Raying Temple is a self-sufficient musical enclave. A band could get the idea, practice, perform and record all in one place, with booze and beds on-site to fuel the process. The weird ambience and well off-the-beaten-path location in Tongzhou makes Raying Temple a welcome alternative to the more established “Beijing proper” clubs and fosters a self-selecting DIY community.

When I first moved to Beijing full-time I was surprised to learn there were two experimental nights every Tuesday. After reading Pete DeMola’s thorough article on D22’s Zoomin’ Night, I wanted to profile its late counterpart: Waterland Kwanyin at 2Kolegas.

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.

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.

Offset: Spectacles are putting out a cassette tape on tuesday June 15 at D22. I found out they’re going to be releasing tapes for several Chinese bands and the bassist also makes a zine. So we made them this flyer.