A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

If you were around on the blogs in 2009, you might remem­ber Top Floor Cir­cus as being a con­tro­ver­sial band. They wrote a song called Shang­hai Doesn’t Wel­come You in their inim­itable par­o­dy­ing style dur­ing the run-up to the Expo, which promptly got their fol­low­ing shows can­celled, forc­ing them out into neigh­bor­ing Hangzhou for a lit­tle while. The scan­dal blew over, though, and the ironic folk-punk band has had time to regroup and come back stronger than ever. This is the first time I’ve ever seen their name pop up in Bei­jing, and despite the myr­iad amaz­ing things going on last night (oh, the many other gigs I could have been with), I made the com­mit­ment to see them because I knew it would be a once-in-a-Beijing-lifetime event. I was not disappointed.

To start off with, SUBS opened the show in full Hal­loween getup. Kang Mao was dressed as a mummy, which slowly got unrav­eled as she thrashed around the stage in her usual weird danc­ing rou­tine. I know I’ve spo­ken about SUBS before, and men­tioned how beau­ti­fully intense and spec­tac­u­larly per­for­ma­tive Kang Mao is, but it always bears repeat­ing. It’s a true tes­ta­ment to this band that despite the fact I really am not a fan of high-pitched squeal­ing or ear-splitting vol­ume or almost any other part of SUBS’ sound and act, I always really enjoy myself. Of course, I always wear my earplug because seri­ously, I’m not kid­ding about that ear-splitting thing. If you haven’t seen these guys yet, get a good pair of earplugs and catch them next time they perform.

Between the sets, and help­ing to assuage a rest­less crowd, VeryRock.net put on a (twenty minute) video of other musi­cians’ impres­sions of Top Floor Cir­cus — and the music scene in gen­eral. Every­one was there — from exper­i­men­tal folk artist Xiao He to jazz sax­o­phon­ist Li Tieqiao to punk vet­er­ans Misan­dao — and they all had good sto­ries to tell. There were par­tic­u­larly long seg­ments about the lead singer get­ting drunk and get­ting into fights, as well as his habit of tak­ing his pants off… Nev­er­the­less, it was a great video, and really helped to pass the time as the stage hands set up for the main event.

Now I didn’t know this before the show, but Top Floor Cir­cus sings almost exclu­sively in Shang­hainese. So for their pil­grim­age to Bei­jing, they brought along a pro­jec­tor and a charm­ingly DIY slideshow with the lyrics so that every­one could under­stand what was going on. I’ll admit, it was a lit­tle bit of a dis­trac­tion (for every­one, not just my inner lin­guis­tics nerd), but with a large part of Top Floor Cir­cus’ appeal being in their won­der­fully sar­donic and satir­i­cal lyrics, it was impor­tant to get the mes­sage across. They were all great songs, but par­tic­u­larly mem­o­rable were the fol­low­ing: an ode to “hailuo ayi” set to Knock­ing on Heaven’s Door, a KTV-style trib­ute to the Suzhou River, a song about monks accom­pa­nied by pic­tures of our robed friends at McDon­alds, and one of their few songs in Man­darin about the girls at pink-window “hair salons”. But really, the whole show was mem­o­rable, and I hope they make their way back to Bei­jing some­time soon.

And he really did take his pants off.

I had to describe the genre of “post-rock” to some­one the other day, and found it more than slightly impos­si­ble. Wikipedia just seems to say “well, it’s like rock… but not” — only in fancier words — but that’s all I could come up with, too. Once you asso­ciate a sound with post-rock — by lis­ten­ing to Sigur Ros, Mog­wai, Explo­sions in the Sky, etc — it’s pretty easy to tell when some­thing is post-rock, but before that it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine. So if you don’t know what I’m on about when I talk about post-rock, check out those for­eign bands or some of the Chi­nese ones I’ll link out to in this post and make that asso­ci­a­tion. Then come back and read this. Because while I’m not say­ing that all post-rock is made alike, all post-rock def­i­nitely sounds the same.

Which is why I mixed up pho­tos of Wang Wen and Hua Lun when I posted them to Weibo, okay?

Any­way, this was a fes­ti­val of gen­eral awe­some­ness. The venue, Mako Live­house, is a great space — like a mini Tango 3rd Floor, but hid­den in an art enclave — and it was well-organized and the evening ran amaz­ingly smoothly. Not only that, but all of the bands were great. While I’ll admit that post-rock can occa­sion­ally be soporific (only the bad stuff, good stuff always builds to some­thing), I got there on time and saw all five bands and didn’t once feel myself spac­ing out. The acts got pro­gres­sively bet­ter as the evening went on, and while lots of peo­ple showed up for the last two acts, I’m glad I got there to see the newer, greener acts perform.

First up was Even Less, a four-piece (okay, most post-rock bands are four-piece) group on the scene since 2009. They had two vocal­ists, the lead gui­tarist but also the drum­mer, which was an inter­est­ing switch-up. I won­dered at first where the back­ing vocals were com­ing from (a record­ing?) before a song began entirely with this phan­tom voice, and I real­ized that it was the drum­mer singing. Their songs were almost exclu­sively in Eng­lish, but the lyrics were pretty dis­cernible. These guys are on the soporific side, but they weren’t bad.

Next was Amber (a change from the billed Pen­ta­tonic), who were a much more instru­men­tal band, and reminded me of a much more tra­di­tional post-rock band. I like my post-rock with a solid beat, some­thing I can fol­low and nod my head along to, which this band def­i­nitely had. Occa­sion­ally it fell into the syn­co­pated trap that I really don’t enjoy, but over­all I liked these guys. They’ll fill up a post-rock playlist very nicely.

