ZK/DD in Shanghai now

by lawrence

Karkowski/Dickson's 2006 China Tour - Shanghai

Zbigniew Karkowski and Dickson Dee reach Shanghai today and will stay there for one week before flying to Beijing. They will be working on an album with Torturing Nurse tomorrow. Contrary to the Shenzhen show, the two Shanghai performances on March 3 and 4 are not free, the entrance is 50 yuan each. On March 5 there will be a free lecture by ZK, Dickson and Guy-marc Hinant of Sub Rosa at Zendai MoMA. Please find updated full schedule here. Chinese info can be found on Dickson Dee’s blog.

Btw, just found this blog on Chinese new art by YAE (yet another expat) when doing an ego-search on Technorati. Highlight of posts includes this one about CAO Fei’s short film COSPlayer at Para/site, Hong Kong; this one about the last issue of the art zine published by Para/site (surprisingly, half of the issue is about sound art); and this one featuring two photos of Karkowski/Dickson’s concert at, again, Para/site on Feb 18.




Chaile Wiki online!

by lawrence

Chaile Wiki is a project launched by Adam - the blogger of chaile.org. It’s (Sousa’s “Liberty Bell March” playing):

“a collaborative project to bring together information and links to information on other sites about bands, people, and places related to the underground/independent music scene in China. If you live in China or are interested in the music, please share what you know with the rest of us.”

Here’s Adam’s blog post about it.




Reviews of Karkowski/Dickson concert in Shenzhen (updated regularly)

by lawrence

(Updated 13:33, Mar 2)

I’ll of course write about the Karkowski/LI Chin-sung concert later, in the meantime, do read Justin Mitchell’s blog post about it. Justin is a journalist from Hong Kong.

Metal Machine Music, by Justin Mitchell (proxy needed for Mainland Chinese readers.)


Southern Metropolis Daily’s report of the concert, click to view the readable version. An English translation is coming soon. Featured in the photo is the first performer HUANG Jian.


Karkowski on stage at OCAT, Shenzhen. The banner in the background reads “Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture: Forum”. Of course this is no forum except for my opening lecture on sound art (in China). ZK’s vintage Powerbook G3 is like a 18-year-old dog, gasping and shaking at the sheer volume of noise it produces. There is apparently some problem with its audio driver as it frequently stops playing any sound without any reason - this was what happened on stage the night before. The clueless audience of Shenzhen couldn’t figure out if it was the end of the show or it’s simply an “intermission” until ZenLu announced the thanks-for-coming-do-come-back-next-time message. Photo by SU Wei.


Karkowski with Dickson Dee (LI Chin-sung). ZK’s sound was overwhelmed by Dickson’s due to the reason stated in the above caption. Photo by SU Wei.


Dickson Dee’s solo with video (made by a Hong Kong video artist), which is kind of a game of synching: the screen was split in half, each contains vertically rolling image taken when travelling on a bus (?) in the streets of HK. The two roll and roll until they eventually become in synch. This is the piece Dickson performed in Vienna and Guangzhou last year. Photo by SU Wei.


Zenlu, the co-organizer of this concert, put on some ambient-ish sound which suffers from the murky PA system and the over-sized space. Photo by SU Wei.


Karkowski (centre) & LIN Zhiying (right)’s first session at Lawrence’s apartment in Shenzhen. The two are going to make an album together. At the left side is David Frazier - the author of the Wire article (see the post below), in the background is my 21-year-old piano. Photo by Lawrence. NEW!!! David’s account of the session (proxy needed for Mainland Chinese readers.)




Wire on Taipei experimental music

by lawrence

March issue of The Wire features new music in Taipei in the Global Ear section. My friend SHI Wenhua, who is an experimental filmmaker currently based in Boulder, Colorado, has produced a scan for us. Click on the pic to view the readable version.

