The music is good, as always. Beijing has a strong and active electronica scene which is often mistaken as an ‘experimental’ one.

2. Zhou Risheng

‘But allow me, sir, to say that your performance didn’t fail to summon in the experienced ear its love for well-crafted sound, its care for painstaking attention of details and a feeling that the advancement of Chinese sound art as a whole always needs persistent, meticulous endeavour. Your efforts in their own way will for ever remain a salutary influence.’

3. nara + Xiao Wei

Some people might think that the set was a mismatch and should be filed to some of the other five stages of MIDI Festival, but I guess the curator has decided to include them for a change. Being melody-focused, however, doesn’t necessarily grant you higher musicianship than the noise makers.

4. Tieguanyin Duo (Yan Jun’s misc. sounds and Wu Na’s Guqin)

The sound from other stages had rendered the set as Tieguanyin Solo—with Wu Na being the soloist.

5. Justin Zhong Minjie

Go buy his CDs (here), none of Justin’s concerts does him justice as a keen sonic experimentalist.

6. Jackson Garland

I missed half of it. The latter half left little impression.

7. Wu Quan

Ditto.

8. Lin Zhiying

The best act of the day. Very clever use of recognizable sound (laughter), which effectively induced subtle response from the audience. It’s a slap in the face of those who doubt or frown at the idea of using found sounds, and especially human-generated sounds, in live performance.

9. Jan Jelinek feat. Kosmischer Pitch

I’ve chosen to pass on this one.

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Actually there won’t be review, quick or lengthy, on Day Two and Three—I didn’t go today and I’ll be on the first plane to Guiyang (if you don’t know where that is, you probably don’t need to know) tomorrow morning. This is gonna be a brief ‘unplugged’ period as we are going to a remote rural area with no electricity. That’s right, no blogging, Twittering, Flickring, RSS-ing, Emailing, Down/Uploading……See you in five days.

Oh, here are some photos of Day One, only five photos in fact. (Update: there are twelve now.)