Tibetan Buddhist chants meet footwork + Postmodern Hippie
+ the return of a Chinese shoegaze favourite + video of Re-TROS in the US
Hello and welcome to Concrete Avalanche, a newsletter about music from China. Thanks very much for reading.
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In this issue: “Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist singing with mutating bass/footwork science”, an update on Li Zhi’s tour of Japan, video of Re-TROS’s tour of the US of A, a new Space Fruity release, sumptuous shoegaze, Chinese punks heading to Europe, and loads more — it’s a packed one.
Tibetan Buddhist singing meets cutting edge club beats on Howie Lee’s masterful new album
Whenever Howie Lee releases new music, it’s worth paying attention. But his latest album is one that I’ve been anticipating for some time.
Why this one in particular? Here’s the official blurb:
“Recorded over two weeks at Drolma Wesel-Ling Monastery in the mountains of north-eastern Tibet, Beijing-based multi-disciplinary artist/producer, Howie Lee combines Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist singing with mutating bass/footwork science, glitched-out hyper-rhythms and sampled Chinese-Tibetan instrumentation for his latest album on Mais Um.”
Taking Tibetan Buddhist chants and pairing them with cutting edge electronic music could very easily go horribly wrong. But in the hands of Lee, the sounds of the religious rituals are carefully transformed. The chanting is deployed in the same way as vocal loops or rap verses, while bursts of powerful temple drums are mixed in among the driving club-adjacent beats, making for a series of fascinating tracks. The album is at once sensitive, reverent and fresh.
“Lee arrived in Tibet […] burnt out from touring, and on the verge of quitting DJ’ing,” the Mais Um intro — which you should absolutely read in full — explains. Lee himself adds:
“Throughout the pandemic, I was DJ’ing a lot. People wanted that, they wanted to have fun. I got quite lost. When I was asked to go to Tibet, it was like a lightbulb moment for me. For me, DJ’ing or performing is like serving the people. As a dancer you project your body movements but as a DJ you project an understanding of how the dancer’s feeling. You have to read the crowd. There is typical buddhism music, bells, gongs etc but the music isn’t new. I wanted to harness the energy of club music and chanting to bring a sense of power to people.”
It’s a fantastic follow up to Lee’s last release on Mais Um, the immersive, beguiling Birdy Island (which came with a worthwhile set of remixes a few months later). It’s also a continuation of the producer’s journey that has seen him go from the founder of pioneering Beijing club night, collective and label Do Hits — with its trademark sound merging traditional Chinese instrumentation with experimental yet dancefloor-ready beats — to more sweeping, spiritually-driven and ‘organic’ sounding explorations. At the same time, this new record is significantly closer to the club than the avant-jazz influenced EP he put out with Liu Pi last year.
I don’t want to say too much more about it, you should really just give it a listen. And read the background story to the record. Highly recommended.
At the Drolma Wesel-Ling Monastery is out now.
From Proust to Hatsune Miko: welcome to the wild world of PostmodernHippie
“5th wave emo, bedroom emo, dream pop, indie rock, shoegaze” — these are just some of the tags on Jiangsu artist PostmodernHippie’s recent release on Sango Records, a label headed up by Chinese Football’s Xu Bo. “Metalcore, anime, noise, posthardcore” appear on a two-track EP that PostmodernHippie released while I was still piecing together my thoughts on that first record. Incredibly, these tags are all accurate. And they probably could’ve added more: Japanese city-pop and Cornelius-like electronica bob up as influences in this churning sea of references at one point.
It’s this eclecticism, or rather the picking out of elements from a startling array of genres, like some sort of musical magpie, that makes PostmodernHippie an engrossing artist to follow.
They’ve been putting out a steady stream of melting pot music since 2021, referencing everything from Proust to Hatsune Miko (including an EP of tracks using virtual singers). Rarely has an artist name felt so apt.
Here’s a quote from the artist that provides a little insight into their approach:
“For me, the 'eccentricity and chaos' are the most important part of one's life. Anything we see, hear, feel, could happen to trigger our aesthetic senses, tho now we put too much weight on 'rules and order', sadly the pure pleasure of being bathed in beauty is undermined. So we call for the 'eccentricity and chaos', just to bring back the authentic effect the beauty will have.”
