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.

Local music steamrolls all ahead this week with a couple of releases from local label, PAUSE: MUSIC. Here’s not one, not two, but three preview tracks from these kids, ROM, from their first self-titled release. Music is future-damaged hip hop, generally speaking, with lyrical content addressing (un)seen persecution, personal futility, and the power structures that bind. Beats come corrupt with dystopia atmospherics, crushed electro pulse work, and deep bass malaise. Paranoia step. Here’s three songs.





That’s three songs from a track listing of 14 -- a pretty mammoth undertaking that also includes a full booklet of art and writing from various other Shanghai elements, and an antic-static-packaged computer chip that you can ram right into your forehead -- “Digital consciousness delivered in analogue nostalgia“. A real hypertext ransom note for the dead-tech generation. Here’s a peak inside.



ROM is a three-headed thing with many tentacles: MC/producer icenine, producer/DJ Blaise Deville, and visual tactician Olive Pixel. The disc comes as a culmination of a couple of years writing and work in Shanghai, playing at their own events around town (Dada, Shelter, and more), a few festivals in Shanghai and not (JZ Festival most recently), and a few tours to Nanjing and such. Shanghai, like any other city, has it’s rock bands, it’s DJs, it’s producers, but there’s only one ROM -- a uniquely schizoid, Shanghai-specific, multimedia fustercluck of analogue anxiety and satire. Must be seen to be disbelieved. Don’t miss that shit.







ROM release their debut CD this Saturday night at The Shelter. Cover is 50rmb, which comes with a free CD. Support comes from Cavia (r) and Downstate -- the latter of which also assisted on this release with some post production work.

And you should look out for Downstate’s own solo release on PAUSE: MUSIC, which should be out sometime-ish. To back up a bit, PAUSE:MUSIC, if you are unfamiliar with it, is a local Shanghai-based label from the people behind your Antidote and Sub-Culture events. Last year they had two releases -- AM444 and SIG -- and they’re expanding their dealings somewhat to put out more independent music from this city.

Here’s another PAUSE:MUSIC release happening this Wednesday night at Yuyintaing: X is Y + BCR Split CD Release, “Summer and Winter Warfare”.





IMPORTANT NOTE: Your humble narrator is directly involved with that so you should take those pop songs with a huge garbage truck of salt and feel inclined to dismiss them with the same vigor in which said narrator has dismissed his journalistic integrity.

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AND ALSO: Couple of other good ones on this week. 2 Gallants at LOgO bar on Saturday night. Wood grain alcohol folk music. And also, same night, Trash A Go-Go returns to Yuyintang with The Bait Ones from Kobe, Japan. Both of those hot, hot, hot, and great for something to do right before the ROM thing.

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