Howie Lee's hidden treasure + The Big Band shocks

+ the best music from the first half of 2023

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In this issue: The (highly subjective) best alternative music to come out of China in the first half of 2023, a load of fantastic, interesting electronic music, the frontman for post-rock greats Wang Wen guesting as a vocalist, Big Band spoilers, and songs “achieved from the frozen and buried snow in the midst of the future.”

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Major leagues: Hualun kick off new improvisation-focused EP series

It’s been less than six months since Hualun, one of China’s finest bands, released Tempus, their latest full-length record. And yet here they are back with a new EP.

The band seem endlessly productive. Tempus was technically only their third studio album proper since forming almost two decades ago in Wuhan, yet the amount of music they’d put out since second album Asian River made that statement feel ridiculous. There’d been celebrated film soundtracks, themed series of EPs, live albums, and collaborations with a wide array of Bandcamp-based labels from across the world.

This new EP isn’t even their first new release since Tempus; there’s already been a track to mark the passing of Ryuichi Sakamoto and a vinyl issue of the excellent Homework in Quiet Time, enlivened by white+ drummer Wang Xu. (A new split with bleed Air is also due out on September 1.)

All of which, as a self-confessed hardcore fan of Hualun, is fantastic, frankly.

The Minor Trio I will be out on September 22 via Katuktu Collective (that link will go live from Thursday 9pm PST, when you’ll be able to is now live for you to pre-order the EP). The California-based label previously worked with Hualun for the release of two episodes in the band’s cinematic-inspired Scene series and before that on the second instalment in their “unexpected moments” collection w​ʌ​nd​ə​rl​æ​nd.

Comprised of three tracks, the new cassette — which I’ve been fortunate enough to hear in advance — finds Hualun “exploring the improvisation of trio forms and ‘internalized rhythm music’ utilizing sampling, drum machine, synthesizer, and minimalist piano.”

Opener ‘Inner Vision’ sets the tone. A guitar-driven number with underlying synths that vibrate and vacillate, it puts down a marker for a series that will “focus on the texture of sound”.

‘Drops’, while distinct, feels closer to the textures explored on Tempus, with what begins as a simple refrain but gradually spirals into something more (gently) chaotic as the band build layers of rhythmic structures only to unpick them again.

Finally, ‘Stranger Than Paradise’ is a more pensive but no less beautiful song that, much like their Scene material, has the sense of a soundtrack for an engrossing arthouse film that’s yet to be made.

In sum, it’s another reminder of why this band should be treasured and of how, with their constant restlessness and desire to experiment, everything they produce is worth hearing.

The Minor Trio I will be out on September 22, with a preview and pre-order available from Thursday 31 August now! A reminder that it’s Bandcamp Friday on September 1, meaning any purchase you make on the platform will see more of your money go to the labels and artists.

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“Instinctive collision”: Howie Lee and Liú Pī come together for a jazz-influenced EP

Click into the new EP from Howie Lee and Liú Pī on Bandcamp, and you’ll find it tagged with ‘bass’, ‘garage’, and ‘trap’. But while there are occasional echoes of these genres, ‘Chinese traditional’ feels like a closer association. Perhaps more telling, on iTunes the five-track record is classified as ‘jazz’.

Alright, Walking on Thin Ice might feel a little out of place nestled next to Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis at your local record shop, but there’s an unmistakeable jazz-like quality to some of the music on this collection of two improvised pieces and three collaborative compositions, even if it’s just in the structure (or lack thereof) of what they create.

Lee is the founder of pioneering Beijing club night, collective and label Do Hits. Having helped build a trademark sound that merged traditional Chinese instrumentation with experimental yet dancefloor-ready beats, the producer’s recent work has seen him exploring more sweeping, spiritually-driven and ‘organic’ sounding instrumentation. Here’s a recent favourite of mine from him in that vein:

Liú, meanwhile, is best known as drummer with experimental rockers Dreaming Julie, a band who have also toyed with jazz-like structures in the past. Another relevant bullet point on his CV: he’s founder of the Instrumental Soundscapes improvisation series held at Beijing’s UFO Space.

Together, the pair create absorbing pieces, with Liú’s sometimes syncopated drumming scampering over the top of Lee’s oscillating synths.

As the official blurb holds:

“Walking on Thin Ice is a direct and instinctive collision between the musicians, or to Howie Lee, a 'terma' (Tibetan Buddhist term for hidden treasure or hidden teaching) that he and Liu achieved from the frozen and buried snow in the midst of the future.”

Walking on Thin Ice is out now, including on fetching green vinyl.

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You can listen, you can ChinaTalk: favourites from the first half of 2023

Should’ve posted this a few weeks ago, but the good people at

ChinaTalk

had me on to share my favourite music out of China from the first half of this year.

