Cat video-inspired metal + rare Uyghur folk music
+ more Chinese bands touring the US + dragon energy music for the Lunar New Year
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.
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In this issue: alternative songs to celebrate the lunar New Year with, Chinese bands at SXSW 2024, a kung fu film-meets-music video series, Brian Eno-endorsed Buddha Machines, “the wildest, if not the uncanniest tradition” in Uyghur folk music, chaotic metal, Omnipotent Youth Society’s Asia tour, and lots more.
Long time coming: an alternative Spring Festival soundtrack
The Year of the Dragon is nearly upon us. One of the signifiers of the approaching Lunar New Year in much of China is hearing the same old cheesy songs on repeat in every convenience store and shopping mall you go to. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Around this time last year, I wrote:
“Chinese New Year tends to come with a cutesy soundtrack. If you’re looking for something a bit more interesting, Do Hits’ compilations are always my go-tos at this time of year. The Howie Lee-led collective — known for blending alternative club beats with traditional Chinese instrumentation — put out two Year of records and they’re both interesting, fun listens that offer a much-needed update to the standard Spring Festival playlist (the Monkey one is fun to dip into any time of year really, given its Sun Wukong sampling).”
Howie Lee loves a Lunar New Year track, regularly dropping one around New Year’s Eve, so keep an eye out for his latest some time in the next few days.
In the meantime, here’s a playlist I put together of interesting Chinese New Year music, largely comprised of cuts from the aforementioned Do Hits records.
Greek-language one-man metal act Hoplites is back, with added free jazz elements
When it came to compiling my end of year mix, one of the issues I faced was selecting which track from one-man metal band Hoplites to include. The artist behind the Greek-language, social issue-focused metal project put out three albums under the Hoplites name during 2023, along with another as Vitriolic Sage. Turns out that wasn’t all he recorded in 2023 however — last month, he released another six tracks, inspired, he says, by “cat video watching & non-metal music & bad school experience.”
More seriously, he says the album is based around what he terms “‘Theía Manía’, aiming to embody the state of ‘Theía Manía (divine madness)’ proposed by Plato in Phaedrus”:
“…madness, which comes from god, is superior to sanity, which is of human origin.”
— Plato, Phaedrus 244d.
It “may sound like Blackened Zeuhl/Brutal Prog,” he adds.
I’m kind of running out of superlatives for this project to be honest. Lazily, here are some of my favourite Bandcamp comments on the record so far:
“fucking unreal each album is better than the next... the instrumentals, the compositions, the insane brutality, this album paints a picture thats both beautiful and grotesque and I'm living for every second” — Thurston Dangerfield
“It's weird and chaotic as all hell, which is precisely what makes it so good!” — honeycombguy
“Absolutely stellar Hoplites release which represents its most groundbreaking work so far, which is quite an accomplishment in light of the previous works” — Hei Tatao
“My brain has been melted by this album” — Jay Waltz.
For more top drawer Chinese metal, check out Pest Productions’ pair of 2023 label samplers, available as name-your-price downloads on Bandcamp.
Παραμαινομένη is out now.
Chinese Football: “For us, the journey of ‘going global’ has just begun”
After releasing their (long-delayed) latest album on the last day of 2022, Wuhan’s Chinese Football spent much of 2023 charming audiences across the globe. At the start of the year, the band’s Xu Bo had told me, “Our goal in 2023 is to break out of Asia and go to the world”. And they did — as this newly-released compilation of clips from their tours of Japan and Europe shows:
“2023 marked a milestone year for our band as we fulfilled the dream of 'breaking out of Asia' for the first time. Starting with a new album, we toured Japan again and stepped onto the European continent for the very first time. This short film captures some of the experiences and insights from our journey on the road this year. The question of 'why tour overseas' may not have a definitive answer, but for us, the journey of 'going global' has just begun. We will continue to live it, seeking meaning on the road. Even if, in the end, everything proves to be meaningless, the journey will not have been in vain.”
More on Chinese Football’s Win & Lose:
Also going global: Fazi at SXSW 2024 + Re-TROS touring US with Liars and Battles + more
Chinese Football were part of a trend last year of artists from China finally going back overseas after a Covid-induced hiatus and it’s exciting to see this gathering pace, even after just a month and a bit of 2024:
Chilled out electronic music master Wu Zhuoling is “bringing the Chengdu live vibes to the Kiwis” with her tour of New Zealand right now.
Xi’an’s Cure-inspired post-punks FAZI and angsty Kunming rockers Mayuan Poets (who went big on The Big Band last year) are both set to play SXSW in March, before zigzagging across the US on two separate tours.
Long-running trio Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (Re-TROS) are returning to the US in April as part of a tour that will see them joined by Liars and Battles. Feels like a pretty big deal.
