Hualun scorch off to utopia + Harry Styles' favourite Beijing record label
Hualun scorch off to utopia + Harry Styles' favourite Beijing record label
+ the godfathers of Chinese post-punk return
Hello and welcome to Concrete Avalanche, a Substack about music from China. Thanks very much for being here and a special thank you to everyone who’s helped share and support this project so far.
In this edition: New Hualun, new PK14 (almost), new Bloodz Boi, a retro release from Run Run Run, and a retrospective for one of Shanghai’s artistic lynchpins. And yes, a brief mention of the man who maybe spat on Chris Pine.
Free Concrete Avalanche playlists, including a collection of Hualun’s best bits, are available for your listening pleasure right here.
“Free and open”: Hualun impress on new album Tempus
I haven’t bothered to go back and actually check the data on this, but I reckon Hualun are probably at the top of the list of most-mentioned artists in this nascent Substack. (A huge honour for them I’m sure.) I make no apologies for that — I’m a fan and they’re a fantastic band. Few surprises then that new music from them is a cause for some excitement at Concrete Avalanche towers.
Back when I interviewed Hualun for The Wire in the summer of 2021, the band told me they were working with Beijing’s bié Records on a new album. They wouldn’t be drawn too much on the details, but said it would be “different” to their previous material. A year or so later, when I spoke to someone at bié about whether the record was any closer to seeing the light of day, they said they hoped so — they’d heard it and it seemed like it was nearly there. How did it sound? Different, they told me.
Late last year, the band kindly sent me a preview and I finally got to hear just how different it was. On March 31st, you get to find out too, with the full release of Tempus. Before that, there are two tracks from the album available to whet your appetite: ‘Scorch Off Towards the Utopia’ which comes with escapist synths and a beautiful freak of a music video (made with AI; watch above) and this one, which comes with a thick, Swans-like1 bassline:
If you’ve managed to track down all of Hualun’s discography (scattered as it is, on various labels across Bandcamp), you’ll know that shifts in direction aren’t particularly new for the band. And perhaps, Tempus won’t seem quite so “different” after all. Certainly, there have been hints at this new sound, whether through 2021’s wʌndərlænd compilation or last year’s Live By the Sea LP. But if your main encounters with Hualun to date have been through their outstanding soundtrack work (in particular the acclaimed An Elephant Sitting Still score), Tempus will no doubt feel like quite a jump. The band have talked of it being “more free and open for us” compared to their film accompaniments.
Ultimately, it’s still Hualun though, meaning that the quality of musicianship remains high and the ideas remain intriguing. They play with dub, krautrock, and swirling, glittering synths, but never lose their knack for a melody, something that’s been on display ever since they began as a grungey post-rock outfit in Wuhan in 2004.
Regardless of whether you’re a Hualun obsessive or have never heard of them before (or sit somewhere else on that spectrum), Tempus is well worth spending time with.
Tempus is available for pre-order now and out in full on March 31st.
The godfathers of Chinese post-punk return: 3/4 of PK14 + 1 new drummer = Lygort Quartet
Back at the end of August 2021, Maybe Mars slipped out a surprise single entitled ‘The August is Not Finished Yet’. There was little information given about the band behind it, who were called The Vladimirs. Yet it only took for the vocals to kick in to dispel some of the mystery. They belonged to Yang Haisong, one of the most distinctive voices in Chinese rock, a Beijing scene lynchpin and frontman for the godfathers of Chinese post-punk, PK14.
I wrote at the time that the track sounded like something from PK14’s classic Whoever and Whoever album, i.e. a powerful bit of post-punk, crackling with energy. More tracks followed, sporadically. Then things went quiet again. Yang returned to his noise experiments and production work.
Now, via STO Records, we have a new iteration of the project: Lygort Trio, featuring ‘Vladimir Jantitov’, ‘Vladimir Swicevic’, and ‘Vladimir Lygort’, better known as Yang, long-time PK14 bassist Shi Xudong, and Li Zichao, one of the country’s most talented drummers and who you may know from his work with Dirty Fingers, Sleeping Dogs and The Molds. Shortly after Lygort Trio’s eponymous new album was released, I came across a social media post announcing the ‘formation’ of Lygort Quartet for a forthcoming tour. The new addition? PK14 guitarist Xu Bo.
This next bit may shock you: the Lygort Trio record sounds a lot like a new PK14 album.
That’s no bad thing of course. Especially as it sounds like peak PK14, the kind of urgent, spiky rock music that characterised Whoever and 2005’s White Paper. I’m very much here for it. Any fans of PK14 should be too.
Lygort Trio’s Lygort Trio is out now.
Tainted love: Bloodz Boi is back
I say ‘back’, he never really went away. After dropping not one but two notable albums last year, the musically shapeshifting rapper has put out a new five track mixtape as yy02, entitled Tainted Artist. The release finds him working with five producers for a supply of pluggnb2 beats and a sound that’s been likened to James Ferraro.
