RAM live at Recombinant

by lawrence

Photos of Zbigniew Karkowski + Daniel Menche (RAM) live at Recombinant Media Lab, March 2006.

More info is here. I like the simpleness of their tagline:

“Space is small but the sounds are BIG, this will wreck your mind and batter your body.”

All photos by Randy H.Y. Yau, via Ronez’s blog. (If you haven’t been to Randy’s website for a while, it’s time to check out the brand new cool design.)

(Download to view better.)




Liwei Chiang Live in New York

by Dajuin

Time: April 5 (Wed), 10:30 pm
Venue: Knitting Factory, NYC

Liwei Chiang, one of the leading sound artists from Taipei, will make a rare appearance in New York City to perform a solo electroacoustic set. I just heard him play recently. Very powerful and fresh stuff. Highly recommended.

Related:

# Liwei’s top ten albums (as part of the “GNO Top 10 series”)




Mini MIDI II (Beijing)

by lawrence

New music audience in Beijing are blissful.

(Schedule is subjected to changes, please bookmark this page or add it to del.icio.us and come back later for latest updates.)

:::: Mini MIDI II ::::
An offsite event of the 7th MIDI festival, Beijing/Waterland Kwanyin #46: Special Program

Date: May 1st - May 4th, 2006
Time: 17:00 - 21:00
Location: Haidian Park
Inquiry: subjam at gmail.com

SCHEDULE

May 1, 2006

Ma Fei San
WANG Fan
me:mo
ZHU Jianhui (aka Double Fish)
White (SHEN Jing + Jeff Zhang)

May 2, 2006

Fannullone (Germany)
iLoop
SUN Dawei (aka Sulumi)
Kulyfile
LIN Chiwei + Dino (Taipei)
10 (Marqido from Japan + Itta from Korea)

May 3, 2006

YAN Jun
Wangwen (Dalian)
Dajuin Yao (USA/Taipei)
Nara
Pisces Iscariot (Dajuin Yao + YAN Jun + LI Jianhong)
White No.2

May 4, 2006

Amoeba
718
Eugene Martynec (Canada)
Umbrellas (WU Quan + Shizi from Noise Association of Lanzhou)
Jackson Garland (USA)
D!O!D!O!D! (LI Jianhong + HUANG Jin) (Hangzhou)

Producer/Curator: Sub Jam/Kwanyin Records
Organizer: MIDI Music School

—

:::: WATERLAND KWANYIN #46 ::::

Date: May 2nd
Time: 22:00
Venue: 2 Kolegas Bar (Qi Che Dian Ying Yuan (Drive-in Cinema), 1.5 km east of Yansha mall, Beijing)
Entrance: FREE

Artists:

XIE Yun (tipsy verse)
LI Jianhong
D!O!D!O!D! (Li Jianhong + Huang Jin)
Marqido (Japan)
Itta (Korea)
10 (Marqido + Itta)

# Waterland Kwanyin is a weekly sound art event curated by critic/musician YAN Jun in Beijing.




GNO Top 10 series - CHIANG Liwei

by lawrence

CHIANG Liwei (Wei) is a sound artist based in Taipei. He was educated in New York as a design major before launching the label Recorderz (see GNO’s post about it) back home with some friends. Currently, Wei lives and works in Taipei.

Wei’s entry at Chinese New Ear is here.

CHIANG LIWEI’s TOP TEN

# Aphex Twin - Richard D. James / Come to Daddy

My first encounter with electronic music. Also, the last two great albums from Aphex Twin.

# Autechre - Gantz Graf

Crazy ass shit! Always advancing their sound. It’s funny that some music critics in Taiwan think they are getting out of hand with their music. Let me tell you something, they are the best in the business!

# Shakti - A Handful of Beauty

This is just beautiful music.

# Laetitia Sonami - Live @ Sounding Taipei 2004

I can’t forget the goose bump she gave me when I first saw her performing live in Taipei. Poetic and powerful. I am glad that I got to see her perfoming live in this life time.

# Tabla Beat Science - Tala Matrix

Percussion at its best.

# Digable Planet - Blow Out Comb

This is the best hip hop album I’ve heard so far. Too bad that all of the members are doing some shit music now.

# Santana, John McLaughlin - Love Devotion Surrender

This is the kind of music that you can cry to.

# Terje Rypdal - Chaser

This is rock n roll! I also got to see him live in New York. An experience that I will never forget.

# Keith Jarrett - Koln Concert

# Christian Zanesi - Le Paradoxe De La Femme Poisson

(GNO Top 10 series invites Chinese sound artists/experimental musicians to list music/albums that are either their personal favorites or have crucial influence on them as artists. By doing this, we try to present the Chinese aural art scene in the context of the global music ecology.)




