A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

Just a few notes on a cou­ple of cool things that have come across my email lately, before I get to report­ing on my MIDI experience.

1) Shang­hai fun­time whiz-kids Pairs have writ­ten a non-exhaustive list: “Things we’ve learned from hang­ing out with rock­stars.” It’s a good read, though it’s prob­a­bly aimed more towards peo­ple IN bands (or dat­ing peo­ple in bands) rather than any­one else. Good advice for any­one get­ting into the scene, and it’s always good for fans to get a per­spec­tive from that elu­sive backstage.

2) Matthew Nei­der­hauser and Zhang Shouwang have put together a Domus Mix­tape for Bei­jing. Unsur­pris­ingly it’s dark and urban and includes almost exclu­sively Maybe Mars bands, but that doesn’t make it bad. In fact, it’s an awe­some playlist. If you can’t get to the Domus site, check it out on Sound­cloud.

3) Long-term Shang­hai res­i­dents Andrew Field and Jud Will­mont are on the cusp of releas­ing a doc­u­men­tary about the Chi­nese indie scene, this time largely fol­low­ing punk group SUBS. Check out some more info here, and keep your eyes peeled for info about screenings.

If you haven’t already heard of Matthew Nei­der­hauser, do your­self a favor and Google him. If you have, you’ll know that he has done a great ser­vice to the Bei­jing inde­pen­dent music scene by pho­tograph­ing bands and gigs for more than two years now. He’s doc­u­mented the growth of the scene in action, and is most famous for his band por­traits shot against the bright red wall in the back of D-22. He put them into pho­to­book form last year, pub­lish­ing and releas­ing in New York. Sun­day night was the China release party for his book, Sound Kap­i­tal.

Held in the new Bei­jing art col­lec­tive Caochangdi, at Three Shad­ows Gallery, the atmos­phere of the event was more like a music fes­ti­val than a con­cert. The per­for­mances, by some of the city’s most cutting-edge per­form­ers, were held out­side on the grass in the mid­dle of the gallery’s sprawl­ing plot of land, with patrons stand­ing around in cir­cles of friends with cans of beer stacked atop each other to avoid hav­ing to return to the cramped drinks table inside the gallery’s cafe. Matthew’s pho­tos were pro­jected hap­haz­ardly against a white sheet that hung behind the stage, and per­haps because we were in the mid­dle of an art gallery, the fact that the per­form­ers’ faces were painted with pro­jec­tions seemed delib­er­ate and artis­tic rather than a sign of rushed setup.

One of the great things about the event, though, is that it is tak­ing place in the mid­dle of Caochangdi’s Pho­to­Spring week, wherein par­tic­i­pat­ing gal­leries are open­ing some amaz­ing pho­to­graphic exhibits (I’d also rec­om­mend the Lucien Cler­gue “Picasso Close Up” exhibit at Art­Mia, or the Han Lei or Cai Wei­dong exhibits at Taikang Space). Three Shad­ows Gallery cur­rently has three exhibits show­ing at their gallery — Rimal­das Viksraitis’ “Gri­maces of the Weary Vil­lage”, the Ren­con­tres d’Arles 2009 Dis­cov­ery Award Slideshow, and the gallery’s own 2010 TSPA Exhi­bi­tion. So, after pick­ing up a plas­tic cup of wine at the gallery cafe, audi­ence mem­bers trans­formed into art appre­ci­a­tors, wan­der­ing the con­crete halls of the gallery while still able to hear the music from out­side. It changed the usu­ally whisper-quiet expe­ri­ence of visual art appre­ci­a­tion into some­thing richer, infused with the exper­i­men­tal lilts of sound art.

It was also one of those events where you showed up only know­ing the per­son you came with, but even­tu­ally found that you knew — or had at least met — half of the crowd. I saw peo­ple I’d met when I went to the Andrew Bird con­cert, and oth­ers I’d met at farewell par­ties or birth­day din­ners or that ran­dom Bei­jing Duck excur­sion you get invited to when vis­i­tors come to stay. There was every lan­guage being spo­ken, and the crowd was largely the hip­ster con­tin­gent of for­eign­ers you’d see up the back of Yugong Yis­han on any given week­end. It was as much a chance for peo­ple to catch up and be seen as it was to see some music, buy a book, or see a photo exhibit.

When it comes to the expe­ri­ence that’s most per­ti­nent to this blog, how­ever, I can’t say what I enjoyed the most. I didn’t stay for too long, and as I men­tioned music wasn’t the focus of the evening. But I was lis­ten­ing to Shou Wang’s set as I wan­dered through the gallery, and I have to say that it was the per­fect back­ground to the TSPA exhibit, which largely focused on Chi­nese con­tem­po­rary life. I also bought Sound Kap­i­tal at the event, which I do not regret. I’m not sure where you can pick it up in China, but do try to get your hands on it. It’s an inspir­ing record of the begin­nings of a very promis­ing music scene, and an invalu­able memento of any time spent immersed in it.