How illegally sold scrap CDs influenced China's underground + Chinese cold wave

+ The Chinese are Coming on Bandcamp + 'A Drunken Octopus in Jazz Club'

Feb 19, 2025

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. Contribute here if you’d like:

Buy me a coffee / Bandcamp download

In this issue: psych-rock sutras and space adventures, Chinese cold wave, a 33EMYBW-soundtracked computer game, electro-shoegaze, a vinyl release from the makers of the Buddha Machine, China’s most fearless punk band, and a new zine sees an experimental music pioneer discuss China’s dakou (‘cut-out’) phenomenon.

Hole lotta love: experimental music pioneer Yan Jun reflects on China’s dakou phenomenon

Shortly after I first moved to Shanghai in 2005, a wander along Suzhou Creek one weekend brought me to an electronics market. Drawn in by the lines of people on the bridge outside selling old-school games consoles and computer parts next to piles of remote controls, I soon found myself on the second floor where several stalls had boxes of CDs on offer. The music they sold was far more eclectic and interesting than the CDs I’d mostly come across in the city at that point — knock-off compilations of tracks by Taiwanese pop acts like Jolin Tsai and SHE being sold from street carts. But what really stood out to me was that a large number of the CDs had small rectangular holes punched through them. This was my first encounter with dakou.

Dakou CDs and cassettes were foreign releases sent to China for recycling after the country opened up. In an attempt to prevent the items being resold, customs authorities would punch or drill holes in the cases and the media, hence the name ‘dakou’, usually translated as some variation of ‘cut out’ or ‘saw-gash’. But of course, this didn’t really stop China’s canny entrepreneurs. Rather than treating these items as waste, they found ways to fix them, or simply sold them on with the holes in, perhaps meaning one or two tracks on a CD wouldn’t play properly, for example.

Dakou items became widely available in major Chinese cities in the 1990s, enabling a certain set of musicians and fans to get a taste of international music that was otherwise near-impossible to come by in the country. Everything from Miles Davis to Madonna, hip hop to death metal. Naturally, influences were varied, but if you saw an alternative Chinese band in the early- to mid-’00s, chances were they’d at least dabbled in dakou — as the above documentary notes.

My reminiscence about the Suzhou Creek electronics market and the mornings I spent flicking through CDs there was sparked by a new release from Yan Jun. Yan is a pioneer of experimental music in China, and someone with a dakou connection that obviously runs a lot deeper and is far more consequential than that of this European newsletter writer. As part of a recent release for Chicago’s Party Perfect!!! label, he’s provided an essay on dakou for a special riso-printed zine.

In it, he talks about his personal experiences with dakou music and the artists he discovered when “digging for gold”, as he puts it, as well as how the phenomenon developed and eventually petered out. As a taste, this is how he first discovered dakou:

“i was walking on my university’s campus on a spring evening in 1992, while i was still a first-year student. someone, or two, was squatting there with a small piece of carpet or something on the ground. perhaps a streetlight was above. a few objects were on the carpet. cassettes! i approached and squatted down to check. the cassettes were strange: they all had a saw-cut gap somewhere on the case and the body of the cd. i also didn’t recognize any of the names.”

The music accompanying the release is typically experimental, but regardless of what you make of the sounds, Yan’s article is a great read (and is also available as a pdf with the digital version).

Yan ended up throwing out a large portion of his collection (who knows, maybe they were ‘recycled’ again in a similar manner?) a few years back, but before he did he put together this radio show with excerpts from his favourite dakou discs and tapes, featuring everything from the Gnawa Musicians of Marrakesh to William S. Boroughs, Shoukichi Kina to Steve Reich:

As with most things of significance from the alternative Chinese music scene, there’s a great Josh Feola interview with Yan where he talks not just about dakou, but about his excellent Subjam label, the rise of experimental music in China, and more. And if you still want to dig a little deeper into dakou after that, here’s a piece from The Wire where Li Jianhong talks about his collection, an academic look at it all from Jeroen de Kloet, and another insightful examination of the phenomenon by Nathanel Amar.

