*** I don't know about you, but I got a lot of loud noises in my ears this week. Whether you were at INTRO, that Feige thing, China Music Valley, Taihu Midi, or Strawberry in Shanghai (heard Dino Jr. really ripped it), I think it's time this week for a bit of aural decompression. Maybe just some simple string and vocal arrangements, no electricity? I'm with you. This week we have a deep card of folk crooners coming in from different corners of China and beyond, providing a wide mix of traditional and contemporary regional musics to give us a refreshing palette cleanser from all that hard rock/metal/techno/punk/hip hop/whatever it is that we usually pollute our ears with. Folk break: *** Kicking it off with some Japanese wildman folk: on Friday night, School Bar hosts scvagabond poet Kazuki Tomokawa for his Beijing debut. From the wiki: "Kazuki Tomokawa (友川 かずき) is a prolific Japanese musician, active in the Japanese music scene since the early 1970s. He is often described as a 'screaming philosopher' due to his idiosyncratic singing style. His music has been used in the films of cult directors Takashi Miike and Kōji Wakamatsu, and he also appears in person in Miike's Izo (2004)." The School guys are really excited about this one. Kazuki falls right into their wheelhouse of crazy dudes playing guitars while very drunk. Here's a little behind the scenes outtake from the recording of Kazuki's 2014 album, Vengeance Bourbon (AWESOME NAME): And here's another recent Kazuki tune, "Runaway Lad": Expect all the punks to be out for this one, regardless of genre. School Bar, Friday, May 8, 9pm, 150rmb at the door. *** Also on Friday: Guangdong folk outfit Wutiaoren returns Beijing to release their latest full-length album, Canton Girl. Wutiaoren's wry ouvre is heavy with sometimes delicate, more often rollicking and boozed out anthems celebrating/scorning the many frailties of the human condition, globalization and urbanization, and the dark spots on Xi's new Chinese Dream. "Attacking your city like a porcupine with a million quills," they say. Canton Girl is Wutiaoren's third full-length album, and this show is a stop on their accompanying third country-wide tour. They invite you to come "drink like the generals" on Friday night. If you don't know what that means, here's a music video for one of their older tunes, "Drink Like the Generals": Most of Wutiaoren's tunes are sung in the band's native Haifeng dialect, which you can hear in the video. For this gig, they'll thoughtfully provide videos with Mandarin translation for us northern barbarians to follow along. That's Friday, May 8 at Mako, 100rmb at the door, 9pm start. *** Another album release this weekend: on Saturday at Mako, formerly Xinjiang-based folk artist Hua Zhou releases her new one, Joy at First Sight. Hua Zhou's simple, stripped down folk offers her lopsided, post-'90s-youth perspective on contemporary China, leaving behind the taboos of earlier folk singers to frankly discuss sexuality and social issues relative to her generation. In classic "folk singer hero origin story" style, Hua Zhou quit school to move to Urumqi, wrote a bunch of tunes, then migrated to Beijing, questing after bigger opportunities in the capital. Joy at First Sight is her debut studio album, produced by P.K.14 vocalist Yang Haisong. He really seems to have a finger in every pie these days. Here's a sample: Joy at First Sight will comprise the first release of a new Beijing-based label called D Force Records. That one kind of came out of nowhere. Looking at the roster of bands they're claiming (including MHP, Soviet Pop, and Chengdu's Stolen), I put 2 and 2 together and confirmed that D Force is the new label arm of social network Douban.com. While Douban's been dying as an actual social network (WeChat killed Douban, along with Weibo and OG social network "face to face interactions"), they've made increasing advances into the offline music industry space, as I've mentioned before. They've been inking behind-the-scenes distribution deals with major Beijing indie labels, and this is their first gambit in the label business themselves. Hey, the more the merrier. Hua Zhou's record release is Saturday, May 9 at Mako, 70rmb, 8:30pm start. *** Closing today's Music Monday out with Beijing-based folk singer Yulin, who's giving a free show on Sunday, May 10 at School Bar. I don't know much about the dude, besides those facts. I'm mainly including him because I want to post this video of him playing this trad Chinese tune on guqin, while wearing a clown mask and leather jacket: Awesome! Creepy... *** RECAP: Kazuki Tomokawa = FRI May 8 @ School Wutiaoren = FRI May 8 @ Mako Hua Zhou = SAT May 9 @ Mako Yulin = SUN May 10 @ School