*** I just flew back from Midi Electronic Festival, and boy, are my ears tired! How bad is EDM?! Fuck me. Thank god for the psytrance house at that thing, don't know what I would have done without that respite. A few notable exceptions aside — Duck Fight Goose was great, Hvad naturally killed — the vast majority of the "music" at e-Midi just sounded like cash registers cha-ching-ing eternally over a never-changing 120bpm four-on-the-floor kick, broken up only by the occasional, circa-2008 dubstep wobble. I was only there on Day 2, but that was enough! Me being me, I'm going to give myself a little aural douche, a Monday mental palette cleanser showcasing the kind of weird, bent, left-field, outer-space electro that isn't made by people cashing in, but rather by people digging deep. Still danceable, I promise! Here's some bent electro coming through this weekend: *** First up: on Saturday night, DDC hosts the Beijing release of Xina Eletronica, a compilation put out last September by Portuguese label Labareda showcasing, they say, "electronic music only and purely made in CHINA." Half of the eight tracks are by American/Euro dudes but I guess the "in CHINA" part is the important bit. Xina Eletronica has been making the rounds online for quite a while. Pretty hard to miss, what with the aggressively yonic cover art. Here it is if you haven't seen/heard yet: A nice sampler of some movers and shakers on the Beijing/Shanghai bent-electro scene, to be sure. Most of the Beijing representatives will be at DDC on Saturday, including thruoutin, Fløøød, and Meng Qi, who blew minds with his all-modular live set at last Thursday's Gulou Double Decker. Also playing Saturday's showcase is Zebre-Rouge, the one name on this compilation I wasn't previously familiar with. Sources tell me Zebre-Rouge is Benoit Vitoux, "an Electro-Dub producer from France living in Shanghai. Inspired by the French and UK Dub scene, Zebre Rouge created his own style as a dub maker with field recording samples gathered during his travels, ethnic inspirations and a bold synth touch. Armed with his machines and controller his live set is a shamanistic trip from Dub stepper to psychedelic electronic." Hmm... here's a sample of that: So, Saturday at DDC: a lot of field recordings gathered on Westerners' travels through Asia, a lot of heavy analog gear on the table, a lot of weird bleeps and bloops flying all over the place. 40rmb, 10pm start. *** Later that same night there's a little Southern invasion at Dada, where Shanghai-based event label Sub-Culture takes over for the night. Sub-Culture is one of about a thousand projects spearheaded by Gaz Williams, who also oversees a label called SVBKVLT, a magazine called JuZhen, and a club called The Shelter. He also DJs under the alias Howell. Aside from all that he's a pretty lazy dude. On Saturday night Gaz will be behind the decks, laying down a vinyl set reflecting his particularly global-minded eclectic selector outlook. Through his bookings at Shelter and his work as a label-runner, he's got an impressively wide net cast for new sounds emanating from underground niches all over the world. Most recently he's been spinning a South African innovation called Gqom. I can barely pronounce it, nevermind explain it to you. Experts say: "Gqom. Pronounced a bit like the French ‘gomme’ but the q is a post-alveolar click. A post-alveolar click is made by your tip of your tongue on the roof of your mouth. Like the sound people make when they are imitating horses galloping." Right. Gqom is basically a monotonous drone with shifting beats and sound effects shuffling around on top, like a bunch of horses galloping I guess? Maybe after taking some ketamine. Sounds like this: But I'm not making any promises... Gaz is always looking for the next thing and I may have just killed Gqom's novelty with that intro. He's probably onto some obscure regional shamanic bass pioneered by Central Asian nomads by now. Only one way to find out. Coming along for the ride on Saturday is GOOOOSE, the solo production effort of Han Han from Shanghai electro-rock outfit Duck Fight Goose. Last time I caught up with Han Han in depth — just over a year ago — Duck Fight Goose was "moving more toward electronic sounds and integrating the by comparison jazzier rhythms of new drummer Jean Baptiste." Now they're fully moved, unpacked, settled in. They've completed a radical stylistic departure from their last album, Sports, their sounds now feeling far more at home in a club than a rock dive. This has been to the chagrin of many of their fans within the Shanghai rock scene, but has also opened doors for new venues and new audiences, within Shanghai and beyond. They killed, for example, at Midi Electronic on Saturday, amassing the largest crowd I saw at any one point during the entire festival for a sundowner set that had all the daytime ravers moving. On the side, Han Han's been experimenting even more explicitly with danceable electronics, DJing and performing live at Shanghai basements Shelter and Arkham. Since participating in last September's RBMA Bass Camp alongside fellow forward-thinking Shanghai producers and Sub-Culture affiliates Downstate and Tzusing — plus Gaz himself — Han Han's been more immersed than ever in the club side of Shanghai's underground, and his work as GOOOOOSE has started to reflect that. Before, GOOOOOSE was an entirely ambient, guitar + twenty-effects-pedals kind of setup. Here's where it's at now, as of April's JuZhen magazine release party:

JuZhen Issue #1 Launch - Gooooose (live recording - 2015/4/6) by Juzhen Magazine on Mixcloud

So, there you have it. GOOOOOSE live + Howell and local supporter DJ Ozone spinning vinyl, Saturday, May 23 at Dada. As an added bonus, Gaz will be hand-importing some of the more recent fruits of his labors into Beijing. He'll bring along the last few remaining copies of JuZhen #1, which features original articles by Han Han and Tzusing, a Kode9 mix, super weird artwork, and other rad treats for your eyes and ears. That's free on a first-come, first-served basis. He'll also bring the latest SVBKVLT release, Tuhaojin, a CD-R of "footwork with Chinese club music... lo-fi flavor and some other forms of electronic music thrown in, such as trap/cloud rap and even a bit of PC Music" by Shanghai producer / master digger Damacha. That one's getting officially released down at The Shelter on Friday night. Gaz will throw a few copies in his bag before he presumably leaves the club directly for the train station. Here's a cut off Tuhaojin to play us out: *** RECAP: Xina Eletronica = SAT May 23 @ DDC Sub-Culture feat. Gooooose & Howell = SAT May 23 @ Dada