Inner Mongolia's answer to King Crimson + a "folk eccentric"
+ an electronic album crafted from field recordings in Tibet + balloons
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In this issue: an epic prog-rock live album, a record of “fragmented” field recordings from Tibet, a standard bearer for the “bizarre Chinese folk underground cultural spirit” drawing comparisons to Tom Waits, some international tour news, an angry tirade against online influencers, “the most elegant traditional instrument in China”, and an album of balloon sounds.
In the court of Hai Qing: Inner Mongolian prog-rocker unveils live LP
When Hai Qing recorded his first album The Flesh almost a decade ago, he wanted it to “have a live feeling”. Born in the central Inner Mongolian county of Abag Banner, Hai Qing had taught himself classical guitar as a child before succumbing to the allure of rock ’n’ roll. His King Crimson-influenced debut LP saw him recruit renowned musicians Li Xing (of Red Scarf) and Deng Boyu (whose collaborators have included Lee Ranaldo and Mamer), with their recording sessions often as unfussy as the songs that they produced. “A lot of them we just played once through and recorded that version,” Hai Qing said when I spoke to him about the album’s release in 2017. “If there were small problems or errors we left them. I wanted it to feel real.”
In 2019, he and Li Xing reunited for Utopian Daymare, a name they liked so much they soon adopted it for their band, with Lu Gang replacing Deng, and bassist Liu Qinfeng and wind instrumentalist Zhang Meng cementing the lineup. Three years later, they released Golden Apple on Badhead Records, an album mixed and mastered by Alan Douches, a Grammy Award-winning engineer whose CV includes work with the Chemical Brothers and Motörhead.
The artist names, personnel and collaborators may have shifted over time, but Hai Qing hasn’t lost that passion for pursuing a “real” feeling. The latest case in point: the group’s new release is an energetic live album.
Recorded in Guangdong in May of 2023, the album features live versions of favourites such as the epic ‘Grandmother Catching Fish’ and ‘Refugees’. Some are reimagined: ‘Make Up’ is given an almost metal-ish makeover, with the band joined by two members of noisy grunge act JaJaTao — trumpeter Shi Yongshan and frontman Liu Yucao — to add extra layers to its previously straightforward structure. The result is immense.
Similarly, ‘The Flesh’, another favourite from Hai Qing’s debut LP, is transformed from a short, simply-structured song into a 10-and-a-half minute freak out, with the musicians cutting loose without compromising their tightness as a unit.
In short, the album is a whirlwind of prog-, art-, and psych-rock. And whether you’re already familiar with Hai Qing and co’s back catalogue to date, or this is your introduction to their sound, it’s an electrifying LP.
Wind Under the Scorching Sun (Live) is out now.
Godless: Λngelvs works wonders with fragmented field recordings from the Tibetan Plateau
Reading that Ling Geng, the new album from Beijing-based producer Λngelvs, is “built upon field recordings, with samples collected across the Tibetan Plateau region” and that those sounds include “wind, bells, and the chanting of monks,” you begin to form an idea of the album before you’ve even hit play: ambient, probably; certainly something slow in tempo and heavy on the spirituality. Yet that’s not what’s going on here.
Λngelvs has “fragmented, reassembled, and abstracted” these sounds and woven them together with intense, almost industrial beats. “Detached from their original cultural and semantic contexts, these sounds are transformed into elemental frequencies for constructing a sonic landscape,” as the introductory text puts it.
Released on Metasonar, the techno-focused label she co-founded with producer D-2, Λngelvs’ Ling Geng is presented as “neither a religious totem nor spiritual instruction. It is a mimetic construction of ritual. Godless, without doctrine or invocation, yet imbued with ceremonial structure and presence.”
Even aside from this intriguing premise, Ling Geng is an absorbing listen. At times its foundational elements are discernible, albeit in their reconstituted form; at others it feels far removed from its source material. It’s a sonic reimagining of an area so often reduced to cliche.
Ling Geng is out now.
Related:
Underground: “folk eccentric” Lu Jiangbo draws comparisons to Tom Waits on new LP
Chef, sculptor, calligrapher. It’s fair to say Lu Jiangbo has worn a few different hats over the years. Here’s another one: ‘dialect folk artist’. Yet while that might be an easy tag to reach for given he sings in a Zhejiang dialect and plays guitar, gongs, and drums, record label Modern Sky insist that it falls short. “He is a self-taught folk eccentric and rock outsider,” they say, dismissing the ‘dialect folk’ pigeonhole. “He is a contemporary inheritor of the most unconventional and bizarre Chinese folk underground cultural spirit.”
On 昂志范 (Ang Zhifan), his new album, the Zhejiang-based artist offers up a modern spin on traditional folk, describing scenes of rural life and referencing classical texts in his local tongue (he hails from Wenling, a coastal area about a 90-minute train ride south of Hangzhou). Musically, his songs slot quite happily alongside the avant-folk work of Glamorous Pharmacy or that band’s leader, and another Chinese “folk eccentric”, Xiao He. And while Ang Zhifan is dominated by Lu’s indomitable spirit, there are a couple of noteworthy experimentalist guest spots: Li Jianhong adds guitar on one track, while Zhang Meng (yes, him again) chips in with his sheng on another.