Review of Fm3’s concert in HK last Saturday (by Luke Harris)

by lawrence

For various reasons I have missed the Buddha Boxing performance by FM3 at White Noise Records, Hong Kong last Saturday. But new media artist Luke Harris has a review on his blog, go read it here (you must).

I’ll quote him:

I’m trying so hard to be positive, but the performance was a crock of shit. No honestly, the audience had no idea what the two players were doing. We didn’t know the rules to their “game.” The sounds were nearly inaudible. Pretentious as fuck. I felt like I was on the out-outside of a really funny inside joke. Granted, I do like where it could have gone: Play as performance, using pre-determined minimal reptetive sounds. You had it so right boys…

Related:

# What is Buddha Boxing, by Christiaan Virant of FM3
# Previously on GNO about Buddha Boxing.




Jazzkammer in south China: poster

by lawrence

Poster of Jazzkammer/DJ Dee/YUEN Chee Wai’s concerts in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Final reminder: the Shenzhen show is today (Beijing time March 28 Tuesday) and Guangzhou tomorrow.




Japanese New Music China tour ‘06 schedule updated

by lawrence

Please check out the schedule of Japanese New Music China tour ‘06 (lineup: KAWABATA Makoto, YOSHIDA Tatsuya & TSUYAMA Atsushi) posted on March 21, I’ve made some major corrections. (Thanks to Yoh!)




Links for March 25

by lawrence


A Punk fan from Maldives

by lawrence

What the hell, I think I’m gonna announce anyway: my new Chinese blog 踎低喷饭 is now officially online:

http://www.chinesenewear.com/maldivepunkfan

Still a lot to be done (categories, font, RSS subscription links, other details) but I’m the impatient kind of person, so let’s do it the web2.0 way: release in beta (even alpha) phase, and improve/adjust in open air.

Mind you, the title of the blog is to be read in Cantonese: Mau Dai Pun Faan.




GNO Top 10 series - Zafka

by lawrence

Zafka (ZHANG Anding) is a member of the Guangzhou-based free form project 21floor, which explores the possibility of interdisciplinary collaboration and the idea of finding “alternative spaces” for sound art/multimedia performance. Before joining the group, Zafka was the guitarist of the post-rock band Prague in Shanghai.
Zafka’s blog (Chinese) is here.

ZAFKA’S TOP TEN ALBUMS

# Sonic Youth - Sonic Death: Early Sonic 1981 - 1983; Confusion Is Sex

# Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

# Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert

# Steve Roden - Light Forms

# Scott Ryan Johnson - John Somebody; No Memory; Rock, Paper, Scissors

# J.S. Bach - Six Suites for Solo Cello (played by Pablo Casals)

# Bela Bartok: Six String Quartets (played by Emerson String Quartet)

# Kronos Quartet - Released: 1985 - 1995

# Olivier Messiaen - Quatuor pour la fin du Temps (Myung-Whun Chung, Gil Shaham, WANG Jian)

# Space Monkeyz vs. Gorillaz - Laika Come Home

# Claude Debussy - Debussy: Orchestral Music (Prelude a L’Apres-Midi d’un Faune; Nocturnes; Images; La Mer); Preludes for Piano

# IKEDA Ryoji - +/- (plus/minus)

# Pink Floyd - Ummagumma

# Artificial Memory Trace - Ritmax Asimetra, Vol. 7

(GNO Top 10 series invites Chinese sound artists/experimental musicians to list music/albums that are either their personal favorites or have crucial influence on them as artists. By doing this, we try to present the Chinese aural art scene in the context of the global music ecology.)




Live Solo Performance by Dajuin Yao

by Dajuin

Dajuin Yao
“A Group Research on the Emotive Power of Sound”

Time: 3/25 (Sat), 4 pm
Space: Chi Wen Gallery
Address: 3F, #19, Lane 252, Dunhua S. Road, Taipei
Phone: 8771.3372

Dajuin Yao will perform a solo set for the re-opening of Lin Chiwei’s sound art exhibition. It will not be a performance of electroacoustic music, and it will not even be sound art.




GNO Top 10 series - XU Cheng

by lawrence

XU Cheng is a sound artist/designer based in Shanghai. He plays with Torturing Nurse regularly under the alias of Youki, and is also a member of OO (Two Noughts). Apart from all these, Xu is also (maybe we should say more than anything else) a veteran photographer.

Xu’s entry at Chinese New Ear is here, and don’t miss NOIShanghai.org, of which he is a founder.

As a designer, Xu submitted his top ten in an unconventional way. Instead of compiling a text list, he produced two mosaics of the album covers - one for CDs and one for……cassette tapes!

(For the CD albums mosaic, please click on the image to view a larger version.)

At GNO’s request, Xu has kindly provided us a text list as well.