Sometimes the scrapbook of sounds approach can be a little bewildering, but the new album on Sango is a little more polished than some of PostmodernHippie’s earlier work. Don’t be surprised if listening to it sees you fall down the rabbit hole that is the rest of their discography.
One life dominated by the Past is out now. So is their self-released two-track EP L'image mortelle m'évoquerait rien.
“Two animals stuck in cages”: Sheng Jie and Carsick Cars’ Li Qing go head to head
Last month I wrote about the welcome return of Beijing-based experimental electronic imprint Seippelabel. In the same issue, I led with a look at Sheng Jie’s ethnographic recordings of traditional Dong folk songs in Guizhou. By happy coincidence, those two creative forces combined for a release a few days later.
Sonically, it’s quite different to those Guizhou folk recordings. It features Sheng Jie and Carsick Cars / Snapline member Li Qing on electric cello and snare drum. “They described the process as two animals stuck in cages, wanting to get out, and communicating with each other,” according to Seippelabel, and that emotion certainly comes through in the “long & discrete, minimalist binary configurations and pure improvisation” that makes up the two 20ish-minute-long tracks.
“They pace back and forth, are injured, powerless, silent, and finally seem to be reincarnated again,” as the official intro has it. The record is an electrifying volley of noise and exciting experimentalism.
笼子里的青狗 is out now.
Destiny awaits: spice-y new instrumental goodness from Space Fruity
I mentioned a couple of issues back that the (excellent) label that brought us Sleeping Dogs’ debut album and Run Run Run’s recent LP had a new EP on the way, the first record from Beijing instrumental trio eitisga. Here it is:
Entitled Dune Pulse, it’s very much in the Sleeping Dogs vein, with the trio drawing on “desert and urban life as sources of inspiration and using rhythm and melody to present an auditory landscape with a sense of narrative.”
Dune Pulse is out now.
Has man a future? Li Zhi update
Last time out, I wrote about Li Zhi’s surprise tour of Japan:
A quick update on that tour: so far, so good. Despite repeated calls for attendees not to film or take photos, multiple clips surfaced on Chinese social media from the first show in Osaka. They showed a packed-out arena with the crowd singing every word.
The only issues so far appear to be the aforementioned filming (organisers issued a new plea and said anyone seen with their phone out during the gig will be ejected) and… smoking. Apparently the venue was littered with cigarette butts after the show, according to the organisers.
Band in the mirror: shoegazers Chestnut Bakery return after five year absence
Chinese dream-pop / shoegaze band Chestnut Bakery have released their first new song in half a decade. Returning from their second hiatus (they previously left a three year gap between their debut album Diaries and a 2018 reunion tour), the band are in fine form on the new track, entitled ‘Mirror’:
And if Chinese shoegaze is your jam, well…
“It’s like waking up from a nightmare”: here’s how Re-TROS’s tour of the US went down
Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (Re-TROS) are one of China’s most accomplished bands. They recently toured North America with Liars, Battles and a host of other acts providing support. Naturally, the cameras were there to capture it all.
Here’s a glimpse:
Just briefly: some mildly diverting updates
Rattling through a load of stuff here as I had a backlog after the special last time out and there’s still new music coming (check the playlists). Here are a few quick points for those who’ve bothered to read this far:
Shanghai-based electronic producer 33EMYBW is booked for a slot at the renowned Nuits Sonores next week, joining Autechre, Deena Abdelwahed, Bonobo, Skrillex, and lots, lots more. She’ll also be playing other dates around Europe, including in London with Gooooose (together, the pair form Duck Fight Goose).
Qingdao all-female punk act Dummy Toys are doing another European tour after winning hearts and minds across the continent last year.
Unexplained Sounds Group recently released the 20-track Anthology Of Contemporary Music From Far East, featuring sound artist Chunyang Yao, “ritual ambient” group Yingshui Dijiang, and experimental folk singer-songwriter Baishui:
Exit music
Production company GeekShootJack have done one of their periodic dumps of high quality videos of Chinese indie bands on YouTube. The latest includes Omnipotent Youth Society and others performing at NetEase’s annual music awards in early 2021.
Here’s the fantastic Chengdu post-punk band Hiperson playing one of the stand-out songs from their brilliant Bildungsroman album, released in 2020, and perhaps, perhaps due to get a follow-up later this year…
Do you have intel about a Hiperson album?!
Very happy to see Chestnut Bakery are back.