And, of course, there’s Yan Jun’s zine.

cut-off is out now.

“Does DJ have feelings? Those cold and avant-garde styles are just tools. He is recording the love, hate and hatred of Shanghai.”

This is how Heimu, a psych-rocker-turned-DJ, introduces his new album De Luna Amour, an almost hour-long slice of Chinese cold wave.

When Heimu first emerged on the Shanghai music scene around a decade ago, it was as one third of psych-rock act Nonplus of Color. That band unfortunately fell apart not long after their debut EP, with the other two members — bassist Da Bai and former So So Modern drummer Daniel Nagels — going on to form Mirrors. Heimu, whose Bandcamp bio says that “If he hadn't fallen in love with music, he would probably be in the Forbes 500”, messed around with a few other guitar-driven projects before seemingly finding more interest in Shanghai’s clubs than its rock venues.

After years on the DJ circuit, suddenly here he is with a collection of ten dark electro tracks that at times sounds like a Chinese Cold Cave record.

The LP references everything from Carlos Castaneda books to “the sun reaching out to stir the nebula” as it picks over love, hatred, and the upheaval caused by both. But even if you can’t understand the lyrics, there’s little mistaking the attitude that cuts through the record — and when it’s at its best, De Luna Amour pulses with a taut, intoxicating energy.

月光爱人/De Luna Amour is out now.

Unearthed: Buddha Machine makers FM3 release vinyl record

In May last year, around two decades on from the very first edition, we got a new version of the Buddha Machine, the little box of loops produced by Christiaan Virant and Zhang Jian. Better known as FM3, the pair’s creation has drawn the attention of Brian Eno, David Byrne, and Philip Glass over the years. (If you want to read more about the Buddha Machine, I direct you to the definitive origin story on the devices from renowned writer, DJ and presenter Steve Barker in The Wire.)

Now, we have music from the duo on a medium that doesn’t quite lend itself to portable playing in the same way: vinyl (fetching translucent vinyl, to be specific). Entitled 考古 (Archeology), the record is a collection of previously unreleased pieces composed by FM3 between 2001-02, pre-Buddha Machine.

The record, which went on sale yesterday after some production delays, is produced by Beijing’s Psychic label, which dedicates itself to “unearthing, organizing, and publishing out-of-print and unissued musical works connected to the early 21st century Chinese avant-garde”. Psychic tends not to put the actual music up on Bandcamp, but you can purchase their physical releases on the platform. Otherwise, if you’re able to navigate WeChat you’ll find the record for sale through the label’s official account there — though be quick, it’s limited to 200 copies.

Regardless of whether you snag an LP, the release is a good excuse to revisit the duo’s work, both via the Buddha Machine article linked above and FM3’s own Bandcamp page, where there’s a multitude of delicately crafted ambient loops (and a special remix album) to explore.

Journey to the East + Misty Mountain Pagodas: a Chinese psych-rock double-bill

A quick glance at Spring Hill Post Tide’s Bandcamp page tells you a lot about their sound. Swirling hot pinks and purples abound amid classic ’60s-style fonts and 2001: A Space Odyssey-like artwork. It’s great.

The Wuhan band back up the visuals with some thoroughly cosmic psych-rock, as evidenced on their new release Journey to the East, which is largely improvised and recorded live. Inspired by “the dangerous and dark space science fiction of the 80s and the wonderful and fantastic space music aesthetics of the 70s”, the group recently welcomed flautist Zhou Sansan and saxophonist Yan Zhentao to their line-up, adding another dimension to their sound.

The title of Khunathi’s Misty Mountain Pagoda may conjure up the idea of wispy ambient sounds floating on high, but it doesn’t take long to discover that the psych-rock quartet are on a different kind of path. Or stream. It’s the band name that gives a more appropriate visual reference point for their sound:

“The Khunathi River (Qiunaodihe) lies approximately 200 miles southwest of the western section of the Karakoram. According to legend, anyone who drinks from its waters will be compelled to dance non-stop.”

