A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

The last time I saw Hedge­hog was at D-22, at an epic night of rev­elry in cel­e­bra­tion of expat duo Hot & Cold’s time in Bei­jing and to see them off. They played to a large enough crowd, though they (and Car­sick Cars) were meant to be a “secret act,” and it was a decent show. They even got quirky vio­lin­ist Yan Yulong to play with them. The time before that, I got to see them play a seri­ously secret set at Old What? Bar, which felt like I imag­ine their early days in the scene did: around fifty peo­ple crammed in a room the size of a someone’s liv­ing room, watch­ing an awe­some band play a bunch of songs.

This show was com­pletely dif­fer­ent. By the time I got there (admit­tedly late), Yugong Yis­han was entirely packed. Not quite Huun Huur Tu packed, but jam-packed at least three rows behind the sound stage, and there was no way you were get­ting down­stairs into the mosh. Hedge­hog had only just started (by my cal­cu­la­tions from the set list on the sound desk), and they played every­thing. It was almost a ret­ro­spec­tive, from their xylophone-brightness of their 2007 “Toy & 61 Fes­ti­val” (玩具和61儿童节), through their Blue Day­dream days, and all the way to this year’s Hon­eyed & Killed. It wasn’t a good­bye, of course, but it was very reflec­tive of them, which makes sense con­sid­er­ing the epic year they’ve had, and the year they have ahead of them.

The crowd was, nat­u­rally, com­pletely into it. For 80RMB per ticket, you really got the fans who love them, and it was clear with the amount of crowd surf­ing that went on. If there are going to be crowd surfers at a show, there’s usu­ally only one or two souls brave enough to go through with it, and they usu­ally only attempt it once. This time, there were at least five dif­fer­ent peo­ple crowd surf­ing, with as many as three peo­ple try­ing to be held up at once. It was a lit­tle insane, and of course nobody was sus­tained for very long, but every­one seemed to tol­er­ate it. Still, I felt like some­one should have told them that even the biggest crowds can’t hold more than two, and cer­tainly not the crowd at Yugong Yis­han. Any­way, every­one was hav­ing a great time and it made the band play even more ener­get­i­cally than usual. The bass player — new to Hedge­hog this year but instantly part of the fam­ily — was par­tic­u­larly into it, which was nice to see.

And finally, at the end of my time at the show (places to be, peo­ple to see, you know how it is), the adorable pint-sized drum-smasher Atom played us a song all on her lone­some. She was alone on stage with a key­board and her high-pitched voice, but unfor­tu­nately the song itself fairly unmem­o­rable — apart from her mic falling down a few times.

Over­all it was a great show. Though I was a big fan of their ear­lier work, I’m really dig­ging grown up Hedge­hog, and I can’t wait to hear what they’ve got for us next. Appar­ently there’s a new album in the works, to be released in the spring, and I’m excited to hear what they came back from the US.

This gig was orig­i­nally billed as Hot & Cold’s final show in Bei­jing, with some great spe­cial guests from the world of exper­i­men­tal elec­tronic music: Fat City, Soviet Pop, Zhang Shouwang, and The B-Side Lovers. What it turned into was some­thing entirely dif­fer­ent. It was, of course, still Hot & Cold’s final show in Bei­jing, and all of the peo­ple who promised to be there were (though I missed Fat City). I saw Soviet Pop first and set­tled in to believe that every­one in the place was there to catch the expat group’s final show, as they’ve been in the city for a long time and have undoubt­edly amassed enough peo­ple to con­vince to come to a show. How­ever, it slowly dawned on me, as I looked around at all the other peo­ple who didn’t seem com­pletely enrap­tured or even very inter­ested in Soviet Pop’s set, that the lit­tle secret I knew wasn’t really a secret at all.

I’d got­ten an email for­warded and then for­warded again from a friend of a friend ear­lier in the week that said that Hedge­hog and Car­sick Cars were play­ing a secret show. It didn’t say where or when, but given that pretty much every­one involved in both of those bands was going to be at D-22, I sur­mised that they would be play­ing instead of their exper­i­men­tal alter-egos. It was a great lit­tle secret for a while, but when I over­heard a for­eigner talk­ing about see­ing Hedge­hog for the first time, I real­ized with­out a doubt that I wasn’t the only one who had heard.

In a way, it was a good thing. It got lots of peo­ple to the show, and more impor­tantly lots of non-committal peo­ple who were more than happy to mill about out­side rather than all cram in expec­tantly for each set. On the other hand, those non-committal peo­ple weren’t really there to hear bands like Soviet Pop, who were the bands that Hot & Cold seemed to be more in touch with dur­ing their time in Bei­jing. Still, the place packed out for Hot & Cold, so I can’t say that the other bands entirely stole the show, though they did slightly over­shadow the point of the evening — to farewell one of the bet­ter exper­i­men­tal groups in Beijing.

