Weekly Update: Heat Up & Chill

By Josh, 2016年 2月 17日

Welcome back! Now that the chunjie freeze is over, we can look forward to Beijing’s live music offerings heating up a bit. Here’s the first batch of good ones for Monkey Year to combat that primate anxiety:

First up: the Sayonara Music Festival, aka 别去音乐节, happening this Friday and Saturday at Beixinqiao gallery Aotu Studio. This double-header marks the triumphant return of Hot & Cold, aka brothers Joshua and Simon Frank, reunited in Beijing for the first time since Summer 2014. They’ll play a set of brand new tunes on Friday night, joined by cerebral dance music & electronic collages from Menghan and Wenliang. Here’s a teaser from Menghan’s EP, forthcoming (soon hopefully) on Sinotronics:

Night 2 features a solo set from Simon, alongside duo sets by 工工工 (Josh Frank + Offset: Spectacles’ Tom Ng) and Earsnail, the new-ish duo of White+’s Wang Xu and Da Bang’s Yan Shuai. Stream some otherwise unreleased demos from Hot & Cold and 工工工 in our chunjie mix.

50rmb per night, or 80rmb for a two-night pass. Show runs from 9pm til midnight-ish both nights.

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Next up: a string of shows for ex-Fushitsusha drummer Ryosuke Kiyasu. Last time Ryosuke came through Beijing, in May 2014, his noise-grind band Sete Star Sept headlined a thoroughly brutal pangbianr show at School Bar. This time he’s back solo, combining in different forms with a who’s who of the current Beijing noise underground. He’s doing back to back shows on Sunday, February 21, with an afternoon set (4pm start) at Fruityshop’s new Meishuguan performance space (its grand opening) along with Zhu Wenbo, and a nighttime gig at Aotu Studio (9pm start) with Ding Chenchen, Wang Ziheng, and Li Jianhong.

Ryosuke also had a Miji show scheduled for Tuesday (2.23), but, well, that one’s been canceled. First casualty of 2016. His other shows are safe for now, fingers crossed. To replace the Tuesday event, he’ll be playing a semi-secret living room show organized by Subjam. Follow the breadcrumbs on subjam.org to attend that.

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On Saturday, Split Works turns in their first gig of the Monkey Year with a show for Canadian noise rock band METZ. This band was an unknown to me before this booking, but pangbianr’s resident Canadian experimental music correspondent (Josh Frank) breaks it down:

they just used to tour like nuts, it was always like “ooh new metz 7″ on pitchfork”
seemed to be on the super DIY noise kick but also are totally normal guitar rock, if i remember right

Sounds good to me! Split Works describes the sound as “heavy, dark, sloppy noise punk,” and I love all five of those words as they relate to music. They’re supported by Beijing’s Future Orients, bright young things leading the 2016 charge for fresh blood on Maybe Mars. (Stream a track from their forthcoming, debut album in pangbianr’s chunjie mix.)

That’s at Mao Livehouse on Saturday, Feb 20, 120rmb at the door, 9pm start. Full info here.

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That’s all for now. For more of a punk & indie vibe, School Bar has a nice doubleheader on for the weekend as well. Click-through for the lineups on Friday and Saturday. And tune in next week for more, we’re back!

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