Chinese scene round-up 060626

by lawrence

Harbin-origined, Shanghai-based Wang Changcun is one of the earliest sound experimentalists of mainland China - I know this is cliche phrase but when I say “one of the earliest”, I mean at least 1998 or 1999. He has been producing home-brewed CDRs under the short-lived label CDR Records before making his official public debut on Sounding Beijing 2003 (other participants includes now household names such as FM3, Justin Zhong Minjie, Ronez, Sun Dawei…), but we’ve waited for three years since then for his formal solo debut album. The Mountain Swallowing Sadness was out on Sub Rosa in April. In his / her review , Boomkat questioned whether the English title is a direct translation from Chinese, which is 拦愁山. It’s not. A more direct translation can be found in the archives of GNO: when we mentioned the album before, we used the working title Melancholy-Swallowing Mountain. Here’s Sub Rosa’s page for the album. As a friend and close watcher of his works, I would like to say that while Wang is indeed a “complex noise-maker”, his style bears a stark distinction from that of “the great Karkowski”, opposed to the intro text on the Sub Rosa page. The Mountain Swallowing Sadness is a great album composed of one electro-acoustic improv piece and one phonography / field-recording piece, probably my second favourite of all the Chinese sound art releases I’ve listened to so far. Boomkat’s review did a great job describing how the album sounds like. Btw, this is the second time that Wang appears in the diversified Sub Rosa archive: one of his tracks was included in the fourth installment of An Anthology of Noise and Electronic Music series. See GNO’s covering here.


Cover of The Mountain Swallowing Sadness, a Sub Rosa release.
A scoop of GNO: Wang’s second album is already finished and will be released by an American label soon.

Two important events happened simultaneously in Hong Kong and Taipei the day before yesterday (June 24). The Sand Festival was held in Para/site Artspace, with sound artists / electronic musicians from Hong Kong, Singapore, Shenzhen, Malaysia and Taipei. We blogged about it before. In Taipei, Ulf Langheinrich of the legendary Austria multimedia group Granular Synthesis gave a lecture as part of the programme curated by GNO co-blogger Dajuin Yao. GS’ 10-year-old piece MODELL 5 is being exhibited in MOCA Taipei as installation until September (planned live performance of the piece was cancelled by the organizer in favour of a Nan Guan - traditional Chinese flute - show). See official site of the exhibition here.

Here in Guangzhou, 21floor has just have three brand new CDRs delivered from the printing factory: Sleeping White and Banned Illusions by Justin Zhong Minjie, Suspended Spectacles by Justin Zhong and LIN Zhiying. These releases mark the first wave of physical output as a colloboration between the visual and sound artists of 21floor, with contribution of experimental video artist Thom Chin on cover / sleeve design. I haven’t listened through these albums yet but both Zhong and Lin have been engaged more with field-recording-based stuff than their earlier noise-oriented style.


Suspended Spectacles (2 CDs), released by Stumble & Jiother Records.

Suspended Spectacles, inside. The Chinese texts are transcriptions of some of the field-recordings used in the album (hawking etc.).


Banned Illusions, released by Stumble Records.

Sleeping White, released by Stumble Records. Portraits: Lin Zhiying and Thom Chin.

All three items are for sale now:

ZHONG Minjie - Banned Illusions RMB 25.00
ZHONG Minjie - Sleeping White RMB 25.00
ZHONG Minjie & LIN Zhiying - Suspended Spectacles (2 CDs) RMB 40.00

Contact Zhong and Lin at sjp020 [at] gmail [dot] com about purchasing, concert scheduling and commission.

Wang Changcun’s new album is sold at £11.99 and can be ordered from Sub Rosa’s website, you can also order and listen to samples on Boomkat’s site.




6 Comments »

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  1. there is a nice review of Wang’s album in the new issue (july) of Wire magazine.

    Comment by zhao — June 26, 2006 #

  2. hi Zhao:

    Thanks. Yes I got that. Will post it later.

    Lawrence

    Comment by lawrence — June 26, 2006 #

  3. […] More about the album here. » Permalink […]

    Pingback by Global Noise Online » The Wire reviews Wang Changcun’s debut album — June 26, 2006 #

  4. […] Justin Zhong Minjie began his sonic experiment with tape recorder and broken CD player around 1997. As of now (June, 2006), he has released five solo CDR albums (see this post for the latest ones) under his own label Stumble Records, and has performed in mainland China, Hong Kong and Europe, notably on Sounding Beijing 2003, Sounding Guangzhou 2004 and Nuit Blanche festival, Paris, 2005. In 2006, Zhong started the open project 21floor with LIN Zhiying, Zafka (ZHANG Anding), Thom Chin and CHEN Gang. He lives and works in Guangzhou. […]

    Pingback by Global Noise Online » GNO Top 10 - Justin Zhong Minjie — June 27, 2006 #

  5. […] Read this earlier post to learn more about these three releases. » Permalink […]

    Pingback by Global Noise Online » 21floor new releases available in June Space, Guangzhou — June 29, 2006 #

  6. […] You can now watch four videos of Torturing Nurse on YouTube, two of them featuring OO (Two Noughts) and WANG Changcun, who just had his debut album out on Sub Rosa. » Permalink […]

    Pingback by Global Noise Online » Torturing Nurse / OO / Wang Changcun on YouTube — July 5, 2006 #

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