*** Happy Dragon Boat! I didn't eat a single zongzi this year. Kind of bummed about that. But anyway, here we are in June. It's Tuesday but it feels like Monday because our brains have melted a little over the last few days. Here are some upcoming gigs to get us back on track, or maybe push us further into the abyss: First up is Hashback Hashish from New Delhi. He's the second artist from Delhi-based label REProduce to come through, following the path blazed by live electronic duo Teddy Boy Kill. The latter played last year's Dong Dong Festival and killed it. Beyond their live show, they sparked a mutual interest in creating a new line of exchange between musicians / music industry mugs from India and China. Soft power kind of thing. So Hashback is the next in the chain. Stoned, above, is his latest full-length effort, released in January of this year. Real slow-burner. Like Hashback's set, it veers between almost aggressively danceable house & techno and frequent forays into experimental glitch / ambient territories: accidental arpeggios and deep dives into analog sound modeling give Hashback Hashish's jams — still mostly dance-oriented — a semi-ragged texture that should suck in the synth nerds along with the club set. Here are a few more samples to dampen your afternoon delirium: Hashback played this past Saturday at The Other Place. You probably missed that one due to the deluge. Luckily you can still catch him tomorrow (Wednesday) night at Dada, where he'll play a live set, joined by Beijing's iimmune and FAR/∞. If you haven't yet streamed the latter's stunning debut LP, follow the SmBJ Wire dude! But here it is again: Catch Hashback Hashish, FAR/∞, iimmune, and DJ Menghan at the Sinotronics Label Night on Wednesday, June 4 at Dada. *** Next one I'm gonna throw at you is the Mushroom Festival, a two-dayer going down on Friday & Saturday at Yugong Yishan. This is the second year for Mushroom, a labor of love put on by Xiao Zhan, the mild-mannered proprietor of 69 Cafe and the Rockland record shop by Houhai. Last year's Shroomfest was more of a 10-year anniversary celebration for Rockland, but it's grown and morphed into an annual thing for 2014. Lineup is pretty damn solid too. It's all based on Xiao Zhan's personal connections, so not as business-oriented as your other summertime festos. Headliners include Subs, ex-Joyside frontman Bian Yuan's band Lone, Maybe Mars neo-psych torch carriers Chui Wan, and outer-fifth-ring-road blues duo Alpine Decline. Personally I'm most interested to check out The Fuzz from Xi'an. They've been through Beijing once or twice to record their debut LP with Yang Haisong. Think this is their first time playing Beijing since that one dropped: Oh and just to weird things up a bit, here's an electro remix of Alpine Decline's "Personal History," set to some unsettling Shining-behind-the-scenes visuals by Parisian group Plaisir de France. Sorry, YouTube only: The 2014 Mushroom Festival happens Friday-Saturday, June 6-7 at Yugong Yishan. Find each night's full lineup here. *** One more: this Saturday, XP will host a release show for the latest slab of Genjing wax. It's a 7" single for Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes, Shanghai's least SEO-friendly depressive shoegaze band. This is their first and likely last Beijing appearance, as their guitarist is Pairs drummer Xiao Zhong, who's leaving China for good because the Shanghai Tumblr scene has become too upsetting. Here are the tunes: I wrote the press release for this 7" so I'm just gonna copy/paste that right now, because deep inside I still think it's Monday or something. And I like the bit about Enya: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. What happened with those two? Why name your band after them? Are they a totem of the 21st-century relationship? The infuriating alienation and slow-burning pain of failed love? Nah. Maybe. “You Don’t Love Me (你不爱我)” rails against the inevitable for about four minutes before yielding to the feral chaos underlying human nature, love, celebrity, the sounds of the words themselves. After the heart’s fires burn out there’s just swirling ash, granules too small to be individually seen but jagged enough to sting your eyes long after the light and warmth are gone. The flip side is an extended remix of another Tom & Katie tearjerker, “After Leaving (离开后),” by Huashun Unit. H.U. is one of many aliases for one-man Shanghai doom drone crusader Nahash, née Laura Ingalls (not his real name), and his partner in crime, Clement Pony. In this studio trip, the duo basically takes one open guitar chord and a few disembodied vocal fragments from Tom and Kate respectively and transmutes them into a lush gestalt that sounds like it was written and performed by Enya’s evil twin for some kind of nefarious ritual. If you’ve never been to Shanghai, let me tell you: this track sounds exactly like how it feels to walk into a bomb shelter dance club choked with cut-rate cigarette smoke and the stink of unmoored pheromones at 5 in the morning. Love blinds. Catch Tom & Kate & friends on Saturday, June 7 at XP. *** RECAP: Sinotronics Label Night w/ Hashback Hashish (Delhi) = Wed, June 4 @ Dada Mushroom Festival = Fri-Sat, June 6-7 @ Yugong Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes 7" Release = Sat, June 7 @ XP