MP3 Monday is a weekly SmartShanghai column, serving up mp3s from bands living and making music in China (or coming to China, or thinking about coming to China, or whatever). Copyright holders: if you would like your song removed, please email us here, and we'll honor your request promptly.

Just a couple show recommendations for you this week. Still more out there if you seek it, but these ones in particular look pretty alright to me.

Kicking off a busy month in November local releases by local acts is raw grunge band Androsace, with their first CD, “Demo”… or maybe that’s just a description and not the title… it’s a ‘demo’, then.

If you’ve been paying attention and following undercurrents in Shanghai’s live music community, you’ll be familiar with this loud-ass band called Androsace, who have been real active developing their sound since forming late last year. The four-piece is pretty emblematic of Shanghai’s polyglot, random collection of musicians, with members from Xinjiang, Yunnan, Italy, and France, and influences that span the decades in grunge, post grunge, metal, and punk. Yeah, that's a pretty vague and useless way to describe it. Lucky, I have this MP3. Here’s just one track… get the CD at the show. Or failing that, download it the full thing off their Bandcamp or Douban after November 4.


Here’s Dario from Androsace describing how it all came together:

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One of our friends sent his mate Andrew Moon who makes these amazing drone records as RST copies of the session and he offered to mix it for us in his shed in Auckland where he does all his own stuff. Andrew completely got what we were after and we think really captured the raw sort of angry sound we try for when we play. Anyway, after we had listened to the first track he completed (Machine) we sat there for a bit then Dario said ; “Cazzo, do you think that’s good enough for a CD?”

So the past few weeks have been a blur of hand painting, folding, stuffing and writing putting the CD together. We thought about professional pressing and production but we didn’t set out to make that sort of thing and Lenz really wanted to let her creative spirit loose and hand make everything. We ordered the tracks and then created a master of sorts on a laptop and we’ve been burning out our CD writers ever since.

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The product of a “blur of hand painting, folding, stuffing and writing” sounds like a pretty fitting first release for Androsace -- a band that is as visceral and aggressive as they are honest and fallible. They’re playing at Yuyintang on Friday night with spazz metal pop punks, Dragon Pizza, and the Earth Mother band from which all doth spring: Cold Fairyland in a rare show at Yuyintang.

So that’s real good, man. Go to that shit. Support and celebrate with a hardworking band that’s put out something great. If you miss it you’re on the…


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And over across town at Mao Livehouse on the Saturday night, this looks pretty good too. French sourpuss / shoegaze band, Alcest making their Shanghai debut. Music started out as black metal way back in 2000 but then morphed into shoegaze in the middle of the last decade. What you’re left with is stuff that sounds like hard Slowdive or Creation Records-ish ‘90s shoegaze, but presented along with the iconography of angst-ridden black metal. Wall of morbidity. Music is a bit happy, affirming, and noisy, but the singer’s name is like Bellezerum Winterfrost or something.

That’s alright, man, I’m telling you. It works out. Voila, une track.


It’s a bit expensive. 150rmb pre-sales (contact the club to pre-order) and 200rmb at the door.

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Androsace is at Yuyintang on November 4, with Dragon Pizza and Cold Fairyland. Cover is 40rmb. Alcest is at Mao Livehouse on November 5. 150rmb pre-sale; 200rmb at the door.

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