I am getting onto a plane for Australia in a few hours. This is my first time heading down under – very excited. This Friday evening Carriageworks, a huge art and cultural center in Sydney, is going to present a program on my Sound Kapital project. I am giving a short talk around 6PM followed by a performance at 8PM by three amazing bands from Beijing: Nova Heart, AV Okubo/AV大久保, and Xiao He/小河. An extended selection of my work documenting the underground music scene in Beijing will also be projected during the concert. It should be an awesome evening all around. Check out the links to Carriageworks above for ticket information and videos below for previews of the bands.

Queen Sea Big Shark/后海大鲨鱼 is so, like, HOT right now. I mean, for real. This past year they were featured in both V Magazine and the Vogue September issue where Mario Testino cued up on them for a big spread. Lead singer, Fu Han/付菡, is now the electronic dance rock fashion diva of China. During her packed show at Tango in Beijing earlier this month, she went through at least four different outfits in the course of the evening. More power to her. I still have a big soft spot for Queen Sea Big Shark, even if I’m not the biggest fan of the haute couture pop direction she is taking with the band. They still rock it out, and their early surf rock influences make an appearance here and there. I luckily caught Fuhan at UCCA during the Creators Project where I took a few photos and video footage for fun. Check the video below for some recent concert material as well. They are getting into very elaborate stage setups for the big concerts. Otherwise, here are some recent music videos for Let’s Play, Glow in the Dark and an awesome promotional video for their sophomore album Wave.

Beijing is chock-full of branded events these days. Whether it’s Diane von Furstenberg at Pace Gallery or Louis Vuitton at the National Museum of China, many fashion houses and luxury brands are trying to wedge themselves into the lucrative Chinese consumer market by pairing up with “legitimate” cultural institutions. Calvin Klein was no different when they rolled into Beijing and threw a party at Club Tango featuring performances by New Pants/新裤子 from Beijing and Far East Movement from Los Angeles. New Pants played a very short set including my current favorite “Sex, Drugs, Internet” while the Far East Movement rocked the energetic crowd with their “Like a G6″ hit – see videos below. Otherwise, one corner of the dance floor was dominated by a specially constructed mini-studio where people could be videotaped dancing around a white room in the same manner as recent Calvin Klein advertisements. The only caveat was that anyone entering the box signed away their rights to the video in hopes of being selected for a future Calvin Klein campaign or web feature. People around the mini-studio could also watch live feeds of the antics occurring inside via flatscreens built into the siding. Overall it was a rather ingenious ploy to get people to freely relinquish rights to their personal images for commercial purposes. Events like this occur every few days in Beijing as international corporations continue to drum up a consumer frenzy throughout China.

The beginning of May is always the busiest time of year for music in Beijing. Bands flock from all over China, and increasingly the world, to perform at a growing number of festivals (see MIDI, Strawberry and CMV) and then rock out local venues late into the night. This May Day also marked the fifth anniversary of D-22, the now notorious dive bar featuring live music that pulled me into the underground/alternative concert scene back in 2007. My uninhibited relationship with the establishment and the musicians that called it home yielded my first monograph, Sound Kapital, and was one of the main reasons for my continued stay here in Beijing. Although I have directed the focus of my documentation to a growing number of music scenes in China, hip hop in particular, I always end up at D-22 for the anniversary shows as it showcases some of the best bands in China and becomes a reunion of sorts for musicians and other hardcore fans. Rowdy evenings are assured and the music goes late into the night. The following videos are highlights from the D-22 fifth anniversary including Carsick Cars, AV Okubo, The Offset: Spectacles, Snapline and selections from the experimental evening including White+, Birdstriking and Chuiwan. You should also check out the brief retrospective made in honor of D-22′s fifth anniversary put together by the Pangbianr crew. Enjoy.

Indonesian hardcore is back. A growing number of youth, disaffected by high rates of unemployment and conservative social mores, are returning to hardcore musical roots that first emerged in Java during the early nineties. Looking to blow off steam and build an alternative community that doesn’t bow to sponsors or mainstream media restrictions, these teenagers like the tempo loud, strong and fast. By employing DIY tactics on the Internet and through mobile phones, they continue to establish larger networks of peers and fellow outsiders. The swelling ranks of Indonesian hardcore fans now organize shows in abandoned houses, art centers and empty storefronts across the country. These communal affairs, put on purely for the sake of the music, often showcase up to twenty bands playing short, fiery sets of hardcore music as well as other outlying subgenres of metal and punk. The mosh pits may appear violent but fighting is not tolerated and after the shows most fans hang around and enjoy the camaraderie of their peers. The hardcore community in Java promotes tolerance and diversity and also continues to redefine the role of women in the largest Muslim nation on the planet. Check out the video below for a more detailed look into the Indonesian hardcore scene on Java.