So it wasn’t just me mumbling, I invited the brilliant Voision Xi to share some of her highlights too. Have a listen here:

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Run on: Mice produces electronic music for coping with the rat race

“This album has to be listened to while running,” says audio-visual producer Li Hongxiang, aka Mice, of his new album Run Mice Run. In case the album title and that quote didn’t make the message clear, he elaborates:

“It can be walking, trotting, stepping, jogging, running, running hard, jumping, running and squatting, running sideways, running backwards, running with clothes on, running shirtless, running in the sun, running on flooded streets, running on icy roads...”

You probably get the idea at this point, but he’s still not done.

“Running to auditory hallucinations and intracranial high pressure, running until the legs, feet, arms and torso start to recognize each other again. I ran to the top of the mountain and bought a bottle of 20 yuan mineral water. I ran out of town and got an air-conditioned express train ticket to get back. I ran home and took a shower and went to bed.”

Fortunately, I feel like Mice has done enough running for all of us at this point, so we can just kick back and enjoy his carefully pieced together, pleasingly paced electronic music.

Run arrives almost three years after Mice’s first album, the slightly more abrasive 0.01%. That effort slotted in nicely with the experimental club music found on Hangzhou collective Function Lab’s nascent (at the time) label, but while he hasn’t lost his edge, Mice’s new record is a calmer, more considered affair. Despite all that talk about running, it’s good music to work to, or to just sit and listen to.

It appeared as part of a pair of releases from another Hangzhou collective, Offscript. The other record is Background Noise by dropdown and is perhaps more closely aligned with the sounds of Mice’s earlier work. Either way, Offscript are certainly a label to keep a close eye on.

Run Mice Run is out now. Both it and Background Noise are available on cassette in China through Offscript’s Weidian store, which you can find via their WeChat.

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How are things going on The Big Band?

Interesting times for music talent shows, given the suspension of China’s version of The Voice.

Following the yuan

has more on the background to that here.

Anyway, last time out I boldly, snobbishly declared that I wasn’t really going to engage with The Big Band, the Pop Idol-ish show for indie bands that was a sensation in China for its first two series. Well, it didn’t take long, but I cracked.

Sort of. I still refuse to sit through the *two to three hours* that make up each week’s episode. But I have started watching little clips here and there. At this rate, by the next issue of Concrete Avalanche I’ll probably be watching all episodes, clicking on all the extra videos pumped out by iQIYI, and making mass orders of whatever products they’re relentlessly pushing this year.

It all started with Absolute Purity. Here’s a band that I quite like, one whose frontwoman I first saw live over 15 years ago (with Guai Li), and whose debut album was produced by Angus Andrew of Liars. So when I saw a flurry of WeChat posts about their Big Band appearance, I was sucked in.

They flopped. Honestly, this wasn’t hugely unexpected. There’s been a load of comments on social media from fans about how the audience just didn’t ‘get’ them, that there “aren’t really any bands who sound like them in China” and that that made it difficult for the audience to digest. Probably. They also played a track that… is not their best. It’s also worth bearing in mind that this is a TV show first and foremost and that to go far you need to have a storyline that the producers can use. Not every band has that — some just make good music.

There were similar reactions among the more dedicated music accounts on WeChat to math-rock act Griffo’s performance, which received the lowest number of votes on the episode. Zhang Yadong, former producer for Faye Wong and Pu Shu and the ‘judge’ who is positioned as the one who really knows about music, apparently spent about 40 minutes enthusiastically quizzing the band on their sound and explaining its ‘weird’ rhythms to the others in the studio.

For their part, the band put a brave face on it, essentially saying that just getting to the show was a “success” and that they hope their appearance will help bring this kind of music to a broader audience. Here’s hoping.

Elsewhere, there were some bigger shocks, with Birdstriking and the first series’ break out newcomers Jiulian Zhenren both getting kicked off early doors. Eight Immortal Restaurant who I highlighted / cursed last time were also booted out, although they were quickly “resurrected” and will continue on the show, for now.

This weekend just gone we also got our first look at Second Hand Rose on the show:

They were received very well and there’s a sense they could go all the way. It remains to be seen how wild they’ll be allowed to go within the confines of a mainstream Chinese TV show however.

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Exit music

After 20-odd years of making mostly instrumental music, Wang Wen frontman Xie Yugang is clearly getting a taste for the whole singing thing. Having provided extensive vocals on his band’s latest album, he’s now added his gravelly delivery to new tunes from Shaoxing-based rock act Little Wizard.

(Side note: Wang Wen played a special ‘sunrise set’ on the coast at Aranya at the weekend, beginning at 5am — will try and find a video for the next issue; they’re also playing in Taiwan, at a more normal time, in October.)

The Xie version of the song ‘Neurosism’ is part of a two track remix release that also features a pounding rework by Shanghai-based producer Rainsoft. Here’s what I wrote about the original tracks last time out and here’s a video for the new ‘Neurosism’: