Mar 15, 2016 Loud and Chinese
People seem surprised when I say that I’ve moved on from the days of making the old magazine. I still see a ton of interesting people and get to do a lot of cool stuff all the time; it’s just that I share everything with my daughter instead of readers these days. But besides working and conspiring alongside friends, what I really miss is plowing through overflowing mail tubs full of music to review. That was the best, and it probably doesn’t even happen any more with all the streaming of music these days. Not nearly as awesome.
So I was pretty excited to receive a fat, over-sized envelope of records from Beijing last week. My underground Chinese music dealer had given me a heads-up that he would be back in California–an opportunity to place an order and save money on shipping.
Of course, I wanted the latest P.K. 14 (photos of and with the band, below, from the China Invasion Tour in April 2010). The new, double album is on splattered, blood orange wax, and includes four live, improvised sets that accompanied an installation by artist Sun Qi. It’s noisy and dark, with drone supplied by Zhu Wenbo and extra textures coming from Alpine Decline. The results are heavy, atmospheric, and appropriate for the piece’s theme of a cicada shedding its shell. The art is gone but the recordings remains like an empty husk. It’s a wild trip, although I wouldn’t recommend it as your first P.K. 14 purchase. Get White Paper instead. That’s the record that made me think that Yang Haisong looks like a Chinese Milo from the Descendents but is really more like a Chinese Guy from Fugazi.
After Argument is a Yang Haisong side project that sounds a lot more like P.K. 14 than Music for an Exhibition does. The frontman gets to play guitar as well as sing, accompanied by Zaza on drums and some backing vocals. The duo’s output is raw and riffy but not flimsy by any means. Like Kicking Giant or No Age, there are layers of give and take, push and pull, and buildup and release between the two halves–and for some reason the lyrics are printed in English even though they are sung in Chinese! The words are anything but a letdown: as poetic as the music is angular. The final and most epic song provides the album’s name, This Is Not Your Game, but you should get it anyway.
I probably listen to Dear Eloise more than any other band from China. It’s Yang Haisong, once more, with his wife Sun Xia playing fuzzed-out, noisy, and blissful music that is both recorded and edited at home. The moody and lovely double album is on pink vinyl and won’t disappoint fans of the Jesus & Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Lush… The 13 songs unfold like a recurring, looping daydream because you’ll listen to the sides and over again before moving on to the next one. Sadly, the duo will never tour and has never played live. Good thing they are prolific; Uncontrollable, Ice Age Stories is their ninth or maybe even tenth release. Happy collecting!
Alpine Decline is another hard-working Beijing band with a ton of releases. Apparently, the duo actually started off and self-released three albums in East Los Angeles before relocating to Bejing. Of course, I’d find out about them after they moved half a world away. Their fifth album, recorded by Yang Haisong (who else) is as light as it is heavy–a real cool juxtaposition of sometimes angelic and sometimes ghostly vocals with groovy garage riffs that can touch on the trashy tones of Suicide as well as the harsher noise of Boris. Alpine Decline will be touring with Carsick Cars and Chui Wan in the fall–what a killer lineup!–and I’ll see you right in front at all of the SoCal shows…
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