Though Pollard himself acknowledged that “there’s not really a big noise scene anywhere,” quality noise musicians of any sort in or passing through Beijing are relatively rare; thus I was surprised that this performance, one of the best I’ve seen recently, didn’t interest more people enough to attend.

The majority (more than 75%) of the audience was non-Chinese. Both surprising and not considering the state of music in Beijing at the moment: we’re in the thick of summer language-study students, many of whom will have heard of Caribou.

“Chinese rock was finished very early on. Without spirit, without a core, rock music can’t exist. Western rock music is a huge structure: from economics to culture, the influence is quite deep. In the eyes of Westerners rock music is perhaps not only a form of expression via music, but more of an aspect of spiritual enjoyment.”

Read the full interview in English and 中文

Hot & Cold’s set often touched on minimal synth traditions of simple repeated melodies (when there is a melody to speak of), raw and bleak (or reverb-saturated) vocals, and stripped down rhythm compositions. However, Hot & Cold is definitely not another band of the Dead Luke/John Maus variety. There is no danger of inappropriate melodic lushness or oversanitized synths replacing vital shapeless noise, only an obvious lack of adherence to any one musical classification, an intelligently programmed drum machine, and post-apocalyptic lyrics.

Pen&ink: Geometric exercises

Dumpling-making begins in the wee hours of the morning at this place, one of the few in the alley open past 2.