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Links for Feb 25

by lawrence

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Hanging around with Karkowski in Shenzhen

by lawrence

“Uncanny” is the word that Mr. Mark Cousins - a professor of architecture at the famous AA School of Architecture, London - used to describe Shenzhen when he was here about a month ago for The 1st Shenzhen Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture. It must also be the word that flashed across Zbigniew Karkowski’s mind yesterday when he saw in the Shenzhen metro station the poster of the Saturday concert of him and LI Chin-sung (Dickson Dee).

“We are Rolling Stones, man!” he amused with a couldn’t-care-less tone.

Underground experimental artists are often flattered by the mainstream media exposure they get in Mainland China. A two-page feature of Haino Keiji was published on Southern Metropolis Daily three years ago when he played in Guangzhou with Yoshida Tatsuya; Shanghai-based oddball rock group Top Floor Circus (aka Attic Circus) was once cover-storied by one of the top youth culture magazine City Pictorial; Sounding Beijing 2003, whose line-up is made up of mainly then-obscure names, was covered extensively by the likes of Southern Metropolis Daily, The Beijing News, Southern Weekend, Modern Weekly, etc. And Karkowski is no exception, he has been treated at least twice with full-page feature on SMD, as well as various other publications. With his Saturday concert included as part of the government-sponsored Biennale, that exposure is amplified to the maximum.

I went to the press conference the day before yesterday to say hi to ZK, who seems to be taking an increasingly minimal approach to interview-taking. When a typically clueless journalist asked him questions in line with “what is experimental music?”, ZK replied with “I don’t know what is it and I don’t know why I do it I don’t know myself blah blah blah”. What rescued the conference from being a total bore was a funny anecdote disclosed by the chief of the Urban Planning Bureau that hosts the biennale: one of the exhibited items, a 9-hour video piece by Beijing artist AI Weiwei (whose father is the prestigeous poet AI Qing), cannot be shown because the organizer failed again and again in opening the huuuuuuuuuge video file on their computer!

After the press conference, ZK, Dickson and ZenLu went to my apartment for copies of LIN Zhiying’s second album Er. When ZK saw my piano, he walked towards it and began to play the few opening notes from J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variation. Being a big fan of Glenn Gould, I was immediately strucked and went over to play several more bars before inserting the 1981 version of Gould’s interpretation of the megawork into the CD player. “This music is highly mathematical.” ZK commented while we sat there listening to the variations that follow the aria.

Later we went to a Starbucks in my neighborhood and talked about girls in Shenzhen, Japanese culture, global politics - in a word, anything but music. However, I did manage to persuade ZK to play something other than his usual one-man software improv noise. It started when he described one of his recent projects, in which two laptops are used, with one running an Max/MSP patch that “runs on its own” and the other one controlled by him. The two patches - both written by Peter Castine - are identical except that one is totally automated and the other one has some adjustable parameters for real-time controlling during live performance. How this set-up would effect the sound is to be heard the day after tomorrow.

PS: finally got a copy of Revenge of Ying and Yang, thanks Dickson.


Cover designed by Hei Lee @ Altscape.

Related: ZK’s 2006 China tour dates

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Links for Feb 22

by lawrence

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New Banner of GNO

by lawrence

After working painstakingly for several hours, we finally have a banner for Global Noise Online! The pic is from Joel Chadabe’s book Electric Sound: the past and promise of electronic music, the original caption is:

Bruno Spoerri (seated) with a dancer controlling a MIDI system through David Rockeby’s Very Nervous System in 1991. Photo courtesy Bruno Spoerri.

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CSA Magazine vol.2 online now!

by lawrence

Web magazine CSA (China: the Sonic Avant-Garde) Vol. 2 (edited by CHEN Wei, XU Cheng and ZHANG Liming) has just been released. You can download the PDF format magazine from the MAGAZINE page of Chinese New Ear. The magazine is in Chinese.