Xiao He/小河 is one of China’s true musical luminaries. A key musician at River, the legendary Beijing folk music bar, he then went on to be a singer and guitarist for the Dadaesque performance group Glamorous Pharmacy. Xiao He now mainly plays improvised solo shows that need to be seen to be believed. Using his guitar and a MIDI controller, Xiao He is able to recreate sounds from a wide variety of instruments both traditional and contemporary. He then loops them together along with his own chanting, throat singing and Peking opera voices to create an unbelievable musical soundscape. The following video recording was made at the opening of the Ephemeral Festival earlier this month. It is really a tour de force of some of his newer material including his voice-controlled flute instrumentation. Really crazy stuff. Also, the photo above was taken in Philadelphia in 2009 during the first Maybe Mars tour of the United States which coincided with my launch of Sound Kapital. I got to travel with Xiao He along with P.K. 14 and Carsick Cars up and down the east coast for two weeks and share beds with him in crappy interstate motels. For the record, Xiao He does not snore or kick. From his Maybe Mars artist profile:

“Xiao He first attracted serious attention in the late 90s with his experimental band, Glamorous Pharmacy, a fluid ensemble that mixed folk, jazz, experimentation, improvised performances and action art to create a strangely surreal sound that never seemed to settle anywhere before turning around and heading of in a different direction.  At the time China’s musical underground was small and fairly homogenous, but the playful and anarchic spirit of the members of Glamorous Pharmacy suggested several new doors into various styles that were eagerly opened and pursued by other musicians.  Glorious Pharmacy glorified in the creation of new ‘branches’ of Chinese underground music, variously called among other things ‘introverted’, ‘weird’, and ‘malicious’ music. Except for a very few special performances with Glorious Pharmacy, today Xiao He only plays solo performances. Calling these multi-faceted improvised performances ‘Free Folk’, as much to express his anarchic playfulness as to suggest the total freedom which he approaches musical instrumentation, vocal performances and stylistic experimentation, he has become the inventor of a deeply weird and immensely moving style of music, mystical and surreal, which abruptly veers from the plaintive cries of Mongolian or Western Chinese music to the barbed and sometimes childlike humor of the avant garde. Complementing his stylistic creativity is a unique way of playing acoustic guitar, loops, synthesizers and any other instrument that catches his fancy.”

On my way out of Indonesia I really had no desire to stop through Jakarta again. I enjoyed my first two days there, but didn’t see any reason to submit myself to another round of the same daunting traffic and urban sprawl that I consistently get in China. However, after promises of hardcore madness by Fadhila Jayamahendra (aka Aca), the lead singer of Straight Answer, I decided to stay over one more night before heading on to Cambodia. I did not regret it. During my last night in Indonesia I witnessed one of the most frenzied audience responses to a live performance ever. Once Straight Answer broke into their first song, there was no holding back. Everyone charged the stage to try to get a piece of the action. As you can see in the video, I am getting thrown back and forth within the crowd. Also, the temperature of the room rose so quickly from the body heat that my lens fogged over – it was absolutely crazy. Straight Answer has been around since 1996 and is a staple of the Jakarta hardcore scene. There is an extended interview with Aca after some short concert clips. I am still putting together the rest of the Indonesian hardcore material so stay tuned – more to come.

Yes, I know. Everybody has been reporting on the breakup of Carsick Cars for a number of months now and many people have already seen the new lineup play at D-22 on New Years Eve and again with P.K. 14 at Yugong Yishan last month. Unfortunately I was out of town on these occasions but did manage to film them at their secret What Bar gig in December. Shou Wang is now joined by He Fan of Birdstriking on bass and Lin Banban of Boyz and Girl fame on drums. What Bar is still one of the best kept secrets for live music in Beijing. Many of the most talented underground acts in China first cut their teeth in this cramped little room along the west wall of the Forbidden City. The vocal mix isn’t the best, but hopefully this will prove to the rest of the world that Carsick Cars is still rocking out and ready to move on to new and better things.

Hanggai released their new album He Who Travels Far to a rowdy crowd at Yugong Yishan last month. The highly anticipated sophomore release for the punk-folk-Mongolian sextet hits high marks once again, much like their first album, Introducing Hanggai, which received extensive praise from Pitchfork. Hanggai’s story is rather incredible. Ilchi, the founder of the band, originally played in early punk groups around Beijing where he moved to at the age of twelve before undergoing a bit of a personal crisis and returned to his Mongolian roots in Inner Mongolia. Inspired by the folk music and vanishing traditional life of his homeland, he learned how to throat sing and play the tobshuur, a two-stringed Mongolian banjo. The songs he subsequently began to write on his own, however, moves far beyond customary Mongolian music by incorporating modal structures and beats that draw strongly from his rock and punk background. The new album thus ranges from traditional, hauntingly beautiful tunes to more bawdy, uplifting drinking songs. Like much of modern China and its ongoing synthesis of different cultures, Hanggai is difficult to peg in a very refreshing way. Their unique sound has also lead to many international tours. They are easily one of the most successful “Chinese” alternative music exports, but still unflaggingly represent a new societal hybrid found in Inner Mongolia that identifies strongly with its traditional past while struggling with and incorporating an onslaught of contemporary Han Chinese lifestyles and Mandarin language dominance.