Enter the glimmering dream world of she's green as Minneapolis-based shoegaze band makes their way to Singer Space as part of their China tour. 'An ethereal love letter to visceral dream pop,' their music pulls listeners in with the angelic and otherworldly vocals of Zofia Smith, its dense layers of swirling guitar feedback, and its organic, natural soundscapes - finding that blissful middle ground between tenderness and blunt force - between atmosphere and rigor. The band has been rising through the indie world over the past few years, with their latest EP, Chrysalis, catching fire and recording in the KEXP studio recently. Expect a packed house.
Week two of LivehinaMusic’s Winter Shuffle series at OASIS - the hidden basement sanctuary of the nightlife funhouse complex INS. If you’ve never been to INS - it’s pretty bonkers - a Disneyland of clubs, bars, game rooms, and photo opts for Shanghai’s young burden-less youth - all in one six-floor building. A frenzy of activity that’s hard to grasp one’s mind around in any given moment. LiveChinaMusic has invited three bands to inject a little rock and roll spirit into space, including rustic indie rockers Disordered Clay, who offer a sound that’s tight, lean, and with the perfect mix of angsty edge and tender discourse. Meanwhile, ANKH安卡 relish their bluesy, grunge-inflicted post punk aping rock and roll with deft musicianship that doesn’t beat around the bush and a singer that oozes charisma. Finally, The Turin Horse, the newly formed industrial post-rock outfit that utilizes guzheng and pipa into their transfixing and surreal sound.
Rival Consoles has been concurrently in the foreground and background of electronic music since the late 00s - crafting challenging IDM, neon electro-house, and more minimalist, experimental compositions. Whether it’s conjuring tense melancholia for Black Mirror soundtracks, playing in front of 10,000 dance fans at Drumsheds, selling out London’s Barbican Hall, and making synthesizers sound more human, the London-based producer Ryan Lee West is one of the best in the game. His increasingly dynamic live audio-visual shows have propelled him to play around the world, including appearances at music festivals such as Sónar, Moogfest, FORM, Mutek, Big Ears, Lovebox, and Roskilde. He’ll be bringing his latest set - centered around his highly acclaimed Landscape from Memory to Bandai Namco courtesy of New Noise. Support in the form of esteemed Chengdu electronic producer Wu Zhuoling.
The Luyiba Indoor Heavy Metal Music Festival returns for its sixth year - and this time they’re taking over EncoreSpace out by Guilin Park. It’s a hefty lineup featuring some heavy hitters, including FalseGods, who brew a ‘bodacious blend of black metal, death metal, thrash, metalcore, and deathcore’ - with members hailing from Montreal and Jinan. Also on hand, Hangzhou’s Airy - whose sound settles somewhere at the nexus of post rock, shoegaze, and atmospheric black metal; Screaming Savior, known for fusing black metal and symphonic metal; long-standing melodic death metal bands Guardians of the Night from Zhengzhou and Direwolf from Hangzhou; and finally, local electro core emo act BeatGeneration 1980’s. Like I said - a meaty lineup. Pace yourself out there in the mosh pit.
Black metal, sludge, hardcore, and rock’s more defiant offspring reign supreme tonight at Cream Club with a gnarly lineup featuring sludgecore act T.O.S. (or Tornado of Shit if you prefer), who concoct a foamy brew of feedback-soaked filth, disembodied samples, and tortured vocals - hardcore brutality via nails-on-the-wall narcotized slow burn. Joining them are black metal outfit Katharnum (featuring members of Atomic Saman and Conjurer), hardcore ruffians HEADIVE, and Mini Koala - not afraid to bring some metal-inflicted headbangers to their sound.
A lush spread of A/V artists and producers takes over trigger for an immersive, atmospheric afternoon of audio-visual art. Acts include offscript label head dropdown, from Hangzhou, who offers something a bit more adventurous and IDM-stricken; Mizu2Mizu - the audiovisual project hailing from Mizu^3; Arcky Tang, who explores ‘surrealism, consciousness, and perception experiments through structural collapse and audiovisual resonance’; Ate Autumn, the multinational electronic music duo whose unique soundscapes wander between ambient, slow-paced, experimental, and psychedelic, using synthesizers, pads, delicate psychedelic timbres, and floating, and whispering vocals; and Yellow Wasabi, who developed a special AI tracker in MAX/Msp to capture the performers' hair and their movements within the space. For those who can’t manage to stay up till midnight to catch top-notch electronic music, this is your jam.
The appropriately named Happy Days - seminal DSBM (Depressive Black Metal) outfit, who hail from the US, have been bringing their fraught mix of funeral doom, Neo classical, and more - creating an intense emotional roller coaster of very depressing music. Think slowly advancing rhythms, persistently layered walls of distortion, and emotionally charged vocals that transform the show into a recreation of a mental state rather than a mere musical performance. Whoa - intense. The band are heading back to FENRIR after a week of touring.
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Check out our events calendar for more gigs and shows in Shanghai this weekend. Submit your event (free of charge) here.
