TheWire: Global Ear – Beijing
Nach den schweren Schicksalsschlägen der frühen 2020er Jahre bieten die eklektischen Räume in Chinas Hauptstadt einer neuen Generation von Musikern und Zuhörern eine Plattform. Josh Feola wählt Stücke von einigen der beteiligten Musiker aus.
gogoj
“EE7”
From 耳熵 Ear Entropy
(No label) 2022
One of the few dedicated homes for experimental music left in Beijing is UFO Space, which opened in late 2020, between separate phases of extreme zero-Covid lockdown. “With the closure of many venues, this [experimental music] scene is far less active than before, and few new venues are willing to do this type of music, truly understand this type of music,” observes Ryan Lui, UFO’s founder. The first major event at UFO Space was a November 2020 collaboration between several key figures of the Beijing scene, including gogoj (Sheng Jie), who performed a solo set at this rare mid-pandemic gathering.
Fish & Li Zenghui
“353 AD 永 和 九 年”
From The Orchid Pavilion 兰 亭 集 序
(KaiSeLu) 2020
The success of this initial event inspired the launch of Lui’s JIAMA series, which has run 50 editions at UFO Space, and attracted heavyweights like free improv saxophonist Li Zenghui, Mamer, and other itinerant players who’d lost their main stages. Li is a veteran of Yan Jun’s long defunct Waterland Kwanyin weekly series, but for the last decade he’s been more involved with live theatrical performance than music. He returned to his trusty, abused sax for an ad hoc tour of Beijing 7-11 convenience stores last year, and recently took the stage with Black Midi for an impromptu jam at a music festival in China. His plaintive, throaty reeds hover over this 2020 collaboration, The Orchid Pavilion.
Sun Yizhou & Zhu Wenbo
“C”
From Responses
(Zappak) 2022
Zhu Wenbo’s Zoomin’ Night label – which, like Waterland Kwanyin, used to exist as a weekly live music showcase – persists as a thread to a more active and dynamic past period of experimental music in Beijing. Zhu still books the occasional show and releases cassettes in small runs. A newer label adding a fresh perspective to the mix is Aloe Records, founded by sound artist Sun Yizhou in 2022 during another heavy lockdown in Beijing. This recording captures an afternoon living room improvisation between the two, short evolving solo sessions on clarinet, toy piano, transducer and other ephemera patiently mixed together afterwards by Sun.
Zhao Cong
“A7”
From REW
(Eminent Observer) 2022
Zhao Cong began playing music in the duo Xiao Hong and Xiao Xiao Hong with Zhu Wenbo, but since 2016 she’s slowly developed a protean role as a solo performer. REW is an intimate collection of miniature noises, assembled from micro-cassette hiss, popping rock candy and other close-by objects that tickle the eardrum. This month she released a new album 55355 for Aloe Records, which likewise uses pickups and gentle movements to amplify the otherwise mundane and indecipherable sounds of the immediate ambience.
Luxinpei
“HHH”
From Encyclopedia Of Luxinpei’s Scandals
(Zoomin‘ Night) 2022
Beijing based duo Luxinpei was a core fixture in the early days of Zoomin’ Night’s long-gone weekly gigs, which started in Beijing’s college district in 2009 and passed through multiple locations, including a public transient underpass, before more or less ceasing last year. Zoomin’ Night lives on as a label, and Luxinpei came back from an eight year hiatus during the pandemic to record old songs that had never been captured, and jot down some new ones. The band has been playing fairly regularly in Beijing again, including an opening set at a sold out show for Shanghai no wave band Liqui Liqui earlier this past summer.
Sleeping Dogs
“Mongolian Beat”
From Blunt Razor
(Space Fruity) 2022
Another fractal remnant of the Zoomin’ Night circuit is Sleeping Dogs, made up of some of the same figures who also comprised the majority of bands (and audience) in the old days of the weekly. The band is a byproduct of Fruityspace, a basement record shop/venue, and a rare holdout for non-mainstream music within Beijing’s city centre. The band’s leftfield instrumentals were collected on their debut album Blunt Razor released in late 2022 by the label arm of the venue, Spacefruity Records.
