I helped curate my friend Roman Lojko’s most recent show on WMBR Cambridge, which focused on China. You can stream the show on WMBR’s site and hear music from Offset: Spectacles, La Loupe, Hot & Cold, Which Park, Fanzui Xiangfa, Walnut Room, Ajinai, and Xiao He, among others.

昭合事變-試拍 (Showa Incident) is a short super 8mm film by by Taiwan-based 趙小姐 (Doll Zhao), whose work will be featured in the first Pangbianr Music and Film Festival on July 25 at 2kolegas. See the short super 8 film here.

Product placement is a means to survival for so many filmmakers today, but The Opposite House shorts have done something entirely new—they’ve placed the film literally inside the product.

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

…sometimes it’s better to keep it simple, and stay true to the original spirit of these both Mongolian and American traditional tunes, rather than trying to spruce them up for the modern set.

This second generation who is taking and building upon an already established sound is confirmation that Beijing has grown into a grounded music scene in its own right, one that gives rise to bands that convey similar emotions using the same musical language.

Wheatfield’s big kick is supplying young artists, intellectuals and counter-culture types in Kunming with a rich selection of literature, theory and music.

光榮的夢 (Glorious Dream) by Taiwan-based 趙小姐 (Doll Zhao) will be featured in the first Pangbianr Music and Film Festival on July 25 at 2kolegas. See the short super 8 film here.