XU CHENG’S TOP TEN ALBUMS

CDs:

# KENICHI Mikawa 美川憲一全曲集

# HAINO Keiji 灰野敬二 - わたしだけ？(Watashi Dake?)

# The Venus - Love Potion No.1

# J.S. Bach’s Die Kunst der Fuge (played by Keller Quartet)

# J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (played by Glenn Gould, 1981 version)

# Schnittke’s Chamber Music (played by Kremer/Zimmermann/Schiff…)

# Amos Milburn Blues - Barrel House & Boogie Woogie: 1946 - 1955

# Michael Jackson - Off the Wall

# Hilliard Ensemble - Hilliard Song Book: New Music for Voice

# Oswald von Wolkenstein - Knightly Passions

# Marcel Dupre - Deux Symphonies pour Orgue

# Lead Belly - Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen

# Oliver Messiaen - Quatuor pour la Fin du Temps-Eduard Brunner/Tori Fontenay

# Jimmy Witherspoon - The Blues, the Whole Blues and Nothing But the Blues

# John Coltrane - Live in Seattle

CASSETTE TAPES:

# Little Tigers (Xiao Hu Dui) - s/t [Vintage ’80s/’90s boy-pop band from Taiwan]

# Lan Erduo Feichuan 蓝耳朵飞船

# Stories told by Sister Swallow 燕子姐姐讲故事 [Chinese audio book]

# The Gourd Brothers (vol. 2) 葫芦兄弟（下）[original soundtrack of Chinese animation]

# James Booker - Resurrection of the Maharajah

# Jimi Hendrix - Jimi Plays Monterey

MISSING ALBUM (HENCE NO PHOTO):

# ZHANG Chu 张楚 - Gudu de Ren shi Kechi de 孤独的人是可耻的 [One of the earliest Chinese rockers/alternative folk singers.]

(GNO Top 10 series invites Chinese sound artists/experimental musicians to list music/albums that are either their personal favorites or have crucial influence on them as artists. By doing this, we try to present the Chinese aural art scene in the context of the global music ecology.)




Jazzkammer’s Guangzhou concert venue changed!

by lawrence

Today when passing by one of the more exclusive clubs of Guangzhou - TANG, I was surprised to see the familiar “guy-bending-over-Powerbook” image. What happened to this seemingly upscale restaurant + KTV + club where you won’t get nothing music-wise except for dancefloor-friendly DJing or some obscure and dull western bands? Well, it’s Jazzkammer and DJ Dee, who will play in TANG on March 29, NOT in Windflower, as formerly reported by GNO and other sources. Price is the same (50 yuan plus one drink).

Click here to view info about Jazzkammer’s concerts in Guangzhou and Shenzhen.




Show in Hong Kong - Free Being & The Wanderers

by lawrence

(Updated 2:20 am, March 28)

Luke Harris, a student of new media art at City University, Hong Kong, will be performing with his noise/drone group Free Being & The Wanderers at the NMIS new media art exhibition.

Time: 19:30, April 3rd
Venue: Covered Terrace, City University of Hong Kong

Free entrance.

FB & TW is a trio consists of Luke (high pitched tongue-singing, chanting and screaming), Enoch Kwan (guitar, white noise) and Wilson Lee (guitar, samples), the latter two are from another group called New Fairfield Parks and Recreation.

From Luke’s blog:

We will be performing a four movement symphony entitled, “30 Seconds Into Manhattan.”

The half-hour performance will follow guest lecture on Interactivity and Multimedia Design by:

# Yasuhiro Santo (School of Design, Hong Kong Polytechnics University)
# Bong Lam (Topic: Don’t Believe in Style)

Date: April 3, 2006 (Mon)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Venue: Screening Room of School of Creative Media

More info on Luke’s blog here.




GNO Top 10 series - Dajuin YAO

by lawrence

Dajuin Yao 2004 Paris

Dajuin Yao is a polyartist/art historian/curator based in Berkeley/Taipei. He runs the label Post-Concrete and is responsible for the first large-scale experimental music festival in mainland China - Sounding Beijing 2003.

Dajuin’s personal page is here, his entry at Chinese New Ear is here.

DAJUIN YAO’S TOP TEN ALBUMS

# Miles Davis - Live/Evil

I must confess that I shoplifted my copy of this album from the local Yamaha dealership, and it was a Quadraphonic LP version (I still remember the gold, instead of red, labels on these Columbia SQ records and the slightly moldy smelling heavy album covers, with of course the amazing paintings by Mati Klarwein, especially his rendition of J. Edgar Hoover on the back cover). I was only a poor kid back then and it wasn’t that serious a crime, because I did pay for my “Bitches Brew,” which I got along with it. Come to think of it now, lifting a 12-inch double album was no small feat. But I thought a two-for-one deal was only fair, and nobody else in the country knew what the hell this was anyway. By the way, after listening to the recently released “Cellar Door Sessions,” I realized how Teo Macero cheated us big time with his heavy cutting and pasting in the original Live/Evil release version, but what a magnificient cheat! And, man, that narration by Conrad Roberts on “Inamorata” put in during post-production!