It’s a sound that award-winning Taiwanese poet (and one of the musicians putting the the ‘band’ in Sheng Xiang & Band) Chung Yung-feng likens to Tom Waits’ 1983 album Swordfishtrombones. Ang Zhifan, perhaps like that Waits record, is certainly something of an acquired taste, but I mean that in a positive way. Long live the “bizarre Chinese folk underground cultural spirit”.
A note about streaming and / or buying this record: I sat on this one for a little while in the hopes it would make it to Badhead’s Bandcamp page, but after a sudden flurry of activity there earlier in the year, they seem to have stopped updating it again (Utopian Daymare’s new record is also on Badhead, but alas, not on Bandcamp at time of writing). It’s worth bearing in mind that the version linked to below (on iTunes) is only half of the album; the full record is available only as a physical release via Modern Sky’s WeChat shop. If it’s any consolation, the physical release does look very nice, with some suitably oddball artwork from Lu himself.
Ang Zhifan is out now, with the above caveats.
Blowin’ up: two new releases from Beijing-based sound artist Zhao Cong
If you thought the last issue’s spotlighting of a record that features audio of someone clipping their nails was a bit out there, you might want to look away now: Zhao Cong’s new release sees the Beijing-based artist ‘playing’ the balloon.
“The characteristics of balloons—their elastic material and variable volume—allow them to produce a rich range of sounds during the inflation and deflation processes,” Zhao says as part of the introduction to the LP, which is entitled blow,blow,blow,blow,blow. “Some of these sounds are very faint and can only be heard in a very quiet environment or with the use of a microphone to amplify them.”
Sure enough, she succeeds in getting a wide range of sounds out of the balloons.
blow,blow,blow,blow,blow is the latest in an invitational curation series from Málaga’s Oigovisiones Label, with Zhao being picked by David Area and Tomás Gris, who together run Madrid-based free improvisation imprint Ex-Nihilo Records.
That’s not the only international attention Zhao Cong is getting this month. You can also find her on a forthcoming release on Japanese label Meenna. Tangerine and the Invisible is a recording of her work with Beijing experimental lynchpin Zhu Wenbo and London-based computer programmer Li Song at Tokyo’s Ftarri venue, from January last year.
Once again, Zhao works with amplified balloons while Li rustles and crackles other unspecified objects and Zhu deploys his self-developed “transducer elastic rope feedback system”.
Incidentally, in related Chinese noise / experimental news: the great Aaron Dilloway is touring China right now, along with Lonny Hoffman, Rudolf Eb.er, and Zhao Ziyi.
blow,blow,blow,blow,blow is out now. Tangerine and the Invisible is out August 10th.
Just briefly: international tour updates
While Mr Dilloway tours China, here are a few Chinese acts heading out of the country in the next few months:
Mongolian folk-rockers Hanggai are playing a series of dates in the Netherlands in August, including at Noorderzon Festival in Groningen and Paradiso in Amsterdam, as well as a set at the TrutnOFF Festival in Czechia.
Re-TROS are returning to Europe for shows in London, Paris, and Rotterdam in late September.
In November, 33EMYBW and Li Jianhong will team up as part of the bill for this year’s Le Guess Who? festival in Utrecht, courtesy of guest curator Chen Tianzhuo.
Take it easy on yourself: experimental noisemaker Yan Jun turns to easy listening
“An easy listening, I hope.” This is how renowned noisemaker (and dakou expert) Yan Jun announced his new collaborative release with Wu Na. While it’s unlikely to show up in the ‘easy listening’ section of your local record shop, it’s true that the three pieces presented comprise some of Yan’s most accessible and, yes, easy-to-listen-to work.
Wu is a celebrated instrumentalist who’s been playing the guqin since she was nine years old. As Yan once told The Wire, “Guqin is the most elegant traditional instrument in China. An instrument that is about creating subtle sounds rather than distinct notes.” This is something Wu achieves with aplomb.
For his part, Yan provides vocals, and in places displays a surprising ability as a singer (surprising for someone who’s spent much of their career creating less harmonious sounds, that is). His vocal melodies range from background-building bass tones that border on throat-singing, to a falsetto that at times leads Wu’s string-playing rather than merely follows it.
Turns out it’s very easy listening indeed.
wu na and yan jun is out now.
Related:
Exit music
When I saw that alternative electronic producer GG Lobster had put out a new single called ‘还我Loopy’ (‘Give Me Back Loopy’), I thought it was going to be a touching tribute to the recently shuttered Hangzhou venue that helped nurture his career (and just one of a number of important alternative live music spaces to disappear in China in recent months; see also: the Kaixuan Lu outpost of Yuyintang and ALL’s Xiangyang Lu spot in Shanghai, plus Beijing’s long-running FruitySpace and DADA venues).
Instead, it’s a wild ride through references to Lamborghini-drivers and psycho CEOs as GG lambasts the wanghong invasion of Hangzhou’s West Lake area, where Loopy was located. Doubling down on the angry vibe of the track is a fairly shocking music video that also takes aim at livestreaming culture.
This is the best gift the substack algorithm could have given me. Thank you for so many sick new finds !!