The best of 2024… so far

A mix of some of the stand out tracks from China from the first half of the year

Hello and welcome to Concrete Avalanche, a newsletter about music from China. Thanks very much for reading.

Apologies for appearing in your inbox more than usual here, but

ChinaTalk

recently asked me to put together some of my favourite songs from China from 2024 so far and I thought I’d share the mix with you now it’s out in the wild.

It skips across everything from psych rock to glitch hop to kawaii core (and other genres that may not really exist), before closing out — as has quickly become tradition on these mixes — with some brutal Greek-language metal. It comes with all the usual caveats about “best of” lists etc.

The tracklisting is below so if you hit upon something you’re not that into, you can jump to the next track. If you find something you really like, please support the artists by buying their music if you’re able to (nearly everything here is available on Bandcamp).

Apple Podcasts and Spotify seem the most easily embeddable platforms here, but you should be able to find it wherever you listen to Podcasts.

00:00:00  ‘Narcissus' Death’ — Backspace (read more)
00:05:38  ‘红喷泉’ — Pepper Heart (read more)
00:09:35  ‘Mail from the River’ (live) — Wang Wen (read more)
00:15:30  ‘她的力量来自海洋'‘ — Yang Haisong & Wang Xiaofeng (read more)
00:22:32  'Ollie’ — 西红、CNdY (read more)
00:26:43  ‘Lost in Bamboos’ — Cola Ren (read more)
00:30:38  ‘Southern Shanghai’ — Voision Xi (read more)
00:34:20  ‘Liquid’ — Duck Fight Goose (read more)
00:36:54  ‘玉林敬酒歌’ — Run Run Run (read more)
00:40:35  ‘Mountains in Yukashima’ — Birdstriking (read more)
00:45:38  ‘SonicBaby’ — XIAOWANG (read more)
00:48:25  ‘My Vagina’ — Fakeorgasm (read more)
00:50:25  ‘Mantra of Vajra Armour’ — Howie Lee (read more)
00:54:08  ‘Bash Bayawan Muqam’ — Mekit Dolan Muqam Group (read more)
00:59:13  ‘Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ παραμαινομένη ἐμοῦ...’ — Ὁπλίτης (read more)

Don’t forget that if you’d like to listen to lots more great music from China for free, all in one place, you can check out the Concrete Avalanche playlists here.