English table of content of this issue:

# Feature: LI Jianhong (an interview, Chinese and Japanese version of Hideo Ikeezumi’s review of Li)
# Visual: Images from 2pi Festival 2005
# Translation: Soundscape Composition and the Subversion of Electroacoustic Norms, by Andra McCartney, translated by ZHANG Liming (hitlike)
# Live events: Waterland Kwanyin - an ecological approach, by YAN Jun

An English version of Ikeezumi’s review can be read here.

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Elliott Sharp in Shanghai too

by lawrence

All the speculation and anticipation are put to a rest when news came that Elliott Sharp will play in Shanghai too (in addition to Beijing).
Time: 20:00, Feb 26 (Sunday)
Venue: ZHU Qizhan Art Gallery (#580 Ouyang Rd., at the back gate of Lu Xun Park), Shanghai.
Entrance: 40 yuan

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Chinese Food Art Live

by Dajuin

Time for some iconoclastic photos. One freezing winter night (12/06/2005). Had some fun with Jimu (JIANG Zhuyun) and Old Li (LI Jianhong) - two top Chinese noisicians - at everybody’s favorite tea house in Hangzhou - He Chaguan (Harmony Teahouse). Without premeditation or exchanging one word, the food art impromptu started naturally after the bellies had been filled.

Dumb and out and hungry at the West Lake.

Sharp and in and warm inside this tea house with delicious food.

“All you can eat” food is definitely more than you can eat.

Braised chicken feet and cherry tomatoes.

Plain orange slices.

Magic chopsticks.

Kids, don’t try this at home. Seriously.

Steamed bun frog men.

Simple remix of the two.

Nice set. And no laptops!

Photos by Dajuin

(download to see better)

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Did I post these two pics of 21floor before?

by lawrence


(Left to right) Thom CHIN, LIN Zhiying, Justin ZHONG Minjie, Zafka (ZHANG Anding), CHEN Gang.


(Left to right) Thom CHIN, CHEN Gang, Zafka (ZHANG Anding), Justin ZHONG Minjie, LIN Zhiying.

These were taken after their debut performance “Sonic Brouhaha” at Gin Yan Club, Guangzhou. (Read Totemz’s review of the performance, “Introducing the Band - 21floor” by GNO, and two more posts about Sonic Brouhaha: 1, 2)

See 21floor’s profile on Chinese New Ear.

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Chinese Mountain Songs Videos

by Dajuin

Sleazy entertainment videos from the really backward country regions as seen on their cheap production VCDs have recently been providing great laughs for city people. I have seen this type of VCDs before, but several videos that have been circulated and posted all over the Internet these past couple of weeks are the cream of the crop and have even been predicted by some netizens to become “The Entertainment Event of 2006.”

My personal favorite is this classic “mountain song” called “Stick a Bamboo Pole into the Clear Water Dragon Lake” (清水龍潭插竹桿) (a good video feed here and a Chinese discussion on the provenance of this particular video is here).

The lyrics are totally “yellow” and hilarious. Two typical stanzas from this song go like this:

[male singer]
“Stick a bamboo pole into the clear water dragon lake, aguailuo;
The water in the dragon lake is deep and great for boat rowing, renyiluo.
Little Brother can take a bath in this deep water, aguailuo;
Only worried that it be too shallow for my boat and it might overturn, renyiluo.
Asu sema zuozuo.

[female singer]
“Stick a bamboo pole into the clear water dragon lake, aguailuo;
The water in the dragon lake is deep and great for boat rowing, renyiluo.
You’ve had your fun all around in the lake, aguailuo;
Why are you still blabbering about feeling thirsty, renyiluo?
Asu sema zuozuo.”

Note: the non-sensical words, such as “Aguailuo” and “Renyiluo,” are typical filler syllables in such folk tunes, especially those of the “minority” (read: non-Han) peoples, and have no real meaning.

Man, I could listen to this again and again, day after day…

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Acidrain’s review of Buddha Boxing @ Duolun MoMA

by lawrence

My old friend Acidrain was among the 200 or so witnesses of FM3’s Buddha Boxing performance at Duolun MoMA, Shanghai last Friday (as reported by GNO here). Below is the translation of his short review and some photos presumably taken by him.

