Chinese Record Store Day releases + a punk Eason Chan cover
+ China's finest experimentalists x an iconic poet + a new 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: Guangdong shoegaze, Chengdu skate punk, a new Carsick Cars music video, a couple of Chinese RSD 2025 releases, a bewitching recording from Asia’s largest railway station, and some of China’s best experimental artists collaborate with a renowned poet for a new album.
Poetry in motion: some of China’s greatest musicians combine with famed writer Han Dong
Modern Sky are one of the biggest — if not the biggest — independent music labels in China. Founded at the tail-end of 1997, their early releases focused on alternative Beijing acts such as New Pants and Supermarket. Today, they’re solidly commercial, with a particularly successful festival brand that pops up in locations all across the country (Cornelius and 4Eve are headliners in Beijing and Dongguan this International Labour Day holiday) and even beyond — they’ll host one of their Strawberry Festivals in Tokyo this summer, for example.
Yet while their trajectory has mirrored and often spurred that of indie artists driving into the mainstream, they still maintain a number of spin-off brands and sub-labels that dabble in more interesting music. One of those is Badhead, which was founded almost exactly one year after its Modern Sky parent and recently put out its 100th release.
The record in question sees an all-star experimental cast assembled to soundtrack a collection of poems by Han Dong. Han was born in Nanjing in 1961 but grew up in the countryside after his parents were sent out of the city during the Cultural Revolution. He eventually became a teacher and began writing poetry, and according to Granta, “by the 1990s was regarded as one of the finest avant-garde poets of his generation.”
It seems appropriate then, that Badhead corralled some of the finest avant-garde musicians in China to provide music to go with Han’s poems. Yang Haisong — the godfather of Chinese post-punk, producer of iconic Chinese indie records, and a musician whose own work has regularly incorporated poetry and spoken word in recent years — opens the album and is followed by Wang Wen’s Xie Yugang, free jazz saxophonist and producer Li Zenghui, avant folk hero Xiao He, experimental pioneers Li Jianhong and Wei Wei, and renowned sound artist Sheng Jie aka gogoj, to name just a few. There’s a huge amount of talent on display, resulting in some pleasingly diverse sounds across the album.
Han’s poetry is often referred to as ‘colloquial’ or straightforward — he isn’t especially interested in deploying flowery prose in his work — and his delivery is likewise unvarnished, making for an interesting juxtaposition as the musicians build distinct sonic textures around his words. It also makes for a fitting follow on from the first record in Badhead’s Contemporary Chinese Poets series, which featured the similarly direct poetry of Sichuanese scribe Yang Li over considered instrumentals from fellow Chengdu-born artist Huan Qing (who also features on this new release).
Frustratingly, fewer than half of the double album’s 31 tracks have made it to international platforms so far. Hopefully Badhead will add the full release to their newish Bandcamp page soon. In the meantime, you can find 13 tracks from the record via the YouTube embeds above and on iTunes (linked below). Even in its partial state, it’s well worth checking out.
Fumo is out now, sort of. Some of it is on iTunes and YouTube. If you have WeChat, you can buy it on double CD and triple vinyl with an accompanying book via Modern Sky’s shop.
Chinese Record Store Day releases
China seemed to celebrate Record Store Day a week later than the rest of the world this year (possibly so shops could import overseas RSD releases, not sure). The timings may have been a little different to other countries, but there was no lack of enthusiasm for Record Store Day 2025, with record fairs and events taking place everywhere from Chengdu to Changsha, Guangzhou to Hangzhou.
Not many of the China-specific vinyl releases put out for RSD 2025 have made it to Bandcamp or other international platforms just yet, but here are a couple, both from indie label Space Circle.
First up was a purple two-LP version of Dalian post-rock icons Wang Wen’s 2018 album Invisible City:
Then there was a snazzy blue reissue of Xi’an post-punks FAZI’s three-track Invisible Water EP:
And speaking of FAZI, they just put out a new video for a track from their most recent album Oriental 101 w Future Prairie:
Related
Head over heels: new Guangzhou shoegaze / dreampop
The young Chinese band compilation Kind of Shoegaze Vol. 2, which came out late last year, was full of fuzzy gems. Now the band behind one of them, a live track nestled halfway through the record, have just released their debut EP. Yet Guangzhou-based quartet Love Letter Lost aren’t entirely as new as they may first appear.
Although they officially formed in 2023, the group of friends have known each other for years, and two of them (singer siyu and bassist Laoyu) previously played together in Pocari Sweet, an act I picked out as a personal favourite in my Chinese shoegaze round-up.
As with Pocari Sweet’s material, Love Letter Lost’s new Secret Words EP walks a line between shoegaze and dreampop, with Cocteau Twins as much (if not more) of an influence as My Bloody Valentine.
Whatever genre you want to label them with, there’s little doubting Love Letter Lost’s knack for crafting songs. And the sense that this is a ‘new’ band who very much know what they’re doing is supported by them bringing in Chinese shoegaze lynchpin Chen Zhenchao to mix the record. A group to watch.
Secret Words is out now.
Related
Summer in the city: Chengdu punks Gaiwaier release new album
Chengdu punk act Gaiwaier — who celebrated their tenth anniversary last year and memorably once played a gig in a McDonald’s — are back with a new album.
The 16-track 梦境中的夏天, which I’m translating as Mid-Dream’s Summer, features songs about everything from developing a dislike for tequila to dealing with low self-esteem and speaking your mind. It’s essentially a straight-up punk record — the lyrics are gruffly barked out to chugging guitars and oi oi beats — though the band do add some classic ska elements for the first time on ‘Big City Mice’.
If you like the look of that artwork incidentally, you should know that the band have joined forces with skateboard manufacturer LoveDali:
The band immediately followed up the release of their new album with a three-track EP of pop covers, featuring numbers made famous by Taiwanese singers Cyndi Wang and Zheng Zhihua, as well as Hong Kong megastar Eason Chan. Safe to say Gaiwaier’s versions are a little different to the originals.
梦境中的夏天 is out now.
Stranger at a train station: a random waiting hall harmonica recording
This release on Lanzhou-based label Daybreak is only about five minutes long, but I keep coming back to it. It comprises three snatched recordings by Chen Pinliang of a stranger playing the harmonica in the enormous Beijing Fengtai railway station.
“The largest station in Asia was empty and boring,” writes Chen, who had gotten to Fengtai three hours before their train departed. “We counted our steps to measure the waiting hall and visited every shop in the station. We were bored. […] Suddenly, the sound of a harmonica floated out from the rest area.”
The result is a few simple harmonica notes playing out over the announcements and bustle familiar to anyone who’s set foot in a Chinese train station.
“I wanted to chat with her, but I was afraid of disturbing her,” Chen continues. “In the end, I just sat diagonally opposite her, listened to her performance, and recorded some of it.”
It’s somehow rather beautiful.
三段口琴 is out now as a name-your-price download.
Exit music
Take a mind-bending tour of bedrooms, bathrooms, and back alleys with this new music video from Carsick Cars. It’s for ‘Stage Riot’, one of the stand-out tracks from their first album in a decade (and in even longer with the original line-up).
New Carsick Cars track is a banger. Glad to see them releasing new music with the original line-up!
I saw carsick cars at a small club in Beijing in 2008. Wild to think they are still making music and, that, at the time I had no idea they would go on to become legendary. Inspiring, really.