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Back on the grind y'all. Here are fourteen tracks to crossfade you into a year of hopefully less wack shit:
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Despite postponing the release of their forthcoming LP due to personal injury last November, Carsick Cars's Zhang Shouwang had a killer December. Cars and Shouwang's other band, White+, played a slew of festivals, secret shows, company gigs, and holiday parties to keep the buzz alive. Over the holiday break, he snuck a few new jams onto the Carsick Cars douban page under the name The Other 3 EP. Most recently, he dropped an unmastered, advance version of "Weicheng," a track off the new disk, 3. Naturally, it was released at 3pm on January 3. These jernts are Douban-only, click it:
Carsick Cars - "Weicheng 围城" Carsick Cars - "Weeds 野草" Carsick Cars - "15 Minutes Older Carsick Cars - "Yoko (outtake)"
According to the Douban, Cars will release 3 on February 28 at Yugong Yishan, then follow that up with tours of China and North America in March and April.
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Alpine Decline
As I mentioned in my 2013 recap, local vinyl slinger Genjing Records has a massive release schedule laid out for this year. First up is a new LP for ex-LA guitar ‘n drums ‘n buzz duo, Alpine Decline. GO BIG SHADOW CITY, the band's fifth full-length, was recorded in P.K.14 vocalist Yang Haisong's underground parking garage studio late last year, and sounds suitably subterranean. Spun this record a few times now and it's already one of my favorites for the year. Here's an advance version of GO BIG SHADOW CITY's second track:
Also on deck is a 7" single for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, a practically un-Googleable duo from Shanghai. TC&KH are actually Xiao Zhong — the gadfly behind noise rock duo Pairs and now-defunct scene-watching Tumblr Slink Rat — and vocalist Cee Q of Marquee VII. Style is smoldering shoegaze pop, just guitar and vocals, real spare and raw. They self-released a full-length last year, which you can stream here. And here's the A-side of the Genjing slab:
Both of those will be released on March 14 in Shanghai as part of the 2014 JUE Festival. They'll drop in Beijing stores on that date too.
Genjing is also re-issuing History, the sold-out 2012 single from Shanghai's Duck Fight Goose. DFG, after undergoing lineup changes last year, have put together some rough demos for a new full-length record. Look for more info on that later in 2014. Here's a refresher on your History:
That's just the tip of the iceberg for Genjing. This Spring alone, they'll release a 7" split between Carsick Cars and Flavor Crystals from Minneapolis (whose latest LP was also called Three... hey, great minds), a split single between Deadly Cradle Death and UK noisemongers The Telescopes (featuring cover art by Beijing street writer Exas), a 7" single of two unreleased Snapline tracks, and Last Summer, a 7" EP by Beijing's rising freak folk star, Little Punk. 加油.
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Despot (left) and Heems (right)
This one's kind of irrelevant since Heems did too many drugs lost his passport in India and subsequently cancelled his previously scheduled Beijing gig. Bummer. The former Das Racist member recently dropped a pretty decent remix with noted New York City polo shirt wearers Vampire Weekend, though. Here it is:
And here's one Das Racist did back in 2010 with Beijing's foremost turntablist, DJ Wordy:
See ya next January, Heems. Maybe. Or not. Don't stress yourself out about it or anything.
In the mean time, Wordy's already going hard in the 2014. Here's Hard to Follow 2.0, a "future electronic" mix he dropped on January 1:
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While we're on the electro tip, let me introduce Dumb Plants, a new live EDM/electro-house duo featuring Yantiao's Shen Lijia and Sid Guan. Dumb Plants hasn't really played out yet, besides one show at an official demo event for Berlin electronic music hardware/software producers Native Instruments (pictured above). Shen has been building a massive catalogue of DJ and electronic music production gear for online distribution through his company WavesPro, and recently expanded to the brick & mortar game by bringing his full stock list to The Other Shop, a brand new gear porn annex to Beiluo hangout The Other Place. As a fringe benefit, he's able to stock his home studio with cutting edge, industry-standard toys. Expect many more bedroom bangers from Dumb Plants this year, and hopefully a live show or two...
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-M- + AM444
And to play you out, here are some sexy French guitar solos:
This dubby little number is a remix that French "pop rock maverick" Matthieu Chedid — aka -M- — did for Shanghai duo AM444's jam, "神经末梢 (Nerve Ending)“. This track is the first of a trilogy that -M- will release in China via Kaiguan, the cultural agency behind last November's Dong Dong Festival. The Kaiguan team brought -M- to China in 2010, and are following up this year with a March 2014 Asia tour with AM444 and a handful of China/Taiwan/Hong Kong-exclusive digital releases. The first is the track above, which was officially released today via wa3.cn in the Mainland. Digital streaming for foreign artists in the Chinese online marketplace was a major theme of Dong Dong, and it's good to see the conference organizers immediately putting new ideas into practice. Keep an eye on SmartBeijing for more tunes from this collaboration, and -M-'s eventual tour dates.
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That's it for now. Enjoy the new sound...