The original Chinese review is here, along with more photos.

Speaking of fame, it’s a safe bet to say that ZHANG Jian and Lao Zhao (Christiaan Virant)’s FM3 is the Chinese experimental act (Lao Zhao is actually a gwailo) that has the most extensive exposure at foreign music festivals and the greatest number of releases on famous foreign labels. The fact that a show like tonight’s has attracted almost 200 people (there were probably 50% expats) is more or less a piece of evidence of their popularity, but does it really mean that Shanghai is already as avant-garde as it seems to be? There is a BIG question mark on that one.

For me, tonight’s show is nevertheless an unprecedented experience: two people randomly playing with the sonic fragments of a couple of Buddha Machines (Google “Fm3 + Buddha Machine” if you don’t know what it is), depending solely on the built-in low-volume little speakers (even the slightest footstep can cover their sound), layering, clashing & pasting the cricket-like sound coming out of them. It lasts for about half hour. Not a bad concept, but there’s one major drawback - with sound art, good concept would have to be realized by good hardware, those tiny speakers are probably powerful enough for a small private space (one that holds no more than a few people, such as an installation space), but they’re completely useless in a 200-head open space. Listening to a sound art performance in such a muttered or even muted sound is equal to listening to a mute speaking, you see his/her lips moving but don’t hear anything. In the latter half of the show, audience were invited to play the little gadgets themselves, for me, it was time to leave.

My conclusion: The Buddha Machine would be better off played as private toy, public exhibition is too heavy a burden for them.

Related: What is Buddha Boxing? (by FM3’s Christiaan Virant)

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Here comes Japanese psychedelic/improv

by lawrence

Apart from Karkowski and Elliott Sharp, the most exciting news for Chinese new music aficionados will be the descent of Yoshida Tatsuya, Tsuyama Atsushi and Kawabata Makoto at the end of March. So far we can only be sure that they’ll play in Shanghai on March 31, but I can see curators elsewhere salivating and working up……

Among the three improv/psychedelic musicians, only Yoshida has played in China before (as Ruins). However, due to the overwhelming power of P2P softwares (Soulseek in particular), all three have a solid fan base. Especially Kawabata, the mysticism and visceral energy of Acid Mother Temple’s numerous bootleg recordings as well as their eclectic approach (while inheriting the tradition of psychedelic rock in the 1960s America, AMT has also re-interpreted Terry Riley’s “In C”, played with King Crimson’s song title “21st Century Schizoid Man”, etc.) did satisfy the never-ending appetite and stimulate the long -jailed imagination of Chinese listeners/musicians. DING Dawen (cy), once a member of short-lived Intelligent Shanghai Mono University, had been a huge fan of AMT about 5 - 6 years ago - despite that he’s generally an electronica artist, a style that can’t be further from that of AMT’s.

Therefore it’s easy to understand the excitement aroused by this news, which is being circulated rapidly on Chinese blogs and forums about new music. It’s said that this show will contain a vast variety of styles including “a capella, comic free form, progressive core, troubadour, cosmic psychedelic……”. What exactly do these novel terms mean hardly matters, this is a pilgrimage.

Time: 20:00, March 31, 2006
Venue: Zendai MoMA (Bd. 28, No. 199, Fangdian Rd., Shanghai, +86 21 5033 9802)
Entrance: 40 yuan




Important updates of Karkowski’s 06 China tour

by lawrence


Poster of Karkowski’s Shanghai performance, March, 2006. Designer unknown (yet).
Dickson just sent me the updated schedule of Zbigniew Karkowski’s 2006 China tour, there are some major changes: the Macau and Nanjing concerts were cancelled, one of the two Shanghai gigs will be hosted by another MoMA, one more workshop will be conducted in Chengdu, Dirt Star won’t play as guest musician in Shenzhen……go to the original post to check the latest version.




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