Right in the mid­dle was Glow Curve, a solid and well-respected local act that has just released their first album. I actu­ally went to their album launch, but wasn’t in the mood that day. At the post-rock fes­ti­val, though, they stood out as a great exam­ple of how awe­some the genre can be. They opened with their rec­og­niz­able Song For Ray­ing Tem­ple and ended with prob­a­bly my favorite of their songs, Flow­ers Of God­mother. I really like the way that song builds up to its final cacoph­o­nous crescendo — the mark of a really good post-rock band, in my opinion.

The penul­ti­mate band was Wang Wen, who made a splash in my world last year with their release of L & R at Mao Live­house, though they’ve been around for twelve years. They’re a Dalian band, so their per­for­mances in Bei­jing have been few and far between. What makes Wang Wen inter­est­ing is partly the fact that the lead gui­tarist plays his gui­tar with a screw­driver (it’s no vio­lin bow, but at least he doesn’t destroy a $100 piece of equip­ment every time he per­forms), but also the ethe­real nature of their music. They cre­ate dream­scapes with their music, and that doesn’t mean they’ll put you to sleep, it means they’ll trans­port you some­where you’ve only been in your dreams. Maybe one where someone’s chas­ing you through a for­est… or maybe that’s just me.

Finally was Hua Lun, a Wuhan band who also doesn’t per­form very often; how­ever, I heard a rumor that they have moved to the cap­i­tal, so hope­fully there will be more Hua Lun shows in the not-too-distant future. They only played a few songs, but those songs were epic. They did a few group tracks, but also one (or two?) with the two gui­tarists sit­ting on stage, which were a lit­tle stripped-down but still good. I think I enjoyed Wang Wen more to watch — they reminded me of Sigur Ros, my first post-rock love — but I will enjoy lis­ten­ing to Hua Lun a lot, once I get my hands on a copy of one of their albums.

Over­all, it was a solid night that I really enjoyed. I hope there’s another one next year!

Where: Mako Live­house
When: Sat 22 Octo­ber, 18:30PM
How Much: 80RMB; 70RMB pre-sale
Who: Wang Wen, Hua Lun, Glow Curve, Even Less (More Info)
Why: Post-rock isn’t everyone’s thing, but if it is, you need to get your­self to Mako Live­house tonight. Wang Wen and Hua Lun are two big names in the genre in Bei­jing because they’re both 1) amaz­ing, and 2) don’t play very often. So to see them play on the same night is a pretty rare occa­sion. But this isn’t called a post-rock fes­ti­val for noth­ing, and in addi­tion to the two heavy hit­ters — which are worth the trip and ticket price on their own — there’s smaller acts Glow Curve and Even Less to back them up. I rec­om­mended Glow Curve’s album launch a few weeks ago, and while I didn’t review it, I’ve been giv­ing the album a spin and it’s solid. I haven’t seen new group Even Less, but since they’re keep­ing such good com­pany it wouldn’t hurt to check them out.

Run­ners up this week include: I’m sure you’re all yelling at me inside for not mak­ing Max­imil­lian Hecker the Gig of the Week, but I fig­ured you’d all be going to see him any­way — for a refresher, he’s play­ing Yugong Yis­han on Sun @ 7:30PM, 150/100RMB; also, Vespa Bei­jing is hav­ing a “mod revival” night with Steely Heart and Toy Head at Yuong Yis­han @ 9PM, Free (avail­able at cer­tain out­lets, click through for details); UK elec­tronic musi­cian Max Tun­dra is also hit­ting the city, play­ing on Mon­day night at Yugong Yis­han @ 9PM, 50RMB; and finally, the French are at it again with post-rock mul­ti­me­dia extrav­a­ganza Micro-film on Fri­day night at Yugong Yis­han @ 8PM, Free (again, details in the link). And no, I’m not in Yugong Yishan’s pocket, just it’s the place to be this week, apparently…

Where: Mao Live­house
When: Fri 14 Octo­ber, 20:30PM
How Much: 60RMB; 50RMB pre-sale
Who: Me Too, Rav­ing Radio, Res­i­dence A, Los Crasher, The Power Pow­der (More Info)
Why: Why? Because I fell in love with Res­i­dence A, that’s why. I need to see these guys again; that’s not a mat­ter for dis­cus­sion. How­ever, Me Too I have also seen before and will be very inter­ested to see again, more than a year on. The oth­ers are all new bands to me, which is always a good thing. The Power Pow­der have been mak­ing head­way in the scene, turn­ing up all over the place, so it’ll be good to see what this new band is com­ing out they describe them­selves as hav­ing a clas­sic rock feel, which is always a solid sound, so I hope they prove to be good. Los Crasher is one of the eighties-style hair bands that are kick­ing around the city, so they should at least be fun if noth­ing else. Should be a good show!

Run­ners up this week include: Aus­tralian rock­ers Arcane Saints are in the city, with a show at Mao Live­house on Thurs­day @ 8:30, 50/40RMB; Jojo Meyer is in town with his new project Nerve, per­form­ing Fri­day at Yugong Yis­han @ 10PM, 200/150RMB; Migra­tory Bird teams up with rock vet­eran Zhao Laoda for an inti­mate show at Jianghu on Sat­ur­day @ 9PM, 40RMB; and finally, DJ, com­poser and mul­ti­me­dia artist DJ Spooky is head­ing to Yugong Yis­han next Tues­day @ 7:30PM, 50/30RMB.