Lanzhou blackgaze + Horse Radio bliss
Re-TROS's Liu Min goes electronic + DJ DAILYSHITPOST
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, which you can contribute to here if you’d like:
In this issue: an ambient black metal record from Gansu, a pulsating electronic compilation from a young Shanghai label, “a new strain of Guangzhou indie”, a departure for one of China’s biggest rock stars, a documentary following a big name band playing intimate venues across the country, and a yurt-laden music video from Xinjiang.
Lanzhou, Lanzhou: one-person-act Deadtrees releases atmospheric black metal EP
In the summer of 2019, leading Chinese metal label Pest Productions released Death Kult Over Black Congregation, a 12-track compilation that captured sounds from “a new wave of Chinese black metal”. Among the stand outs from what would become a three-album series were two one-person bands: Vitriolic Sage and Deadtrees.
Since this newsletter began, I’ve written repeatedly about the former (and especially his startling Hoplites project). Yet there’s been less output to speak of from the latter. A new EP however, once again on Pest, offers a chance to dig into Deadtrees. Somewhat ironically, it’s entitled Negate Me.
Deadtrees is the brainchild of Lanzhou-based self-taught musician Ma Meiming. He came to the attention of Pest with his self-produced debut EP Forest in 2018, but by the time his first full-length album No one knows who has been to this world was released in 2021, Ma’s tastes appeared to have moved on.
His attention had turned to Døde-Dands, a medieval European folk-influenced act that featured on the second Death Kult compilation, and to HallucinGod, who had a pair of tracks included on sludge / doom collection StonedChine Vol 2; he’s also become increasingly involved in China’s experimental noise scene as MMM.
All of which is to say: Ma’s revival of Deadtrees is something of a surprise — but it’s certainly a welcome one.
Three years on from Deadtrees’ last full release, there’s a distinct maturity to Negate Me. The project was always concerned with atmosphere building, but where No one knows… felt raw, Negate Me makes a more accomplished fist of it. Ma may have been drawn into China’s noise scene, but here that impulse is deployed sparingly, with more focus on black metal and shoegaze influences. It’s blackgaze really, even if that genre tag can be divisive.
Ma is an artist to watch under any alias, but it’s great to have Deadtrees back.
Negate Me is out now.
We don’t talk anymore: Re-TROS’s Liu Min finds quiet collaboration with electronic project TrembLe MiX
On its release page, TrembLe MiX’s eponymous new LP is trumpeted as “a testament to the beauty of artistic freedom and the eternal pursuit of reaching the soul’s depths through sound”. Even by the standards of Bandcamp blurbs, that may seem a rather grand statement for what on the surface appears to be a fairly straightforward, retro-tinged electronic record. But those words make more sense the more you dig into the group’s intriguing backstory.
TrembLe MiX is Xu Feng and Liu Min. Him an early member of PK14, playing guitar in the band long before they were established as a seminal Chinese post-punk act; her one third of one of China’s biggest rock acts, Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (Re-TROS).
The pair first crossed paths at a DIY gig in Hefei in 2000. Although they’ve since said they were impressed with each other’s musicianship, they barely spoke on the night. It wasn’t until almost two decades later that they began to actually collaborate — a “a wordless yet harmonious collaboration”, as that Bandcamp blurb has it:
“They rarely discuss style or arrangement, simply improvising, listening, and nodding in agreement at each other's contributions. For Xu Feng, who is deeply influenced by Japanese experimental and electronic music aesthetics, this creative approach is pure pleasure. As their sounds quietly flow together, the creators become unusually perceptive listeners for each other. […]
”For Liu Min, writing lyrics in English opened up a new freedom. She breaks away from the constraints of traditional expression, conveying her inner feelings more plainly. This approach allows her to transcend language and cultural boundaries, exploring the depth and breadth of emotions and ideas.”
Liu clearly has a penchant for electronic sounds beyond those deployed by Re-TROS, and it’s interesting to see her experimenting with something quite different here via Xu’s beats. It’s a record that hews closer to the sonic territory she explored on her solo release A Day Without Time last year, though it feels like a step up from that record.
Whether it’ll touch your soul’s depths… well, I’ll let you decide on that.
TrembLe MiX is out now.
“A new strain of Guangzhou indie”: read Mando Gap on XiangXiang’s new album
The latest edition of
features a write-up on Guangdong indie rockers XiangXiang’s debut record:“Led by sweet and girlish vocals, a song like “Home Alone” with its chipper attitude and foot-tapping rhythm doesn’t sound far off from the cozy indie pop acts of local Qiii Snacks label, like Cheesemind or Power Milk. But the five-piece often have their sights set on something loftier than a relaxed stroll, injecting the track with shoegaze guitars and power pop melodies that animate their indie pop into something more muscular.”
“Dance to freedom”: zaaang showcase young Chinese electronic music
Founded by Shanghai producer Glass Bystander in 2022, electronic label zaaang (as in 臟, dirty) recently unleashed their third compilation. “We will use our music to empty the space around you for a while,” says an introduction to the record, “and now please dance to freedom.”
After a relatively gentle opening from 點䘑 and DJ DAILYSHITPOST, it’s over to ADEAD and the producers who follow (including Glass Bystander) to deliver on the label’s statement that “this is a compilation of pure club music”. Wuhan audio-visual artist Vonatawk rounds things off with one of the record’s highlights, pulling together influences such as gqom, industrial, and Kim Gordon’s ‘The Believers’.
There’s an energy and experimental nature to the whole thing that brings to mind the early days of Shanghai avant club crew Genome 6.66 Mbp, albeit the sounds are often distinct.
“We hope that it can make you feel the atmosphere in the club in fragmented time, where the air will surge with the drum beats and rhythm of the music,” say zaaang. “It would be even better if it can make you dance.”
Only one way to find out.
zaaang comp.3: Another Room is out now.
Just briefly: Checking in on Chinese Football, another FAZI doc, and a David Boring live set
Chinese Football’s North America tour appears to be going well! Lots of sold out shows, the rest mostly running low on tickets, and plenty of nice touristy stuff being done along the way. So happy for them.
Speaking of North America tours, Xi’an band FAZI played a few shows on that continent earlier this year, including at SXSW. The experience left them wanting to return to performing at smaller, more in-yer-face venues in China, or so they said at the end of the short documentary they made about the tour. This summer, they did just that by packing in eight shows across the country in the space of a fortnight. The whole thing was once again filmed for posterity, with the hour-long result landing just as the band tease new music:
And speaking of small venue live shows, here’s 16 minutes of new material from David Boring, one of Hong Kong’s finest acts:
Exit music
This wonderful track from Horse Radio, a talented group of Xinjiang-born Mongolians who found each other in Beijing, actually came out in the spring, but it’s only just made its way to Bandcamp, giving me an excuse to share it and its accompanying lovely horse- and nature-laden music video. It’s bliss.