There are some meditative moments, but these sections are often just the band winding up for something bigger, more energetic, and sometimes a little chaotic. The band attempt to “capture the brilliance of spontaneous creativity” as they “weave tales of Xiyu (Western Regions of China) and craft apocryphal sutras”.

Journey to the East and Misty Mountain Pagoda are both out now.

Winter’s tail: new label TAILNIA offers up a string of experimental releases

In my round-up of Chinese music in 2023, I wrote of my excitement around experimental Guangdong band The river, Orchestration, Walkman! They promptly went on to release no new music in 2024.

That’s not really the whole picture though. The band did continue with oddball, sometimes impromptu performances and quirky community building, with merch such as customised kites and Lunar New Year decorations. There was just nothing much I could write about in any great detail in this newsletter from them.

While we wait for them to put out something new on their Bandcamp page, here’s an hour of off-the-wall experimentalism from one member of the band, Pang Pang. Using “instruments or objects such as clarinet, whistles, pianos, vocals, metal lids, water, glass, tables, chairs, doors, etc”, the cassette release comes as two tracks on Bandcamp, but is really 22 separate tracks and short, sometimes sharp bursts of sound with titles such as ‘A Wall Clock, A Cat, A Fan’, ‘A Drunken Octopus in Jazz Club’, and ‘Metallic Cap 3’.

It’s one of a slew of releases from new label TAILNIA, which has grown out of a series of experimental-leaning shows in Wuhan over the past couple of years. Largely based on label founder Ziyang’s recordings of TAILNIA events, there are releases from the likes of psych-ish drone act Acid Lumo (recorded in an air-raid shelter) and “shitty/serious noise act” Diarrhea Agent (live in Yiwu), along with Ziyang’s solo work, in which they present a trio of phone recordings of sounds made with contact mics and a mixing board. An imprint to keep an eye on.

Winter Planet is out now.

Just briefly: three electronic projects to check out

A recently wrapped exhibition at Michael Xufu Huang’s Beijing-based X Museum featured a computer game called Honey, soundtracked by pioneering Shanghai-based electronic music producer 33EMYBW and with involvement from other Concrete Avalanche favourites such as Gooooose, gogoj, and Hyph11e. A vinyl release of the music used has been promised, but in the meantime, the game has been made available for download via the X Museum website.

xvirtual.world

A post shared by @xvirtual.world

It’d been over two years since Xiamen electronic music collective I/O (Input/Output) had released one of their compilation records, but late last year (on New Year’s Eve in fact) they finally unveiled Vol.7 in their long-running, often techno-leaning series. After a tranquil opening with back-to-back ambient tracks, the compilation takes a more upbeat turn with YYS’s ‘Pulse’. Things get darker with Sin. and CHENKU — the latter of whom has also released on Ran and “Shanghai raised, Berlin based” techno label BeSure — before 4ms Chordimal provides one of the record’s stand-out tracks with ‘[圆形科技局]’ (‘[Circular Technology Bureau]’).

散瞳散 are a Chengdu-based duo who craft a sound “Blending cold dance beats and dreamlike electronic melodies into chaotic noise amidst dense guitar drones.” Having begun life as a more traditional shoegaze four-piece, the band found their current sound when half their line-up left and they began experimenting with electronic beats instead of bringing in a new drummer. They just released their debut EP — proof that China’s shoegaze revival isn’t merely confined to imitating bygone sounds.

Exit music

SMZB, one of China’s earliest — and certainly one of the country’s most fearless — punk bands, have set up a Bandcamp page. They’ve always had a strong DIY streak, but when your music is removed from platforms in your home country and labels there can no longer release your records, setting up your own shop probably makes sense. As the credits for 2020 album Once Upon a Time in the East note, “Most physical records were confiscated by government departments.”

Despite the barriers they have to grapple with, the band have promised that a new single is on the way very soon.

In the meantime, you can enjoy their Wuhan brand of Celtic punk — and of course, support them financially — by checking out their back catalogue right here.