A Beijing-based music and gig review blog

Now, I don’t know why I’ve been post­ing about Sum­mer Sonic any more than you do. For some rea­son, Mao put me on the email list about it, so I’ve been get­ting the emails. But I do hon­estly think that it’s a great oppor­tu­nity for those bands going, and another step in the right direc­tion for cul­tural exchange between China and Japan, to take eight Chi­nese bands and put them on stage at Asia’s biggest and most suc­cess­ful music fes­ti­val of the year. With all that said, here is the final lineup, includ­ing Mao Livehouse’s bat­tle of the bands winners:

1. Re-TROS
2. Queen Sea Big Shark
3. Muma & Third Party
4. Perdel
5. The Ghost Spar­dac
6. Crys­tal But­ter­fly
7. Run­Run­Loser
8. Nanwu

And despite the fact I have never heard of Run­Run­Loser, I think this is a solid lineup. There’s a good vari­ety of all the biggest gen­res, and all with great bands rep­re­sent­ing China’s efforts. Of course there are bands I think would be bet­ter, but for a first pass at impress­ing Asia, I think China’s done a good job.

It would be wrong to say that I acci­den­tally attended this gig; that’s not exactly right. I had been sick the entire week, and had got­ten home from a spot of chu chai with work to Xia­men that evening, so was emphat­i­cally not plan­ning to go out to save my san­ity and health. How­ever, a friend from for­eign lands was vis­it­ing for a cou­ple of days so I con­ceded to going out after din­ner. It didn’t put me back ter­ri­bly far in the health stakes, but it did mean that I didn’t see the whole show. We turned up late, miss­ing Girls Are Wait­ing To Meet You, and left before see­ing Nakoma. It might be biased to say that I think we still caught the best acts of the night, but that’s how I see it.

This was, osten­si­bly, a Hal­loween show, but it wasn’t much dis­cernible from any other gig at Mao Live­house. GAWTMY, appar­ently, decked them­selves out as zom­bies, and Not There held a cos­tume con­test and threw candy out inter­mit­tently dur­ing their set. But those were about the only dif­fer­ences. We were promised candy with our tick­ets, accord­ing to the Mao Live­house Douban, but unless you caught some, there wasn’t any handed out.

The first band we caught was Not There, an inter­na­tional expat group. They were mainly instru­men­tal, with mean­der­ing psy­che­delic rock riffs punc­tu­at­ing the gen­eral post-rock expe­ri­ence of their per­for­mance. There was a singer, but he didn’t do much (Appar­ently, I mis-remembered!); the bass player did most of the talk­ing, in some of the best col­lo­quial Chi­nese I have ever heard from a for­eigner. Aside from that, they brought up a friend for one of their last songs, who added to the per­for­mance with a bit of rap­ping in some non-English, non-Chinese lan­guage. I thought it was French, and my friend thought it was Hebrew. It may remain a mys­tery. (It doesn’t; Not There bassist Jon says in com­ments it’s a mix of Ukran­ian and Russ­ian.) Their set was solid; it def­i­nitely held my atten­tion in a way that not all instru­men­tal acts can or do.

Next up was Nanwu, who were sur­pris­ing and amaz­ing. I had no expec­ta­tions, but they exceeded them any­way: they’ve got a soft­ness and quirk­i­ness to them that makes me want to describe them in folk terms, but they are most def­i­nitely a rock group. They were ener­getic, too, and enthu­si­as­tic in get­ting the crowd to sing along, which they did with much gusto. Songs like “Lalala” are made for audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion, and “Huahua Gongzi” was so catchy it was impos­si­ble not to sing along, even if you didn’t know the words. Their song “Post-80s” is also respon­si­ble for their Chi­nese folk feel, with a flute and the con­ver­sa­tional feel of a Nancheng Brother song. I really enjoyed their set, even though I didn’t get through the whole thing (due to Mao Live­house being the worst place for a per­son recov­er­ing from the flu to hang out). Def­i­nitely check out their Douban, and con­sider get­ting their album from an indie music store near you.