Li Jianhong’s Japan Diaries, Day One

by Ben

Last February, about the time I was wrestling with that Ronez review, I read with interest Lawrence’s post about Li Jianhong’s Japan Diaries, in which he recounts his tour through Japan the previous December. It occurred to me that studying a blog with a more conversational and informal tone might be better suited to my skill level, and the possibility of posting the results here would provide some good motivation.

So here’s day one of “My Ten Days in Japan: A Personal Map” by Li Jianhong, originally published on his site (check it out for photos and the original Chinese text). Many thanks to Lawrence and Yao Dajuin, who helped me a lot with things I got wrong or didn’t understand!

Remaining journal entries to follow soon…

December 9, 2006
I got out of bed before dawn, at 3am, and took the train from Hangzhou to Shanghai for a 9am departure. Japan is one hour earlier than China, so I arrived in Tokyo around 1pm. Marqido was already waiting for me. His bright red clothes swaying in the crowd made him easy to spot. It takes a long time to get from the Narita airport to Tokyo proper; after 25 minutes in the train Marqido said we still hadn’t arrived… My first impression of Tokyo was that everything seemed so clean.

Marqido’s Tokyo apartment is even smaller and colder than mine. His bedroom is unfurnished, apart from a bed and a desk. I asked him, “How can your apartment be even colder than mine?” but Marqido insisted our two apartments were equally cold.

We dropped off my bags and went to have dinner. Marqido’s like me; we both know a city’s cheapest and tastiest restaurants, since we’re both so poor.

At dusk we went to Kichijoji 吉祥寺 to look for second hand musical instruments and records. Kichijoji is not far away. After checking just a few shops at random, we had already seen a lot of guitars that I’d only previously seen on the internet. It made my fingers itch, but I told myself that tomorrow there would be more second hand shops to peruse, so I forced myself to endure it. As for the second hand music shops, I was overwhelmed; two floors were filled from top to bottom with every kind of music. As I browsed the second hand albums, I saw, among others, The Incapacitants, Hijokaidan 非常階段, Masonna, Keiji Haino 灰野敬二, Merzbow, Yoshihide Otomo 大友良英, lots of prominent Japanese avant-garde musicians, western composers like Iannis Xenakis and John Cage (a large John Cage boxed set was particularly tempting), and lots of free jazz albums. It was like a dream: so many stacks of records, rare beyond my wildest imagination, and on vinyl! I wish I had the dough to hire someone to carry them home for me. Second hand avant-garde albums are a little more expensive than other albums, usually about 1200–1500 yen, though you can find some that are cheaper.

In the end, I bought Merzbow’s Green Wheels, not my favorite album, but this CD was the cheapest and most economical, a thick plastic boxed set containing one CD and one mini LP, all for only 1,000 yen. So I snatched it up. In Japan buying albums is a never-ending war; you’ve got to keep your wits about you.

Outside, at a roadside bookshop, I purchased a copy of Studio Voice magazine, the 30th anniversary specially sized issue. Inside was a feature introducing D!O!D!O!D!’s recent performances in Japan.

After returning home, we went to a public bathhouse to renew ourselves. We sat on a small wooden bench, took the towel, and washed away the fatigue of the day.




Ronez in Rolling Stone

by Ben

Rolling Stone China 滚石 was a strange publication, and it appears to be no more. There were three incarnations by my count.

The first issue appeared in March 2006 with the Chinese title Audio Visual World 音像世界 and featured such controversial content as a cover story on Chinese protest rocker Cui Jian 崔健, an interview with notorious sex blogger Muzimei 木子美, and a scandalously self-serving history of the importance of Rolling Stone magazine in the history of popular music. A free Rolling Stone hat was included with each issue. It was promptly shut down.

The next month a revamped Audio Visual World hit the newsstands with the familiar Rolling Stone font, layout, and translated content, but the name Rolling Stone was nowhere to be found, even though the band the Rolling Stones was featured on the cover, in conjunction with their Shanghai appearance. Several issues followed in a similar vein, the covers graced with Johnny Depp, the Black Eyed Peas, and Placebo (prior to their performance at the Beijing Pop Festival last year).