# Mahavishnu Orchestra - Visions of the Emerald Beyond

To be able to see it without hallucinogens. That’s what I call real vision.

# Jean-Claude Eloy - Gaku-no-Michi (1978)

When I first met Eloy in Taipei back in 1978, I wasn’t as impressed by his music (which I heard too little of then) as by his composure and his deep penetration into the realm of sound - a quality that I had encountered previously only in percussionist/composer Michael Ranta. I can never forget the image of Eloy raising his right arm up to the EQ controls and leaving it up there for about twenty-minutes, during his presentation of “Kama-Kala” for three orchestras and chorus. 26 years later, I brought Mr. Eloy and “Gaku-no-Michi” to Sounding Taipei 2004 for a magnificent 4-hour, 4-channel live diffusion concert. After I release his complete version of “Gaku-no-Michi” on four CDs, I’ll be able to die with no regrets.

# Keith Jarrett - Köln Concert

This music is so personal to me that I don’t even want to reflect on it now; and I probably will never play it again. But my on-the-spot, improvised English composition essay on this music did get me transferred successfully into the English department when I was about to be kicked out of the aeronautical engineering department. And by the way, I wrote the Chinese liner notes to probably the only pirate LP edition of “Köln Concert” manufactured in Asia.

# Santana - Welcome

One track title sums the whole album up perfectly: “Flame/Sky.”

# Circle - Paris Concert (Anthony Braxton, Chick Corea, Barry Altschul, Dave Holland; 1971)

Four top musicians in top shape, heading towards unknown beauty. The art of improvisation at its best.

# Nikhil Banerjee - Raag Malkauns - Live Concert Vol. 1 (Cchanda Dhara)

Totally still, yet totally agitated, at the same time. I’m lucky to have met Pandit Banerjee once in 1983.

# Karlheinz Stockhausen - Hymnen (1967)

It’s really not about the sounds, or how complex the inter-modulation techniques are. It’s the scale of that grand, humanistic vision.

# Arnold Schönberg - Verklärte Nacht (Karajan/Berliner Philharmonik version)

The version I heard was actually a pirated LP made by Yongfeng Records - cheap, scratchy recycled vinyl, and cheap, thin paper sleeves. But hell, it sure don’t matter. Also, no other performance version on earth can compare to this one by Herbert von!

# ЛЮБЭ - Песни о людях (Lyube - Songs of the People) (1997)

I didn’t think that truly great songs could still be written in this era, songs that achieve folk-song status as soon as they come out and can live on forever. I can never forget the state of disbelief I was in when I first heard the almost a cappella “Kostroma” (from another album, Polustanochki); I played it repeatedly for 5 or 6 times straight. Then I started playing these Russian gems on my ForeTaste Radio show (the name is a pun on “avant-garde music” in Chinese) around 2001 and a network of young Chinese fans simply went nuts over Lyube, DDT, Akvarium, Alla Pugacheva, Linda, Zemphira… And no doubt Lyube is everybody’s favorite. This is a big wide world that has been unfairly censored all these years by the Anglo-American music hegemony.

(GNO Top 10 series invites Chinese sound artists/experimental musicians to list music/albums that are either their personal favorites or have crucial influence on them as artists. By doing this, we try to present the Chinese aural art scene in the context of the global music ecology.)




GNO Top 10 series - CHEN Wei

by lawrence

CHEN Wei (aka sic, Xiaosi) is a sound artist based in Hangzhou, he’s a former member of the avant-rock band Second Skin and now one half of the multimedia duo Livescope.

Chen’s entry at Chinese New Ear is here.

CHEN WEI’s TOP TEN ALBUMS

# Tetsuo FURUDATE 古馆彻夫 & Zbigniew Karkowski - World as Will II

# Tetsuo FURUDATE - Autement qu’être I

# Sachiko M - 1:2

# OTOMO Yoshihide & TAKEMURA Nobukazu - Turntables and Computers

# Philip Glass - Einstein on the Beach

# IKEDA Ryoji 池田亮司 - 0ºC

# Steve Reich - Triple Quartet

# Merzbow - Animal Magnetism

# Francisco Lopez & Steve Roden - Le Chemin du Paradis

# John Cage & Sun Ra - John Cage Meets Sun Ra

(GNO Top 10 series invites Chinese sound artists/experimental musicians to list music/albums that are either their personal favorites or have crucial influence on them as artists. By doing this, we try to present the Chinese aural art scene in the context of the global music ecology.)




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