I'm Going To Beijing - Any Music Should I Look Out For?

Oh dear God, the syntax of that title! Would a mod kindly flip "I" and "should"?!

The only Beijing types I've heard about were young punky girls starting bands. I think there was a NYT mag piece a few years ago or something.

Peter Hessler got a blog?

i thought u were makin fun of chinese in th title

I know!! That's why I am so horribly embarrassed of it.

i thought you were making fun of black people with your name

As far as I know, China's music scene is pretty backwards. I haven't spent a whole lot of time there, and my friend who was just there for a year was in central (read: bumfuck) China, but from what I've experienced/heard there's a real dearth of anything interesting. If you mean pop/rock/avant in the same vein as, say, Tokyo, you're pretty much up shit creek. I could be wrong, but that's all I got.

Summat's going on:

http://www.post-concrete.com/005/index.html

Jay Chou's probably the biggest name in Chinese R'n'B - I think he's Taiwan-based, but releases his stuff on the mainland as well (his name is ??? in simplified Chinese, if that helps in looking). He's really good, as well - really detailed, lush production, all unexpected touches and cinematic flourish. His latest album, 'November's Chopin', is well worth getting. There's some pretty neat mixing of classical Chinese instrumentation with hip-hop/r'n'b styles in there; Wang Lee Hom does the same kind of thing, though I don't know that much of his stuff (he had a recent album, 'heroes of the earth', that I've heard some good songs from). R'n'B seems to be where the most interesting stuff is happening, though it means wading through quite a few glurgy ballads.

I don't really know much about the Chinese pop market - the Hong Kong and Taiwan chart pop markets seem very similar to the Japanese one, in that they're full of actors-who-also-sing and straightforward manufactured pop, and I think the Chinese charts are basically the same, dominated by non-mainland artists.

There's a cute HK hairclip-indiepop group called "My Little Airport" who I quite like - I think they've just split up? Not at all avant, though.

is ??? in simplified. (will this work?)

(...no, it won't.)

I've been living in China since January of this year. I have found no evidence of a good music "scene". Everyone I know has the same viewpoint. Whenever the subject of good Chinese music comes up, it usually provokes sad laughter, and then homesickness. It is really, really, really, really, really, really depressing.

The best music I have heard has been the music played on old stereos in Buddhist temples, which are hypnotizing chants usually consisting of one voice and a woodblock, sometimes a big drum as well.

I enjoy Jay Chou as a sort of cultural curiosity. It's fun to see what billboard Jay Chou will appear on next. I'm pretty sure he's made of silly putty. One day he's sexy Jay Chou, with an unbuttoned shirt and longing eyes, and the next day he's World Cup Jay Chou, and he's kicking a ball and wearing an Italian uniform shirt, and then the next he's Goatee Jay Chou. Then actor Jay Chou. He's sort of like J-Lo. Jay Chou (Chou rhymes with low). He's a popstar.

His music is awful, however.

One of the problems is that Chinese people like their music, television, and films to be cheesy. Way beyond my cheesy threshold. Every song must be cheesy.

I'm convinced that there is no avant-garde/experimental scene here. When I first came I had hopes that maybe I'd spot an occasional acid mothers temple-esque stoned Chinese guy in the alley making good music, but now that notion seems a little ridiculous to imagine.

If anyone can correct me, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do so. I'm dying here.

Oh, oh oh, I forgot to mention, there is the "Superstar" song by S.H.E. that came out last year, I think. That song is pretty good, and gets addicting the more you hear it. But my girlfriend bought their new album, and it's just nonstop terrible from the first song on.

I know the feeling, Zachary! I'm from Russia, where people also like extra cheese on their synths and any rock band is an alternative-rock band by default (since the golden mean is still a kind of gypsyfied Italo Disco).

My travel books insist there's a punk scene in Beijing, citing such bands as Brain Failure, "ska-tinged" (uh-oh) Reflector and a girl-punk outfit called Hang On The Box. A cabaret/folk/whatever band called Second Hand Rose actually sounds decent from the description.

The best live venue is supposedly Yu Gong Yi Shan.

I'm in Beijing right now as well and my searches have pretty much matched what's been already said. I have a travel guide which claims there are a bunch of punk bands performing on a bar circuit, but the only lead they give is to check out the bands mentioned in 'That's Beijing' and to ask around in local bars.

I was at Xidan the other week and found a 'punk' shop that sold a bunch of homemade t-shirts, mostly just thumbnails of album covers blown up onto an extra small tee. I'd go there and ask the store owners for some leads.

also, check out these two WFMU posts: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/11/chinese_rocks.html and http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2006/05/chinese_rocks_p.html

I heard an excerpt, a few seconds of a song by Hang On The Box, on some Public Radio thing, it was pretty good! For a few seconds (well, all of the few were good). But also, if you check the Global Hit Pages archived at http://www.theworld.org (a joint production of PRI and the BBC), they had really hot excerpts of a Chinese punk band, The Subs (also backstory), but the usually reliable link to the BBC-associated store site had nothing to sell, at that point (a long time ago). But I did google up an EP or two somewhere, wish I'd ordered. There might be more now. I'd start with their Global Hit Page though, might could save time by Google Advance Searching with theworld.org as Domain Name, and you can hear them in the archive.

nothing to offer but whats on in SPB and moscow in Sept?

has minimal house hit russia? a tiny clip i saw on the fortdance website seemed to indicate so...

Erm, for Russian sounds and East and Central Euro, might wanta check http://www.tamizdat.org/

There's also FM3, an electronic music group, who released recently their famous Buddha Box. (BTW, you may be able to find the same device with a recording of a buddhist prayer in a monastery; I got one that looks exactly like the Buddha Box at the one in Lantau Island in Hong Kong.)

look out for a fellow named Wang Changcung, he just released an album on Sub Rosa, go to Foxy Digitalis for a review. He organizes events as well, in China

Check out:

Sandee Chan (best new artist I've heard)
Long Kuan Jin Duan
People Mountain People Sea

And some fun '80s bands I like:

Tat Ming
Chiu Chiu Band