Then last October the magazine was reborn a second time. A free CD was included, the Chinese name was now Music Space-Time (or something like that: 音乐时空), and the Rolling Stone name and logo were back. Many issues followed; we met Christina Aguilera, mourned James Brown’s passing, and celebrated 2006 in review. The last issue I ever saw featured Sonic Youth on the cover; I heard murmurs of official discontent surrounding their April shows in Beijing and Shanghai, so perhaps the periodical fell afoul of regulators once again. In any event, Music Space-Time (there must be a better English name) has since resumed publication in a completely new format that doesn’t resemble Rolling Stone in the slightest.

Throughout each iteration, pride of place went to Rolling Stone’s staple Western acts, especially if they happened to be visiting China, with much of the content translated from the English version. Second came the Chinese rock scene, with the Subs on the cover one month, and features on bands such as Muma, Tongue, and the Ruins (not to be confused with the other Ruins, from Japan, likely of greater interest to GNO readers). Taiwanese pop icons like Jay Chou and Jolin, so prominent on the Chinese airwaves, received scant mention.

Surprisingly, the experimental music scene got some decent coverage. One article focused on Shanghai’s growing underground scene, and Torturing Nurse was mentioned alongside post-punk groups like Top Floor Circus 顶楼的马戏团. There was even a picture of TN’s Junky and former vocalist Miriam performing at the now defunct 36mm CD shop. FM3 and their Buddha Machines also got a big feature. Laptop whiz Wang Changcun 王长存 and noise artist Ronez were represented in CD reviews alongside Bob Dylan and The Game.

For me the fascination was to try to see how at least one publication pieced together the fragmented Chinese musical landscape, to try to parse what constitutes underground music and the mainstream, to see what people are really listening to, and where it comes from. This task is all the more difficult in a country where legitimate CD sales count for so little that there’s no standard hit parade to arbitrate musical popularity. The charts in Rolling Stone China were primarily based on sales in Hong Kong or Taiwan, or on celebrity hot picks.

So in this spirit I attempted to translate into English the Rolling Stone review of Ronez’ release Ni Hao! I’m Deaf And It’s OK from the November 2006 issue, to see what was actually being said about this scene. I quickly realized that the writing (by Yan Jun 颜峻, in fact) was far beyond my skill level, so I relied heavily on my dictionary and on patient friends (several of whom reprimanded me for wasting my time on what they considered an irrelevant mouthpiece).

But I slogged through, and here is the fruit of my labor. The original Chinese version is mirrored on Sugar Jar, so you can check it for comparison. I welcome all suggestions and corrections. Enjoy!

Ronez
Ni Hao! I’m Deaf and It’s Okay
Harsh Noise
By Yan Jun (translated by Ben Houge)

The international standing of Chinese experimental music already exceeds that of rock and roll, and noise music is particularly prominent. Ronez, from Guilin, recently released an album on the American label Harsh Noise, and in addition to teaching foreigners how to say “hello” in Chinese, it further ushers the country’s underground music onto the world’s stage. By now, Ronez and Shanghai’s Torturing Nurse have joined stars like Stimbox and The Hater in the pantheon of noise artists.

“Harsh noise” was originally the name of a genre, usually indicating rough, hardware-generated sounds; mad exuberance; high energy; and fast-changing noise. Releases were typically hand-made and low-key, allowing the output to be prodigious. Ronez’ new album conforms to all of these criteria. From the first second, you begin to wonder if your speakers have blown, and over the course of one hour’s manic vibrations, you continually suspect that your neighbors are pounding at the door. Shrieking high frequencies assault your eardrums, punctuated by low frequency blasts that sound about as mellow as rock and roll. The seventh track’s shrill beginning contrasts sustained tones with intermittent pauses, exposing Ronez’ bent for humorous parody. (This is also the only track that fades out at the end.) He prefers piercing tones, high-velocity particles, and impulsive feedback, sometimes laying down a bed of low frequency noise as a cushion, sometimes sustaining high frequencies to test your endurance. All sonic events are clearly differentiated for a clean and solid mix. Your ear keeps rushing from one extremity to another, until you finally realize the whole album consists of nothing but extremities.

If someone were to assert that this kind of music, scarcely granting an opportunity to catch your breath, is more grand and outgoing than Ronez’ earlier work, I could only reply that it’s because he’s become more calm and unhurried. Before the end of the eighth track, there comes a moment of relief, masterfully yet effortlessly constructed to produce an additional adrenaline rush from the contrast. In the presence of such a veteran noisemaker, of what significance is deafness?




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