*** Well, we're at that point in the year again. Half of your friends are in Thailand already. Likewise, most of Beijing's live music venues will leave you hanging before week's end. Some have already shuttered up; the rest will call it a year around Valentine's Day. Slim pickings for live music offerings this week, but here are a few solid leads from the thin spread of music events in the immediate pre-Spring Festival fray: *** First up, for fans of the esoteric: Beijing experimental scene veteran, composer, performer, and Sub Jam label founder Yan Jun presents the 21st in his MIJI concert series on Thursday at Meridian Space. This is the second or third event Yan Jun's done at Meridian, posting up in the rather under-utilized, oblong performance space on the second floor, above the main events and bar space where events at Meridian are usually held. I saw the last MIJI there, featuring Swiss bass clarinet + electronics duo DEER, plus Yan Jun and his usual coterie of minimalist improvisers (Chui Wan's Yan Yulong, Snapline's Li Qing). The space (pictured in the flyer above) well suits the "aesthetic" of Yan Jun's sound. Or lack thereof. Yan Jun performs mainly with feedback, manipulating high frequencies with movements of his body within a field produced by a careful arrangement speakers and microphones looping signals back on each other through a mixing board with no inputs plugged in. In case you have no fucking clue what that means, here's a video: The special guest for this edition of MIJI is Austrian laptop composer Klaus Filip. According to his own CV: "The main focus of his current work is sinewaves, whose subtle and adducent sounds are used in a wide dynamic range." Neato. Filip founded an open-source freeware system called ppooll, which allows computer musicians all over the world to mingle and mash code together online. Here's a video with a soundtrack of Filip performing on ppooll, aided by no-input mixer noise from Japanese sound artist Toshimaru Nakamura (another one of Yan Jun's buds, naturally): Average that out with Yan Jun's borderline ultrasonic squeals, and add in ultra-minimal electric violin plucking from Chui Wan frontman Yan Yulong, and you have a good idea of what to expect on Thursday night. 40rmb, 8pm start. More info here. *** Then, on Friday, Mao hosts their big pre-CNY party in the form of a fifth anniversary celebration for another venue: Nanluoguxiang rock'n'roll worshiping mini-bar 69 Cafe. As a live venue, as a cafe, as a bar, as a place to hang out, 69 has never really cut it for me. Overpriced and overcrowded. But as a passion project of Xiao Zhan's — local diehard behind the Rockland record store and Mushroom independent music festival — it gets a pass. Hard to believe it's been around for five years, and managed to keep up with NLGX rent at that. So, Xiao Zhan / 69 are throwing a fifth anniversary party up the street on Friday at Mao Livehouse. The lineup is stacked with a bunch of (laowai) acts who cut their teeth at 69 and have subsequently stepped onto bigger stages around town. The most established names on the bill are Daniel Taylor (HarriDans) and his drums+bass duo with Daniel Lenk, Luvplastik. The latter has been tearing it up lately. Caught them at Djang San's underground showcase the other week and they were one of the highlights of the night. Real grimy, stripped-down bluesy psychedelia with some menacing, delay-drenched caterwauling on the part of Mr. Taylor. Here's a vide of Luvplastik, live from the incubator that is 69's tiny stage: The rest of the lineup I haven't heard of. Presumably all fairly fresh laowai acts that have taken full advantage of Xiao Zhan's friendly open stage policy to a certain breed of classically oriented rock sounds. There's an Australian band called The Plumtrees, a folk duo called Nathan & Stefan, and a classic blues rock group called The Sleepwalkers. Five acts packed with vintage sounds, 8:30pm start, 80rmb at the door. More info *** Trudging on to Saturday. Valentine's Day. Of course most clubs will be open for this one, selling you alcohol while you stumble toward some approximation of love / a one-night stand. We'll have a separate listicle kinda roundup thing for you on that later. But on the live music tip, you'd probably want to be at School for the V-Day. On Saturday night, School Bar throws its annual pre-Spring Festival party, in which it invites all its regular wasters to come kill the booze stash before the bar closes for the zodiac transition. Live tunes from Joyside frontman Bian Yuan and his Lone backup band. Here's a fairly high-production-quality music video they cut recently: Nice fiddle! No entry fee on this one. Expect cheap / free drinks allllll night long. And expect this Valentine's anthem to pop up at least once during the night: *** Recap: MIJI #21 = THU Feb 12 @ Meridian Space 69 Cafe 5th Anniversary = FRI Feb 13 @ Mao School Bar pre-CNY Party = SAT Feb 14