Five titles have been released in three days (with more in the works):

AV001 Wang Changcun - KUNCHONG
AV002 Xie Zhongqi - KUROJAWAN
AV003 Jiang Liwei - EXPERIENCES
AV004 Yao Dajuin - DREAM REVERBERATIONS (singles)
AV005 Wolfenstein - LIVE AT NANHAI 2007

ARCHIVAL VINYL: http://www.post-concrete.com/vinyl/

2pi Music Festival (二皮音樂節), the must-see, can’t-miss annual party extravaganza surveying the cutting edge of the Chinese experimental/laptop/sound art/noise scene, is celebrating its fifth anniversary on November 24, 2007 in Hangzhou.

“2pi”, pronounced “er pi”, stands for “The Second Skin,” the name of the record label operated by festival founder/organizer Li Jianhong.

Li Jianhong at 2pi Festival 2006

Torturing Nurse at 2pi Festival 2006

The event this year will run marathon-style from mid-afternoon all the way till midnight, with over a dozen sets featuring artists from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, and Australia.

Time: Nov. 24, 2007 (Saturday), 15:30 - 24:00
Venue: LOFT49
Address: 49, Hangyin Road, Gongshu District, Hangzhou

For complete GNO live coverage of last year’s 2pi Festival 2006 with photos and recordings, see here.

For more information, visit:

2pi Festival Official Site

Maps & Contact phone number

Facebook Group: 2pi Records

Last.fm

YouTube: search “2pi”

Please make reservation through Michelle: 139 1835 3967

This is actually a trio of Brötzmann, drummer Michael Wertmüller and Chinese instrumentalist Xu Fengxia 徐凤霞. The show is made possible by Sun Mengjin 孙孟晋.

Location: Studio #5, Electronic Music Centre, Central Conservatory. (Go straight into the front gate for 50 metres, turn left and go to the second floor.)

People:

1. Ivo Bol (Netherlands), composer & sound artist. Topic: new media, electronic composition, softwares from STEIM.

2. EventStructure (yang2 + aaajiao). Chinese sound/visual artist on SuperCollider and Processing.

Previous participants of Dorkbot Beijing include Stephen Kovats from V2_, Wen Jingbo 温京博, Rene Stettler, and Diato Manabe.

We’re holding a wake to honor the memory of our friend Helmut Schäfer who’s life has touched us all and death saddened us greatly.

Sunday, April 29, 4:00 pm
Zeitgeist
199 Valencia St.
San Francisco, CA 94103
Daily 9:00am- 2:00am
Tel: (415) 255-7505

I know he had many friends in the bay area, please forward this to those whom I have missed.

Related: In Memory of Helmut Schäfer (1969 - 2007)

[See full schedule of Mini MIDI 2007 here.]

‘So the point is that so much words existing, and we get better and better to use them for hiding the truth. You can use sound in the same way, stimulating some nice and warm feeling in middle of chaos, but from time to time we all should stimulate strictness, clearness, intensity, directness, set free some anger to bring up the basic truth of our present. Noise can be seen as the chance to go into the back of things, as a therapy which is able to confront ourselves with others lesser good looking sides of life without getting frustrated by this. See it as a source of very special energies, it gives power to see more clear and swim against.’

Helmut Schäfer is the embodiment of that energy. My first impression of the man came from a GIF animation made with the video footage of his live performance at the Mills College Chapel. I found myself dumbfounded by the sheer power manifested: here’s a man operating a laptop in the way Rock guitarists playing their instrument. His hands were fixed steadily on the MIDI controller, serving as a pivot to support his dramatic physical gesture. Although in a sitting position, it seems that his chair has morphed from a supporting structure that holds him from falling to the ground to something dispensable that happens to attach to his constantly twisting body. Think of the twenty-something Glenn Gould playing his piano and add a portion of roughness to it and you’ll get the idea. I can’t help worrying about the poor slides and knobs on the controller.

As GIF animation - the standard of web animation in the archaic days of web 1.0 - comes with no sound, one would have to complete the audio part of the experience with imagination, a potentially damaging practice as imagination tends to transcend reality. The best music lives only in one’s head, and any attempt to materialise it only dilutes the experience.

That’s why I was so deeply moved when later listening to Isolated Irritation, the album containing the live recording of that very concert. The cover design, a highly-manipulated image of Helmut’s stage presence, gracefully captures the feverish emotional power of his music, which totally lives up to, if not surpasses, the promise of my imagination.

I guess Helmut has never been part of the ‘international sound art scene’. He was, however, very well-received in China. In November, 2003, he was invited by Dajuin Yao to play at “Sounding Beijing,” the first-ever large scale experimental music festival in mainland China. That fifteen minutes of intoxicating noise construction still ranks as one of my most mind-blowing live experiences. The professionalism demonstrated in his highly concentrated sound checking process - something not as common among sound artists as you would imagine , believe it or not - and the artistic nobleness expressed in his sublimely elegant bow to the audience (which ‘felt like a proud prince’, borrowing critic Yan Jun’s phrase) have served as a timely reminder on what does it mean to be a true artist. His legacy, I believe, will last longer in China than in any other part of the world.

May peace be with you Helmut, wherever you are.

http://www.post-concrete.com/helmutschafer

See also what others said about Helmut:

• Dajuin Yao
• Yan Jun (Chinese)
• Li Jianhong (Chinese)
• Junky (Chinese)
• Edwin Lo (Chinese)
• Chiang Liwei (Chinese)
• Doushiwodecuo (Chinese)
• Misc. members of Sound Art group on Douban (Chinese)
• Messages on Helmut’s MySpace page
• ayrtbh (Wang Changcun), hitlike, k1973 (Zhang Jungang) [Chinese]
• this is a book or blog (Chinese)

Ulf Bilting and Zbigniew Karkowski’s 1988 vinyl release Bad Bye Engine is now in public domain and open for free download. (MP3 format.)

The studio consisted of two Yamaha TX816 banks (equivalent to 16 DX7s), an AKAI S900 sampler, analog mixer and two TEAC tape recorders, 8- and 2-track. Very little midi sequencer software was available at the time, so a system of programs for generation, manipulation and playing midi data was created on the VAX-11 BSD Unix system at the department. Time-stamped midi data (an invented format preceding standard Midi Files) was transferred to a specially built processor with 8 midi interfaces that controlled the real-time playing, recording and synchronization of midi.

Many of the tracks use a technique of playing many, very short sounds on the TX816s to create musical shapes, e g the first sound heard in He Van He consists of about 800 attacks with a duration between 0.1 and 0.2 secs.

The idea of making short tracks was quite unique at a time when almost any electroacoustic music piece were streched out over an entire LP, or several.

Masonna (left) and Li.

‘My Ten Days in Japan: A Personal Map’ (Text + Pics 1) [The text is in Chinese.]

‘My Ten Days in Japan: A Personal Map’ (Pics 2)

‘My Ten Days in Japan: A Personal Map’ (Pics 3)

‘My Ten Days in Japan: A Personal Map’ (Pics 4)