*** New Year column reboot part 2: the perennial Fresh Bands edition. I'm sure there are some international acts coming through this week but today we focus on local talent. Mostly Beijing bands, with a dash of Nanjing punk-jazz freakness for contrast. As usual, mostly concentrated at the city's most open stages, XP and School Bar. Old people making new bands, new people making bands that sound old, aspirational new soundwaves for 2015: *** First up, we have a lowkey new(-ish) band showcase on Friday night at XP called 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I guess the gig title is meant to suggest a certain depth of sound. Of the two bands on the bill, I'd be most interested to check out Solaris, a noisy average of post-rock noodling and freeform psychedelic jamming. Solaris rises from the ashes of one of my erstwhile favorite Beijing weirdo rock bands, Hecate, who played like four gigs in 2013 then peaced out. Guess they've been in the labs working on which tones to elicit and which Russian deep space psych-cinema masterpieces to reference before hitting the scene with fresh vigor. Judging by this recent live set, it seems the needle hasn't moved that much from Hecate's original aesthetic. Which is awesome. Sharing the stage on Friday night is She Never Sings Our Songs, a new-ish post-rock band. I'm really not a post-rock guy. Frankly I'm getting tired of writing about it. Running out of things to say. I might actually hate post-rock. But it's not going anywhere, seems to be pretty deeply rooted in Beijing. Not hating on this band in particular, their sound is pleasant enough. Judge for yourself. If you're one of the thirty billion post-rock aficionados in Beijing you'll probably feel it: So yeah, two new bands trying to cut their teeth early in the year. Expect mostly instrumentals. That's Friday, Jan 16 @ XP. *** Same night, different vibe: School Bar continues one of its many regular "mash 'em up regardless of genre and ask questions later" gig series, Keep Calm and Fly On. The Douban event bills it as a show "for children who hate talking", so take that for what its worth? Pretty strange lineup on this one. White+, who apparently play all of these Keep Calm gigs, are co-headlining with Girl Kill Girl, the by comparison more abstract & noisy side project of Hang on the Box frontwoman Wang Yue. Girl Kill Girl plays very rarely, ostensibly only when Wang Yue — better known these days as would-be fashion provocateur Gia Wang — wants to feign possession of the kind of underground cultural relevance she had circa 1998. Or model her latest vagina t-shirt or whatever. In any case, this will probably the only show Girl Kill Girl will play this year, so that's an angle. Also on the bill is MeToo, another fairly established Beijing band prone to long hiatuses. I've been seeing their name pop up more often lately, and they were on that XP Sound comp last year, so presumably they're staging a comeback. Here's a recent live cut: The newest blood on this School show is The HarriDans, a rock'n'roll outfit fighting the double uphill battle of refusing to sign to any of the stock Beijing Indie labels (they've had offers) and being a band of mostly white faces. The HarriDans are fronted by and evidently named after British transplant Daniel Taylor, who cut his teeth on ubiquitous open mics at 69 Cafe and has subsequently hit the DIY booking route pretty hard, securing many gigs for both the HarriDans and his side project with Daniel Lenk, Luvplastik. I've only seen the HarriDans once, at a random Zoomin' Night last year. One 2015 resolution is to augment that. Here's an extended jam from last December to give a taste of the HarriDans vibe: Fun fact: the father of HarriDan's drummer Carlos Fuentes (also of Djang San Band and other random moments of semi-drunken percussive improvisation) played in this Nuggets-style one-hit-wonder late-'60s trippy hippie band called It's a Beautiful Day. Here's their big tune: Groovy! So, yeah. Friday night at School. Weird but solid lineup. Worth a look for sure. Full info in the listing. *** My editor's pick of the week: Zaofang #2 on Saturday. This Zaofang gig series — coordinated by XP booking manager / former Maybe Mars general-purpose ass kicker Shen Ye — is putting number 2 in the books, defining itself by the super weird bands it brings from out of town and into the hallowed halls of Beijing's best stage for non-straightforward musics. This time around, Zaofang shines a light on Nanjing bass + drums duo White Elephant. This is a new side project spun off by Ka Liening, key member of long-running Nanjing weirdo rock scene placeholders 8 Eye Spy. At the moment there are only a few raw practice room recordings up for streaming on White Elephant's Douban. Highly recommend you stream them here. Some weird psych noise prog punk jazz hybrids going on. Really curious to check it out live. White Elephant / 白象+++ White Elephant is making the trip up to play their second gig ever (first one was opening up for Cheveu at the Nanjing stop of the Dong Dong Festival tour). They're joined in Beijing by Carsick Cars's Zhang Shouwang, Snapline side project Rat Spy 51, and itinerant improv noiser A Ming. The latter's been holed up in Leeds for the last six months or so, steadfastly making loud noises at home while his girlfriend pursues a graduate degree in law or medicine or something equally legit. Really no way to predict what A Ming will play on any given night. Have seen him wail on everything from a double bass, to an electric guitar, to an electric fan, to a plastic recorder, to contact-mic'd boxing gloves, to a sewing table Frankensteined with the sawn off neck of the aforementioned double bass (and the saw used to decapitate it), to a mouth harp… Here he is wailing on a flute run through about 300 cheap effects pedals: Rad. Welcome back, buddy! Recommend this one for the most unpredictable sounds of the weekend. That's Saturday, Jan 17 @ XP. *** Finally, close the weekend out with a Sunday afternooner: LDMY Studio is gathering a smattering of Beijing bands in 798 for a daytime showcase of young-ish heads on the scene at some place called The Name of Rose Center. The show's tagged Aspiration of Teen, though no one playing it is actually a teen, to my knowledge. The sub-headline is "Weekend gathering of psychedelic youth", I suppose that's a little closer to the mark. Pretty erratic lineup on this one. The only band that's actually playing "psychedelic" music is Chui Wan, though they're sharing the stage with Birdstriking, who are in the same school if not the same class. Chui Wan and Birdstriking are both gearing up to churn out sophomore albums this year, and preparing for overlapping US tours in the Spring. So maybe go to this one if you want to see what they've been cooking up. Birdstriking 2.0 at last November's Clockenflap Festival (photo by Vlatka) The other bands on this Aspiration of Teen bill are pretty randomly thrown together. Really can't find a thread here as none of these bands are particularly young or aspirational. There's alt-rock group The Eat (formerly known as DRINK), I guess they're still fairly new. Some band I've never heard of called AMOS that has evidently played one show a year since 2011. And — the real outlier here — live electro trio CnDY. I like CnDY. Haven't checked in with them for a minute. Here's a weird chopped-vocal-sample ambient earworm from their Acid Candy EP: Yeah, weird gig, but might be cool for a loud Sunday afternoon outside of the standard inner city dives. Ticket is 90rmb at the door, but there are 60rmb pre-sales available via Musikid. 3pm start. *** Recap: Solaris / She Never Sings Our Songs = FRI Jan 16 @ XP White+ / Girl Kill Girl / MeToo / Harridans = FRI Jan 16 @ School Zaofang #2 with White Elephant (Nanjing) = SAT Jan 17 @ XP The Aspiration of Teen = SUN Jan 18 @ The Name of Rose Center (798)