Another of China’s biggest bands, Omnipotent Youth Society, will play Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Taiwan and Japan on their Asia tour this spring.
Qinghai art rock act Tation will join Chinese post-rock pioneers Wang Wen at Dunk!Festival in Belgium this May.
More of this please.
Quick links: alt-rock, ambient, Buddha Machines
The latest release on Shenzhen DIY label Small Animals Records comprises three delightfully “hyped up, shoddily produced” tracks from Wuhan-based “alternative rock all-girl band” Pepper Heart:
The wonderful Li Yilei has a new album coming in March on the excellent Métron Records. Billed as “an introspective reflection on the journey through childhood” it’s as immersively brilliant as its ambient predecessor.
The first edition of FM3’s highly sought after, Brian Eno-endorsed Buddha Machine has been given a physical reissue. Read the definitive origin story on the little loop-filled boxes from the renowned writer, DJ and presenter Steve Barker in The Wire.
“One of the most important cultural heritages of the Uyghurs”
Speaking of The Wire, here’s a great playlist delving into the world of Shenzhen’s Tomorrow Festival. No paywall, no nonsense, just what they describe as
“A winter holidays special exploring pathways into Chinese music opened up since attending the Tomorrow Festival in Shenzhen in 2015. Co-presented by Chris Bohn with guest host Anla Li, music/culture writer and Wire contributor, and former manager of B10 Live, Shenzhen.”
It’s packed with Concrete Avalanche favourites such as The River, Orchestration, Walkman!, 33EMYBW, and Mamer. Give it a listen here.
One of the artists who performed at the most recent edition of Tomorrow Festival was the Mekit Dolan Muqam Group, a collection of musicians who perform “a unique form of folk music and one of the most important cultural heritages of the Uyghurs.” Old Heaven Books, the Shenzhen-based record shop and label involved in putting on Tomorrow Festival, took the opportunity to invite the group into the studio, resulting in this extraordinary record:
The intro to the album states:
“The Muqam of the Uyghurs is characterized by its diversity of musical styles. Apart from the classical Twelve Muqam, there are also multiple folk Muqam traditions with distinct regional characteristics, including Kumul Maqam, Turpan Muqam, Dolan Muqam, and Ili Muqam. Among them, Dolan Muqam is often considered as the wildest, if not the uncanniest tradition that still exists.”
Released on triple vinyl LP, double CD, and digital, the physical forms of the album also come with beautifully-produced photo booklets. It’s a fascinating listen and another important piece of cultural preservation work by the ever-reliable Old Heaven.
Bayawan is out now.
Five not-so-easy pieces: experimental sounds round-up
Li Zenghui (ex-Omnipotent Youth Society, Black Midi collaborator, avant saxophonist extraordinaire) and Yang Haisong (PK14 frontman, godfather of Chinese post-punk, Beijing rock lynchpin) recently teamed up for an experimental live show at Shanghai’s Yuyintang Park. The performance was recorded and is presented here as the two-track Once Upon a Time in Shanghai. A reader who found this via the Concrete Avalanche playlists told me it reminded them of John Zorn…
Another Shanghai live recording here, from one of the city’s smallest venues: a tiny hidden bookshop located in a residential building close to the city centre. It comes from the Free Music Collective of Shanghai and features renowned sound artists Adi, Jun-Y Ciao, Xu Cheng and Tian whistling, hence the title (and if that’s too musical for you, you can find the same players performing ‘Polystyrene Box Quartet’ here, a tribute to “a material symbol of the lockdown period of the city”):
Jun-Y Ciao also features on this recent release from Zhu Wenbo’s Beijing cassette label Zoomin’ Nights. Zhu is the other player here, lending clarinet to Jun-Y’s soprano sax in a record entitled Handle, Nail and Rubber Dinosaur.
Here’s a 20ish minute piece from free jazz experimentalist Lao Dan, mixing kung-fu film clips with processed flute sounds, recorded live in Urumqi:
And finally, here’s the debut release from the Shanghai Oscillators Group, who describe themselves as “an amateur electronic acoustic band […] The entry threshold for this group is low, the composition of the team is complex, the safety risks are great, and the expectation of downward oscillation is strong.”
Exit music
As you can probably tell, the focus for this newsletter tends to be on artists who sit outside of the pop sphere. That’s largely because they’re covered better elsewhere, not necessarily because of some snobbish agenda. I’m no Mandopop expert, but I do occasionally check in on that world, and one pop artist who always seems to me to be doing more interesting things than most is Akini Jing.
For her new record Villain, which once again sees her link up with multi-talented producer Chace, she’s switched up her cyberpunk aesthetic for a kung fu-inspired look, with an appropriately action-packed series of music videos telling her character’s story to boot. If you’re not into the oscillators above, perhaps you’ll get a kick out of this:
Didn't know Akini Jing. Very, very cool.