More background on Bloodz Boi right here. Go support him on Bandcamp and you’ll also be supporting a whole host of obscure, interesting artists — he’s one of the most prolific purchasers of music on that platform that I know, always looking to support other acts.
Tainted Artist is out now.
Space Fruity’s flexible friend: Run Run Run get really retro
[Clarification: apparently this isn’t a proper flexi-disc release, but a flexi-inspired coloured vinyl. My mistake.]
Other than at China’s growing network of independent vinyl shops (more on them closer to Record Store Day), one of the places I look for records in China is at curio and antique markets. Places like the Xiangguo Antique City in Fuzhou, Chengdu’s Masaicheng Collectibles Market, or the old ‘ghost market’ in Shanghai (so named because it began at dawn, giving vendors an eerie look in the low light). Every city has their own version of these and I tend to track them down whenever I visit somewhere.
It’s rare that you get a stall dedicated to just records, but often you’ll find someone with at least a few music offerings hidden beneath the old books, Red memorabilia and jade off-cuts: laser disc KTV compilations from the ’80s, old gramophone records, collections of Cantopop cassettes and Taiwanese tapes, and lots and lots of flexi discs. These wobbly PVC alternatives to the traditional vinyl record were mass produced by China Records starting in the late 1960s. They usually featured revolutionary songs and were intended for use by radio stations rather than individuals, given the paucity of personal record players in China at the time.
Having spent many an early morning leafing through piles of flexi discs, it made me smile to see the latest release on Space Fruity Records, one of my favourite Beijing imprints, home to the brilliant Sleeping Dogs, and a label once endorsed by Harry Styles at an Ariana Grande concert (no, really).
Just look at this thing of beauty:
Here it is in amongst the old flexi discs you usually see at the aforementioned markets:
So what of the music? Well, it’s two new tracks from Run Run Run. Taking their band name from a Velvet Underground track, their debut on Maybe Mars, 2019’s Hoon, built layer upon layer of psychedelic rock; their eponymous follow up a year later went for a more direct, post-punk and krautrock sound.
The tracks on this 7”, ‘Lost in Nanning’ and ‘March Third Infatuation’, do something pretty different again, playing up the laidback southern influence in the band’s sound, which comes from songwriter Xiao Dou’s time spent amid the mountains of Guizhou (and now, from the title of the first track, in Guangxi). They’re a pair of old-timey-feeling, tap-along guitar pop tunes, with the A side even featuring a sweet male-female vocal duet — golden retro tracks that feel highly appropriate for the old-school format.
The new EP doesn’t seem to have made it to Bandcamp yet (although the records do come with download codes), but if you want to get your hands on one of the limited edition flexi discs, you can see if there are any left via the QR code here. Otherwise, the slow-burning Hoon is well worth a listen:
Faith in the city: IdleBeats mark 12th anniversary
If you happen to be in Shanghai right now, you should really go and check out the 12 year retrospective exhibition for screenprint masters IdleBeats. If you’re not, here’s some beautiful imagery from them to gaze lovingly at.
One of the first pieces we ever did at Time Out Shanghai was following IdleBeats’ Nini and Gregor through the process of making the above poster for The Shelter. They’ve gone on to produce eye-catching art for dozens of music events and record covers, in addition to their quirky, affectionate takes on the city.
From IdleBeats’ blurb:
“Memories of those who lived in Shanghai during the decade between 2010 and 2020 might have been bathed in golden light. The era gave rise to a spirit of hope and sense of togetherness among the community of locals and emigrants from around the world. Providing the soil for a flamboyant, colorful garden of artistic expression growing out of thousands of little clubs, bars, galleries, and pop-up spaces throughout the city.”
Or as the inimitable Morgan Short puts it:
“Much of the visual language of Shanghai’s underground scene in the decade spanning 2010 to 2020 can largely be attributed to one small, independent DIY screenprinting studio: IdleBeats. As any drunk Shanghai lifer in a bar will tell you, the period marked a relative highpoint in vibrancy and output for the city in terms underground culture and music.
“Yes, the ‘pre-Covid era’, three and three million years ago, when Shanghai was a comparatively more open place and creators were freer to move about and make interesting things happen.”
Relating so hard to this. Go follow IdleBeats on Instagram to immediately upgrade your social media scrolling experience and find the exhibition details here.
Exit music
Long-time Beijing resident, producer and pipa player Brad Seippel has released a new EP under his thruoutin moniker. He describes it as “a fusion of ambient experimental themes and gqom beats”, and invited Dong Yang and He Kairan to provide wind and percussion as well as JustSYD to add vocals.
Cheers Yfvana for that likeness.
I’ll save you the Google: it’s “heavy 808s and busy, sharp percussion underscored by soulful melodies and fluttering high-tempo bars to create a fusion of trap, rap and R&B” apparently.