工工工 (Gong Gong Gong)
“Gong Gong Gong Blues 工 工 工 布 魯 斯 (Howie Lee Remix)”
From Phantom Rhythm Remixed 幽 靈 節 奏
(Wharf Cat) 2021
工工工 is still a Beijing band, even if only one of their two members – Hong Kong born Tom Ng – resides in the city full time. The other half is Montreal based Josh Frank, and the band materialised briefly on several contents to tour their spare but hard-driving 2019 debut Phantom Rhythm. 工工工 reunited this summer in Beijing for the official afterparty of a festival near the Great Wall of China headlined by Michael Rother, whipping an oversold crowd at art deco bar Modernista into a sweaty mess. This track is a remix by Beijing born producer Howie Lee, who in recent years has been exploring territory further and further away from the bass music he first broke out with.
Edward Grey
“Wu Jin”
From Wu Jin
(No label) 2019
Another resilient inner city institution is Wu Jin, a tiny cafe in a neighbourhood still relatively untouched by tourism development. Located in a quiet residential lane, with virtually no signage, Wu Jin hosts a rotating calendar of low-decibel sound performances organised by Ake, a performer who first developed an interest in experimental music while attending Zoomin’ Night’s now defunct weekly series. This track, named after the space, comes from Edward Grey, who performed along with Ake at the second Tiny Space concert in November 2019.
Ake
“u r not here 2”
From silence is shit
(Subjam) 2023
Ake has been performing regularly since 2015, usually opting for low-volume solo sets on a weathered old wooden violin. She’s popped up since then regularly at events organised by Zoomin’ Night’s Zhu, as well as Yan Jun, who still periodically organises his MIJI concert series at various spots around the city, often his own home. “u r not here 2” is her contribution to silence is shit, a cassette released in August by Yan’s Sub Jam label collecting over-the-phone ‘performances’ by a group of artists delivered between 10–11pm.
Yan Jun
“Internationale (Choir)”
From silence is shit
(Sub Jam) 2023
Yan’s own contribution to this compilation is a bewildering and amorphous take on the “Internationale”. Not quite a cover, not even really a chorus, this chaotic addition to an otherwise low-boil collection (Sun Yizhou from Aloe Records contributes a ‘rendition’ of John Cage’s 0’00”, for instance) is in line with Yan’s tendency to stand out even in a room of dedicated experimentalists.
Zhao Ziyi
“United (excerpt)”
From aloe on-site 2
(No label) 2023
At 16, Zhao Ziyi is probably the youngest active member of the Beijing scene. He first learned about experimental music via online rabbithole research during the pandemic, from Shenzhen’s Old Heaven Books tracing a few recurring names like Li Jianhong and Mamer. He eventually found UFO Space, and felt like he’d discovered a new home through Ake’s Tiny Space concerts at Wu Jin. “Wu Jin has its own unique, gentle magnetic field that’s hard to break,” he says. This is an excerpt from an (extremely quiet) solo set he gave at Fruityspace during an event organized by Aloe Records this past June.
Mind Fiber
“丫 杈 坂 的 黄 昏 Dusk at Ya Cha Ban”
From Ya Cha Ban 丫 杈 坂
(Dusty Ballz) 2022
Zhao just organised a mini-festival at a mixed sports hall (ping pong, basketball, archery) in eastern Beijing, with a line-up uniting multiple generations of the city’s experimental scene. Newcomers like Zhao (who picked up bass last year) and high school twins from nearby Tianjin playing their first show shared the stage with seasoned artists like Wei Wei and Li Jianhong, who performed as Mind Fiber. Since the sports venue was slated for imminent demolition – a quintessentially Beijing circumstance – this was a one-off happening. “Maintaining an optimistic attitude is key,” Zhao says of his motivation for organising the event. “At least everyone isn’t stagnant! Let’s just go with the flow while staying healthy.”
Read Josh Feola’s full Global Ear report in The Wire 476. Wire subscribers can also read the article online via the digital magazine library.
© TheWire, 09/2023
