Weekly Update: quick comeback

By Josh, 2016年 4月 6日

Welcome back, friends! That’s a self-reflexive welcome back, as pangbianr is taking a break from our self-imposed, long-term booking hiatus with two hot tickets coming your way this Thursday @ Dada and Saturday @ Fruityspace. Those two, plus a few other relevant items for your consideration in this week’s update:

First up, Thursday (4.7) @ Dada: Antidote x pangbianr team up for a long weeknight of far-out future sounds and ice-cold springtime club killers. Heading up the bill is the legendary RP Boo, founding father of Chicago footwork/juke, following up on a canceled December gig. Credited in some hype-oriented media as “the greatest Chicago producer you’ve never heard of”, Boo’s oeuvre is ground zero for the radical evolution in sound and movement that has characterized the Windy City as one of few hearths of true originality in contemporary club music. He barely played outside of his hometown until the 2013 release of his Legacy LP, which, as the name implies, cemented his role within the city’s storied dancefloor-cultural history.

Joining are two more international guests: from London we get Helm, a sound artist and experimental electronic musician whose 2015 long-player for PAN, Olympic Mess, increasingly incorporates his parallel interest in industrial and hard-edged dance music. Helm will play a live set on Saturday afternoon at Fruityspace (see below) for the true noise heads; tonight at Dada he’s DJing a mix of Belgian synth wave, new beat, proto-techno, hard & cold Euro dance tunes.

All that, plus another turn from irregular Beijing resident M Dwinell, founding member of Forma, who’ll unpack his modular suitcase once again for some hot organ licks and conceptual twists on contemporary club culture, justly intoned. (Dwinell will also flip his set to the more experimental end of the spectrum on Saturday at Fruityspace; see below.)

Opening/closing sets of thinking-person’s machine music from Beijing’s Charm and Oaktree Blossom, respectively.

10pm start, 50rmb

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Then pangbianr hits the reset button on Saturday at Fruityspace, the new live venue opened by Fruityshop vinyl store proprietor Zhai Ruixin (aka Me:mo), located a stone’s throw away from the China National Art Gallery. Excellent/raw basement vibes in this spot, Zhu Wenbo & co threw a pretty nasty noise show there last Sunday. Works well for grimy matinees.

Our thing kicks off abruptly on Saturday at 4pm with a free improv set by Beijing’s reigning harsh noise champion, Ding Chenchen (丁晨晨), whose “instrument” lately I guess is “no-input mixer that he wears like a giant medallion around his neck”, plus Charm smashing drums to boot. Then live sets of ambient electronics, experimental drone, exploratory sound art, et al from London’s Helm (PAN) and New York’s M Dwinell (Forma/Bunker NYC). Chase that down with a live set from Menghan, Beijing’s first lady of challenging, deep & dark techno.

Here’s some recent work from our visiting guests to set the stage:

4pm start, be on time!

Fruityspace address: 13 Meishuguan Dong Jie / 美术馆东街13号 (basement space, across from 24-hour Sanlian bookstore)

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Follow that up on Sunday with the opening reception for Drifting, a field recording-based exhibit by Jason Kahn. You might have seen Kahn pop up at the Zoomin’ Night underpass or at Fruityspace over the past few weeks. He’s been in town capturing random Beijing sounds via two small, fuzzy mics pinned to the lapels of his jacket, and has put a random assortment of his field recordings into a quadraphonic sound installation at Meridian Space, supplemented by text notes on the city’s soundscape.

More from Meridian:

“These sounds will be integrated with the numerous texts in the final installation, played through many small speakers installed in the exhibition space. Some of these sounds might parallel the sounds written about in the texts, but many will not. The installation is part sound-journal, part investigation into our awareness of the sounds around us and in particular will give residents of Beijing a different perspective on how the sound environments in their city have been perceived from the ears of a visitor, investigating the city each day through a conscious focus on sound.”

Pop in on Sunday, April 10 at 6pm for the official opening and a discussion with Kahn.

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Then roll all that energy on into Monday, when DDC hosts legendary composer & improv performer Otomo Yoshihide. As Japanese experimental musicians have pretty much been personae non gratae (someone check my Latin grammar?) over the last year+ in Beijing, I’m just gonna copy/paste the event info and cross fingers this doesn’t get canceled at the last minute:

Sound of Silence

The Red Errant Knight：As the current domestic be found the most ancient of silent martial arts films.The Red Errant Knight is the classic martial arts films of China’s early pioneer and is worth to collect carefully.Will bring you different feeling.

Otomo Yoshihide:Improvisational guitarist, turntablist and composer Otomo Yoshihide was born August 1, 1959 in Yokohama, Japan; the son of an engineer, as a child he built his own radio and electronic oscillator, and as a teen began creating sound collages by means of open-reel tape recorders. During high school, Yoshihide performed in a local rock band before moving on to free jazz, influenced primarily by saxophonist Kaoru Abe and guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi; while a university student, he also became fascinated with ethnic music, and in 1981 traveled to Hainan, China to research the area’s musical culture.

80rmb at the door, 7:30pm start

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