At the end of the day, though, it was a great show. Hedge­hog put on a great show as usual, and invited exper­i­men­tal vio­lin­ist Yan Yulong onto the stage for a song or two. Hot & Cold for their part rocked the place with their melodic brand of music cou­pled with the wild antics of Simon Frank. And of course, Car­sick Cars did a reli­ably good job at pump­ing up D-22, even if it was already past mid­night. The only thing about the night that was a real sur­prise was that Car­sick Cars opened with a song that they haven’t played in a really long time — Zhong­nan­hai. Arguably the anthem of D-22, if not of Car­sick Cars’ gen­er­a­tion of punk rock in China, it hasn’t been heard in a while but it’s just as great as ever. I man­aged to catch it on video, so enjoy!

Mod­ern Sky just sent out a spec­tac­u­lar EDM about their bands’ upcom­ing trips over­seas, so I thought I would pass on the news. While this blog is about bands play­ing in Bei­jing, I sup­port get­ting more Chi­nese music out to the rest of the world, and the fol­low­ing Mod­ern Sky groups are really tak­ing on the world.

First of all, they men­tioned the Re-TROS/Gang of Four tour in Aus­tralia, which has been reported on in for­eign media such as Faster Louder (a favorite site of mine back in Aus­tralia), The Vine, and The Dwarf. And if you have a VPN, you can also check out a pod­cast inter­view with FBi’s Radi­ant (this page also con­tains a pod­cast with my ex-boyfriend’s band, creep­ily enough). They got some great write-ups, and as much as Re-TROS is not my thing, I’m really happy for them and for what it means for Chi­nese bands to follow.

Next, they announce that Queen Sea Big Shark will be head­ing to SXSW this year! They will be per­form­ing four times, at the IODA, Mike Galaxy/Band, Bill­board Mag­a­zine and Rolling Stone Show­cases. Con­verse is foot­ing their bill. Their new promo pic­ture is amaz­ing and I can’t wait to hear the recep­tion they get out of Texas.

Then, some­thing we also already knew, that New Pants will be play­ing at Coachella this year. They’ll be head­ing up against some big names like The Strokes, Kanye West, Duran Duran, PJ Har­vey, and much more. I’ll be inter­ested to see reviews of this one. The EDM also men­tioned that there will be New York gigs announced soon, so I’ll keep my eyes open for that.

Last but not least, they revealed that Hedge­hog will be going on tour in the US with Xiu Xiu in Sep­tem­ber. This isn’t sur­pris­ing, as Xiu Xiu has been friends of Mod­ern Sky fes­ti­vals for ages. Hedge­hog has been over to the States before, so it will be inter­est­ing to see if they get a sim­i­larly warm wel­come this time.

Photo from 草央♥ on Douban

Straw­berry Fes­ti­val was, quite sim­ply, an amaz­ingly good time. There are things I would change but there are more things I wouldn’t, and cou­pled with the good luck of the first warm sunny days we have had in this city since, oh, Sep­tem­ber last year, it made for one of the best music fes­ti­val expe­ri­ences of my life. And I don’t say that lightly.

But of course, a three-day fes­ti­val is far too long to sum up, so here I’ll give you the high­lights from each day, fol­lowed at the end by some things to remem­ber. If I missed any­thing, or if any atten­dees read­ing have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion, I encour­age every­one to com­ment! Fes­ti­vals are large places, and every­one expe­ri­ences the same days dif­fer­ently, so please! Com­ment away.

So with­out fur­ther ado… a Read More link. (Because this got way too long.)
Read more

Enti­tled some­thing along the lines of “I’ve Come To Loosen Your Morals”, this was a highly-anticipated gig for yours truly. Not only did it have two acts I had already seen and fallen in love with (Fly­ing Mid­night and Steely Heart) but two acts that I’d heard a lot about and have wanted to check out for a while (Hedge­hog and Casino Demon). So, with the lineup a big draw card for the night, and a full belly, I headed to Mao Live for the first time in a while.

When I got there, the crowd was already pump­ing with adren­a­line, as I had missed the first band of the evening — the me guan me’s (me灌me) — which, from the looks on everyone’s faces, was unfor­tu­nate. I’ll have to catch them next time around. First after them was Steely Heart (钢铁的心), who I’d seen ear­lier at Dos Kole­gas ear­lier this month, and they did not dis­ap­point. At the pre­vi­ous gig, I remem­ber feel­ing a touch of déjà-vu when it came to these guys, but this time the songs were famil­iar and easy to con­nect with. The crowd was into it from the word ‘go’, and Steely Heart has an energy to be reck­oned with. They belted out some of their faster songs to begin with, and the crowd was in there, get­ting a mosh pit going. The thing I like best about this band, though, is that they come to the stage as adver­tised. If you’ve lis­tened to the songs posted on their Douban, you’ll have heard almost what it’s like to see them live. They’ve got bet­ter energy and more fire behind a per­for­mance, but their recorded tracks won’t make you yawn and feel like never see­ing them live. With the excep­tion, per­haps, of their track “For­ever Young”, which is much bet­ter live. It reminds me a lit­tle of a slow Fratel­lis song; not any song in par­tic­u­lar, but it was the slow Fratel­lis sound with a Chi­nese accent. For their last song they played an upbeat num­ber with an adorable synth-infused bridge that really got the crowd going. There was a conga line and everything.

Read more