A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

This week­end saw the unveil­ing of two new things in the Bei­jing live music venue scenes: the ren­o­va­tions at Dos Kole­gas, and the new Maybe Mars space at Di’anmen. I was lucky (and maybe just crazy) enough to get around to see­ing both first-hand.

First up, the ren­o­va­tions at Dos Kole­gas. They’ve taken over the old bath­room area in the front and extended back­stage, with room for more instru­ments and — just a guess — booze. The bath­room sink area next to it has been turned into a bar, but was empty on Fri­day; appar­ently it will play host to food events, like when they bring in a sac­ri­fi­cial lamb. Unfor­tu­nately for the wall­flow­ers amongst us, they’ve boarded up that door­way at the side of the stage, which means no more side-view pho­tos. The good news, though, is the new toi­lets. Even though there wasn’t any run­ning water on the first night, they still proved to be a step up. They’re squat toi­lets, and though there are male and female des­ig­na­tions, they’re func­tion­ally uni­sex. It might not be any cleaner, but then, what’s Dos Kole­gas with­out a lit­tle messy bath­room action?

Sec­ondly, there’s the “Unnamed Space” at the cor­ner of all the Di’anmens. The Sally Can’t Dance fes­ti­val went down really well, and their lit­tle unnamed space at Di’anmen is really lovely. It’s hid­den behind the most pop­u­lar chest­nut roaster in town, and though there was noth­ing in there but some quilts on the walls for sound­proof­ing, I’m pretty sure it’s going to be awe­some. There are plans to keep it open dur­ing the day as well, with per­haps a cafe space at the front, a record store, and any­thing else they can fit in. The bar area looked small, but even if you habit­u­ally can’t a drink back there, the space is very close to a handy 7/11. Which, it shall be noted, was cleared of all the cheap 500ml cans of beer by the end of Sunday.

All in all, venues look like they’re on the up and up. All we need is Yugong Yis­han to do some­thing about their sound sys­tem and Mao to do some­thing about their ven­ti­la­tion and cool­ing for the sum­mer and we’ll be pretty much set, gig-goers.

After Chi­nese New Year was offi­cially over, Feb­ru­ary kicked off at Mao with Swedish post-rock group Immanu El. Glow Curve opened and I loved them as per usual, but Immanu El was some­thing spe­cial. Unlike a lot of post-rock bands, even the really freak­ing good ones (I’m look­ing at you, Sigur Ros), they actu­ally moved around stage and put on a show. They were immensely tall, and it was weird to real­ize that all the bands I’d seen on that stage before were really short. But in short, it was a great show, and I’m glad that there’s some­one out there bring­ing good Scan­di­na­vian post-rock to Beijing.

The next night I did some­thing I never thought I would do, and that is vol­un­tar­ily go see a metal band. It was actu­ally a great show, at least when they were play­ing their more prog-rock sounds. I also dis­cov­ered that the only rea­son I dis­like metal is the singing, because oth­er­wise I can be totally down with it. I just find the growling/screaming/not even really singing just kind of point­less. But on the con­trary, Opeth were amaz­ing, and their lead singer can really sing. Plus, they had a lot of fun talk­ing with the crowd, and there were some amaz­ing head­bangers out that night. Some nearby guys doing wind­mills made me feel like there was a fan on me…

I had a big hia­tus because the next week­end I was slated to go see pop DJ Calvin Har­ris but, well… it was a total clus­ter­fuck. So my third gig in Feb­ru­ary was JUE Festival’s warm up show, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart. skip skip ben ben opened and I didn’t much care for them, but that’s mostly because I was excited to see Pains. They were good, as adver­tised; rem­i­nis­cent of 80s groups like The Cure, only a lit­tle softer. The songs did, how­ever, start to sound the same after a while. Still, I enjoyed them and it reminded me to get excited for the rest of the JUE lineup (it all looks amaz­ing okay).

