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.

I just completed a Domus Mixtape for Beijing. You can hear it over at Domus or on SoundCloud. I drew exclusively from Maybe Mars and Modern Sky for the music as well as a live recording of Zhang Shouwang/张守望 of White+ and Carsick Cars fame. There is a lot more music out there in China, of course, but this is definitely some of my favorite material. Sort of the soundtrack to my life over the past four years. Below is the accompanying text, track list and some portraits of the performers included on the mixtape from Sound Kapital:

The hardest part of the day in Beijing is getting out of bed. Gazing across a smoggy skyline and watching the hectic traffic below is reason enough to hide under the covers for a few more hours. It is a dystopia – maybe even a nightmare. That is why I embrace the night. The sky remains a muted black, and I can seek out sparks of life in the darker recesses of the city. Beijing’s mutating urban landscape can only be matched by its shifting artistic climate, especially in the realm of sound. Desperation breeds discontent, and voices are emerging to express it. Every weekend features full billings at a growing number of performance spaces across Beijing: dive bars near the universities, small coffee houses hidden amongst the hutongs, larger concert halls in defunct government buildings, or experimental enclaves adjoining fish farms on the outer edges of the city. Beijing’s erratic social landscape is now molded by the Internet and mobile phones instead of more closely controlled media channels such as television and radio. Those with idiosyncratic tastes readily connect with each other and access an exponentially broader realm of music from both home and abroad as they continue to pick apart the past fifty years of western pop, rock, jazz, punk, electronic, and experimental music with increased vigor. The performers on this mixtape constitute a formidable new wave of artists striving to expand their creative limits in an autonomous and compelling fashion. Even though it is too early to tell what may come of the innovative strides made by these musicians, there is no doubt that they will continue to break ground within Beijing’s nascent artistic landscape, helping to push the boundaries of an already expanding realm of independent thought and musical expression in China. In the end the city resists description. Outside the smoke-choked bars everything is layered in a fine coat of dust. Whole neighborhoods disappear and find their way deep into your lungs. That’s the problem. The city gets inside you – fills you to the brim – consumed by a monstrous flow of people and infrastructure. It’s savage but enticing. Six million people flocked here over the past ten years and half a million are expected each year for the foreseeable future. The implosion is just beginning. The nebulous heart of the middle kingdom skips along to ever irregular beats.

Tracks:

01. My Great Location - Rebuilding the Rights of Statues/重塑雕像的权利

02. Some Surprises Come Too Soon - P.K. 14

03. No. 6 Space Ship - AV Okubo/AV大久保

04. Sand Hammer - Hedgehog/刺猬

05. Sunday Girl - Ourself Beside Me

06. Flu - Snapline

07. You Can Listen You Can Talk - Carsick Cars

08. Golden Gate - Duck Fight Goose/鸭打鹅乐队

09. This Side Down - The Offset Spectacle/憬观：像同叠

10. To Die - Soviet Pop/苏维埃·波普

11. The Earthquake - 24 Hour/24小时

12. Hospital - Guai Li/怪力

13. Beijing is Not My Home - Demerit/过失

14. Intro/Outro/Transitions - Zhang Shouwang/张守望 live at D-22 on November 22, 2011

Earlier this year Alexei Perry Cox of the Handsome Furs contacted me out of the blue about using the name of my book, Sound Kapital, as the name of their new album. Since most of the songs were related to their experiences in China, she thought it would be a cool way to pay homage to the alternative music scene and further their connection to the Middle Kingdom. I quickly consented, of course, after which Alexei made a further request to include my photography in the album design. She proposed to juxtapose my blueish Tuanjiehu waterpark series with an orangish nightfall Portland series photographed by Bradley Sellers. The results are quite stunning. Moreover, the music is great and getting solid reviews by Pitchfork and Spin. This is the first time I contributed to album art outside of Chinese bands, and I am proud to have provided the name of my book to their own musical ventures. The Handsome Furs are touring like mad right now in support of their new album. I am lucky enough to catch them on August 18 at the Bowery Ballroom. Rock it out if you can.

My portrait from Sound Kapital of Subs lead guitarist, Wuhao/吴昊, appeared on the cover of Courrier International. If you buy the magazine and speak French, please translate the article for me. The Subs are AWESOME. They are one of the first bands I saw when I returned to Beijing in 2007. Expect some big features next week, including photos in The New Yorker and Time Magazine.

I put together a video slideshow for my recently published monograph, Sound Kapital: Beijing’s Music Underground. It features the song Hard Heart from my favorite electrosurfer band in Beijing, Queen Sea Big Shark, which is also included in the compilation CD packaged with the book. The slideshow was also presented at the New York Photo Festival as part of a warm up for Lou Reed’s Hidden Books, Hidden Stories presentation.

After three years of photographing and months of preparation, my first monograph, Sound Kapital, finally launched at the powerHouse Arena in New York this past Thursday. Hundreds of people showed up and the prints looked wonderful in the large space. The guests of honor, though, were the Chinese bands who flew in from Beijing to kick off their first USA tour. I could not have been more honored to get P.K. 14, Carsick Cars, and Xiao He to play short sets at the opening. These performers provided a great deal of inspiration to commit to the Sound Kapital portrait series. They are easily making some of the best music coming out of China. You can see some video of their performance thanks to Punkcast.