations were simple and effecient enough.”
It’s a varied mix of field recordings, feedback, noise and recitations (the Beckett track finds Yan reading only the word ‘I’ from a Chinese translation of Texts for Nothing). As ever with Yan’s work, it’s avant garde and unusual and a great example of the kinds of experiments happening on China’s (non-)musical fringes.
contradictions (plays lu xun, žižek, baudrillard and beckett) is out now.
P.S. for more Yan Jun, check out this doom and drone metal piece he features on, helmed by (friends of Sonic Youth) Carsick Cars’ Li Weisi and Li Qing:
TV on the radioBandcamp: rapper LATENINE6 goes musical channel hopping
“Switch the channel, take a break... ‘Let's exchange sincerity and have a relaxed conversation.’” So says LATENINE6, Shanghai-based rapper and singer, whose new album The Latenight Show just dropped on Delivery Music, a kind of sibling label to the excellent Eating Music imprint.
As the title suggests, the LP is a kind of concept album based around LATENINE6’s relationship with television. “When I was a child, my parents were not at home, and I would always watch TV and wait for them to come back,” he says. “When I was 14 years old, for some reason, I needed to go to a strange city and live alone, I had to turn on the TV even when I was sleeping. As long as it was playing, I would feel safe.”
The album is also an attempt by LATENINE6 to broaden his repertoire, “to change from the role of a rapper to a richer vocal expressions.” It doesn’t always hit the mark, but it’s a quirky, largely fun release, with the lyrics intended to be accessible — rather than abstract bars, the focus here is on relatable reflections on every day life. Have a flick through and maybe you’ll find a “programme” you like.
The Latenight Show is out now.
Just quickly: two new soundtrack works to check out
First up is JajaTao with a fantastic track for the Record Without Words soundtrack:
And then there’s this album-length work from techno artist SHAO, originally made for renowned dramatist Meng Jinghui’s interpretation of Yu Hua’s classic novel To Live, which you may know from the Gong Li- and Ge You-starring film version by Zhang Yimou:
On the Wire: bié Records playlist
Exit music
I mentioned the other week that Omnipotent Youth Society were going to be playing in NYC. Here’s a little taste of how that went down (including a whole room of people singing the words to ‘Kill the One From Shijiazhuang’):
The band also recently played Clockenflap Festival in Hong Kong, a city they’ll return to in March as part of an Asian tour. Here’s some video from their set on Central Harbourfront:
Hey Jake. You’ve been so good to your avid readers all year. I just want to say a massive thank you and to wish you a very fine Christmas and a belter of a New Year when they arrive. Also, what would be on your list of best tracks / albums of the year? In no particular order...
"including a whole room of people singing the words to ‘Kill the One From Shijiazhuang’"
Goosebumps.