Finally, there was the gig I had been look­ing for­ward to for a long time: Res­i­dence A’s album launch show. I skipped Me Too and poked my head in for most of Glow Curve, and then made a total bee-line for Res­i­dence A. They were on their game as per usual, but to be hon­est, for me per­son­ally, I’ve seen them so many times that I def­i­nitely have other favorite gigs of theirs. I can’t wait to see them when they get back from their ridicu­lous 28-date tour of China’s tier 2 and 3 cities! Their first show back is likely in May, so I’ll have to be con­tent with their album (which you can buy on Taobao for ¥60) for the next cou­ple of months.

Where: Yugong Yis­han
When: Sat 25 Feb, 21:00
How Much: 150RMB, 120RMB pre-sale (if you can still get them). You can also win a pair of tick­ets at City Week­end, haha
Who: The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, skip skip ben ben (More Info)
Why: If you’ve been with me for any length of time, you know how much I love Split Works and their JUE Fes­ti­val. They’ve brought some great for­eign and Chi­nese acts to Bei­jing as part of the fes­ti­val, and this year is no excep­tion. Their offi­cial JUE lineup doesn’t start until March 9, but they could only get this Brook­lyn group now, and of course they jumped at the chance to warm up with a group like this. To me, they sound like a curi­ously non-modern update of The Cure, invok­ing all those hazy mem­o­ries of music from your 1980s youth, with lyrics that are sim­ply time­less to any­one old enough to remem­ber their teenage years. If none of that makes any sense to you, check them out on MySpace or Douban (videos only). They’re joined by local lo-fi group skip skip ben ben.

I had a hard time not mak­ing Res­i­dence A’s album launch the pick of the week, but there’s only so many times I can tell you to see them before you either get annoyed because you have seen them, or stub­bornly ignore my advice. Either way, go see the show. I know it’s on a Sun­day but go. 8:30PM at Mao Live, 60/40RMB. Another show I dis­cov­ered last minute is this curi­ous UK soul/dubstep artist named Jamie Woon. Not usu­ally what I’m into, but the poster on Douban intrigued me. Check out his stuff at Sound­Cloud, you won’t regret it. He’s play­ing Jianghu on Sat­ur­day, 9PM for free! And if you’re up for some­thing qui­eter, Mon­go­lian folk group Aji­nai are putting on an unplugged show at Zajia Lab, Sat­ur­day at 9:30PM, 50RMB.

Through my posi­tion at City Week­end, I get to hear lots of new stuff. Jor­dan Thomas Mitchell was one of my first inter­views there, and though you might have seen him around the cafe/bars in Gulou per­form­ing as his folk per­sona, he’s also been doing some electronic/hip-hop stuff. He’s finally gath­ered up enough sounds for a release, which you can lis­ten to and down­load for free on Sound­cloud. It’s pretty catchy, and I don’t know whether Jordan’s being ironic about this, but it sounds like the per­fect hip­ster half-mocking, half-tribute to obnox­ious hip-hop music. The lyrics are (acci­den­tally?) hilar­i­ous, which makes sense when you’ve got song titles like “Rap Orgy Rock Star”. Go check it out, it’s pretty awe­some, and aside from the fact it’s a hip­ster rap­ping, it’s got a great, heavy, dark beat that you can at least groove along to.

For a long time I thought that I should be wary of a white guy play­ing a pipa. But after a few stel­lar exam­ples, includ­ing thruoutin/白面包/Brad, I’m no longer as wary. And peo­ple around the world are get­ting into this too, includ­ing Pittsburgh-based elec­tronic artist Johnny Jit­ters. He’s released an instru­men­tal sin­gle called “Clo­sure” and invited a bunch of artists to remix it, one of those artists being Beijing’s very own thru­outin. You can find the track at Band­camp, along with the oth­ers, and it’s well worth a lis­ten to. The pipa and Brad’s sub­tle vocals add some­thing that just isn’t there in the other remixes.

Brad’s going over­seas in March, to do a lit­tle tour of the U.S., but he’ll be back Beijing-side soon, work­ing up to a release all of his own, as well as get­ting the jing­weir zine up and run­ning, and of course some Super Secret Awe­some stuff that I just can’t tell you about yet. But don’t worry, it’ll be awesome.